What is QEMU ?

QEMU is a FAST! processor emulator using dynamic translation to achieve good emulation speed.

QEMU supports two operating modes:

User-mode emulation allows a process built for one CPU to be executed on another (performing dynamic translation of the instructions for the host CPU and converting Linux system calls appropriately).

Full System mode emulation allows emulation of a full system,(for example a PC), including one or several processors and various peripherals. It can be used to launch different Operating Systems without rebooting the PC or to debug system code. including processor and assorted peripherals.

For system emulation, the following hardware targets are supported:

• PC (x86 or x86_64 processor)
• ISA PC (old style PC without PCI bus)
• PREP (PowerPC processor)
• G3 Beige PowerMac (PowerPC processor)
• Mac99 PowerMac (PowerPC processor, in progress)
• Sun4m/Sun4c/Sun4d (32-bit Sparc processor)
• Sun4u/Sun4v (64-bit Sparc processor, in progress)
• Malta board (32-bit and 64-bit MIPS processors)
• MIPS Magnum (64-bit MIPS processor)
• ARM Integrator/CP (ARM)
• ARM Versatile baseboard (ARM)
• ARM RealView Emulation/Platform baseboard (ARM)
• Spitz, Akita, Borzoi, Terrier and Tosa PDAs (PXA270 processor)
• Luminary Micro LM3S811EVB (ARM Cortex-M3)
• Luminary Micro LM3S6965EVB (ARM Cortex-M3)
• Freescale MCF5208EVB (ColdFire V2).
• Arnewsh MCF5206 evaluation board (ColdFire V2).
• Palm Tungsten|E PDA (OMAP310 processor)
• N800 and N810 tablets (OMAP2420 processor)
• MusicPal (MV88W8618 ARM processor)
• Gumstix "Connex" and "Verdex" motherboards (PXA255/270).
• Siemens SX1 smartphone (OMAP310 processor)
• Syborg SVP base model (ARM Cortex-A8).
• AXIS-Devboard88 (CRISv32 ETRAX-FS).
• Petalogix Spartan 3aDSP1800 MMU ref design (MicroBlaze).

For user emulation, x86, PowerPC, ARM, 32-bit MIPS, Sparc32/64, ColdFire(m68k), CRISv32 and MicroBlaze CPUs are supported.

Building the QEMU accelerator

$ git://git.sv.gnu.org/qemu.git or http://git.sv.gnu.org/r/qemu.git
$ $ cd qemu
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

QEMU usage:

This command will create a 500MB hard disk image in QEMU's "qcow" format

qemu-img create -f qcow c.img 500M

$ qemu-img create -f qcow c.img 128M
Formating 'c.img', fmt=qcow, size=131072 kB
$

In this command the -f option is for the disk image format. The following formats are supported: raw, qcow, cow, vmdk and cloop. See also: .img and .iso.

Now you have an emulated disk (c.img) and a CD-ROM from which you can install your operating system. The next step is to install the operating system on your hard disk. This is done simply with qemu:

$ qemu -hda c.img -cdrom linux.iso -boot d

This will boot a virtual machine with 64MB of memory, booting from c.img.

$ qemu -hda c.img -boot c -m 64 -vnc :1