Booting Zephix

Zephix can be booted using either the traditional BIOS boot or else using UEFI boot. It will automatically detect the type of boot and act accordingly. If you would like to test Zephix using VirtualBox, here is some important information you must read first, especially if you are going to use a USB device to boot with persistence from Microsoft Windows.

A quick search online will guide you how to create a vmdk file that points to the USB drive and then attach it to a controller to boot. This is fine unless you would like to use persistence. If you use a vmdk file for the USB drive within the virtual machine, Windows will have a lock on the drive volume and so the virtual machine will not able to have write access to the USB drive volume. It will be able write to sectors outside of the partition (ex: MBR), but not files inside the partition. Persistence requires physical file access to the drive volume and therefore, using a vmdk file, persistence will fail.

You will also realise that the virtual machine will snapshot the drive so that any writes you make to the locked portion of the USB drive (when running under the virtual machine) will go to a snapshot version of the USB drive and will not physically write to the sectors on the USB disk. Therefore, any files you create or update while using Zephix will not be there once the virtual machine is closed.

In order to solve this issue, the Zephix team has found a working solution. If you want to be able to access the USB drive in raw mode, this requires the drive to be offline from Windows and the USB icon should disappear from the notification area in Windows, indicating that the virtual machine has acquired exclusive total control of the device.

To achieve this, create a virtual machine in VirtualBox without attaching any vmdk file. Actually you do not even need a storage controller. Once the machine is ready, plug in the USB device containing Zephix taking note of the type of USB port (ex: USB3). Once the USB device is detected by Windows, click the USB title in the virtual machine details section. Enable the USB controller, select the USB type and click the icon showing a USB with green plus symbol. Select your USB drive and press OK.

The final step is to instruct VirtualBox to use the physical USB device to boot even though there is no vmdk file attached to a storage controller. VirtualBox can also do this when EFI boot is enabled. Click the System title in the virtual machine details, and tick Enable EFI (special OSes only). Zephix is now ready to boot from the USB device. Start the virtual machine and you will be presented with VirtualBox EFI screen. Here you can either press Enter or else wait for the countdown to finish. Zephix was programmed in such a way that VirtualBox automatically finds the required files on disk to boot, without the user having to type anything, making the user experience as seamless as possible.