[SOLVED] I think I broke Qemu

[patrickaupperle]

I ran puppy linux in qemu and it worked great. I was enjoying being able to do virtualization. Then I decided to try my debian iso and when I tried to boot it this came up (screenshot). Then anytime I tried to boot anything it came up. I tried puppy again and same message. Any suggestion on fixing it? Should I move to different software?




Edit: If I should switch software, I want one that can boot ISOs as well as normal images.

[patrickaupperle]

Bump

[patrickaupperle]

If this is unfixable (or if you don't know how) please post something. I also need to know how to remove qemu and what software would be suggested if this is the case.

[ruibernardo]

Hi patrick,

you are trying to boot QEMU with an ISO file, but you are not telling QEMU to boot from it. The option is "-boot d" to boot from the cd-rom.

I see that you are also using "sudo" to launch QEMU. You should NOT do this. It is not needed and is certainly not advisable in any circumstances, unless you really want to because for some mysterious reason.


A very good page about QEMU, setting it up and use it is https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...UnderQemuHowTo. From there you can enable kqemu accelerator, virtual networking and usb.

[patrickaupperle]

-boot d didnt work, but -cdrom did

Thank you, any idea on how to get debian working? I posted that somewhere else, ill go get the link.

edit: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=719055

[ruibernardo]

Sorry, about that

My actual complete command line to boot a debian testing/lenny is (copy/paste to a text editor, adapt it, save it a file and make it executable - chmod +x scriptname):

#/bin/sh
qemu -m 384 \
    -localtime \
    -hda '/home/myuser/qemu/lenny/lenny.ovl' \
    -hdb '/home/myuser/qemu/lenny/hdb.raw' \
    -boot c \
    -cdrom '/home/myuser/Desktop/CDs/mini-debian-testing.iso' \
    -net none \
    -usb

EDIT:change "-boot d" to boot from the "-cdrom iso_file".

[ruibernardo]

Here some GUI tools to deal with QEMU options and make your life easier with QEMU: qemu-launcher and qemulator, both on the Ubuntu repositories.

[patrickaupperle]

Sorry, about that

My actual complete command line to boot a debian testing/lenny is (copy/paste to a text editor, adapt it, save it a file and make it executable - chmod +x scriptname):

#/bin/sh
qemu -m 384 \
    -localtime \
    -hda '/home/myuser/qemu/lenny/lenny.ovl' \
    -hdb '/home/myuser/qemu/lenny/hdb.raw' \
    -boot c \
    -cdrom '/home/myuser/Desktop/CDs/mini-debian-testing.iso' \
    -net none \
    -usb

EDIT:change "-boot d" to boot from the "-cdrom iso_file".

Can you explain what this does?

[ruibernardo]

qemu -m 384 \
    -localtime \

Starts a qemu VM with 384 MB of RAM and its BIOS clock set to the time of the clock in the host...

    -hda '/home/myuser/qemu/lenny/lenny.ovl' \

... with a hard disk connected to hda. The file for hda is lenny.ovl, which is an overlay of another disk file (lenny.img), so any changes in the VM are not saved on the original disk file. You have to use the command qemu-img to create disk files (type "man qemu-img" for more info).

    -hdb '/home/myuser/qemu/lenny/hdb.raw' \

This line adds a second hard disk to hdb. The file for this disk is hdb.raw and is in RAW format, created by qemu-img. I use it to save files in it and later I mount the disk file in the host and use it as another mount point to retrieve the files.

    -boot c \

Boot from the hard disk.

    -cdrom '/home/myuser/Desktop/CDs/mini-debian-testing.iso' \

Use the iso file as a cdrom.

    -net none \
    -usb

No network, but usb enabled (need to add usb devices by pressing Alt+Ctrl+2 on the VM and type "info usbhost" and then add "usb_add host:1234:5678"). Remove the "-net -none" line to have network.

Read the docs to know more about QEMU.

The GUI tools that I posted before - qemu-launcher and qemulator - handle all this options for you with a GUI.

Here is a link to a video file with qemulator: http://qemulator.createweb.de/conten...al&typ=richdoc

Try it (or qemu-launcher), it's more simple and less confusing for the start.

[patrickaupperle]

Thankyou for all the trouble you went to. I tried with these options on Qemu-launcher and it still did not work. Maybe it would be easier to duel boot.