bochs(1)

📦
version 3.0 · 3 versions
, in debian trixie

💖 bochs — the portable x86 emulator page (section 1, The Bochs Project, bestie) 💖

okay so welcome to bochs(1), the manual page for the Bochs Project's little time machine. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, we're gonna talk about running entire operating systems inside your operating system. no cap.

✨ NAME ✨

bochs — portable x86 emulator. that's it, that's the whole vibe. a whole Intel machine, but make it a program. 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

bochs [bochs_options] [bochsrc_options]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Bochs is a portable Intel Architecture 32 (x86) emulator that runs on most popular operating systems. and like, the way it's giving "inception but for computers" — inside the emulator, it can run many operating systems, including Linux and Microsoft(R) Windows(R). literally a whole little computer inside your computer, main character energy fr fr. 🦋

✨ OPTIONS ✨

okay so real talk: when you run Bochs without one of the following options, it goes looking for a configuration file called .bochsrc in the current directory and your home directory, and then it shows you the start menu. 🫶

  • -q — skips the start menu after it loads the configuration file. quiet queen behavior.
  • -f configfile — tells Bochs the name of the configuration file to use.
  • -qf configfile — when you run Bochs with this one, it skips the start menu and uses the config file you specified. two birds, one slay. 🎀
  • -n — Bochs doesn't load a configuration file at all. in that case you gotta do the whole emulation setup yourself with bochsrc options on the command line, or in the start menu. diy era. 💅
  • -benchmark N — runs Bochs in benchmark mode for N millions of emulated ticks. numbers go brrr. 📈
  • -dumpstats N — dumps Bochs stats every N millions of emulated ticks.
  • -r path — restores the Bochs state from path. save file moment. 💾
  • -log filename — specifies the Bochs log file name.
  • -unlock — unlocks Bochs images that got left over from a previous session. cleaning up your mess, we love to see it. 🧹
  • -h, --help — prints a summary of the command line options for Bochs and exits.
  • -h, --help features — displays the available features / devices and exits.
  • -h, --help cpu — displays the supported CPU models and exits.
💜 the following options are only available if Bochs is compiled with debugger support. so if they ghost you, that's why bestie.
  • -dbg — starts the Bochs internal debugger on startup. detective mode activated. 🔍
  • -rc filename — executes debugger commands stored in file.
  • -dbglog — specifies the Bochs internal debugger log file name.

🌈 overriding your config, the cute way 🌈

you can override the settings from the configuration file with command line arguments, using the same syntax as the bochsrc file. and listen — if you have any spaces in your command line arguments, they should be enclosed in single quotes. don't skip that part, it's not optional, iykyk. 🙈

for info on Bochs command line and configuration file arguments, see the man page bochsrc(5).

example: ✨

bochs -q 'boot:a' 'floppya: 1_44=a.img, status=inserted'

👑 LICENSE 👑

this program is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. see the LGPL file located in /usr/share/common-licenses/ for details on the license and the lack of warranty. yes, "lack of warranty" — read it and weep, but like, legally. 😭

🦋 AVAILABILITY 🦋

the latest version of this program can be found at:

https://bochs.sourceforge.io/getcurrent.html

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

the Bochs IA-32 Emulator site on the World Wide Web:

https://bochs.sourceforge.io

online Bochs Documentation:

https://bochs.sourceforge.io/doc/docbook

💖 AUTHORS 💖

the Bochs emulator was created by Kevin Lawton (kevin@mandrakesoft.com), and is currently maintained by the members of the Bochs x86 Emulator Project. you can see a current roster of members at:

https://bochs.sourceforge.io/getinvolved.html

🐛 BUGS 🐛

please report all bugs to the bug tracker on our web site. just go to https://bochs.sourceforge.io, and click "Bug Reports" on the sidebar under "Feedback". not me being the bug reporter 💀

when you do, provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of the program you're running, the operating system you're running the program on, and the operating system you're running in the emulator. all four, bestie, don't leave me hanging. 🙏

okay that's the whole page!! this was bochs 3.0, dated 14 Dec 2024, and it's filed under bochs(1). thanks for reading my ted talk, go emulate something iconic. mwah. 💅✨🎀

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