Testing with qemu was Re: Please join the Skolelinux sarge testing team

[Gavin McCullagh <lists_gmc@fiachra.ucd.ie>]

Hi,

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005, Ralf Gesel|ensetter wrote:

> - another option is using the qemu as free virtual machine:
>   apt-get install qemu vtun
>   (vtun for the virtual tun0 network interface)
>   then follow Klaus-Ade's instructions at
>   http://developer.skolelinux.no/~klaus/notater/x4250.html

Just thought I'd document in a few lines how to use the kqemu accelerator
to make your testing a little speedier.  With the default "unaccelerated"
qemu, installation takes rather long and the system is rather unresponsive
once up.  If you're using qemu, I recommend trying this, it makes a huge
speed difference.

To install the kqemu accelerator kernel module (right now) you must:

1. Download the current source via CVS
	export CVS_RSH="ssh"
	cvs -z3 -d:ext:anoncvs@savannah.gnu.org:/cvsroot/qemu co qemu

2. Download the kqemu source/binary thing from this page.
	http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/download.html

3. untar it within the qemu dir
	cd qemu/
	tar -xvzf ../kqemu-0.XXXXX.tar.gz
	

4. configure and compile[1] qemu
	./configure
	make

5. Install (as root)
	make install

6. Load the kqemu module
	modprobe kqemu

7. Run qemu as usual but from /usr/local/bin

Notes:

[1] You must have the required libraries and headers which (on sarge)
    includes (libartsc0, libartsc0-dev, libgpmg1, libgpmg1-dev, the X
    libraries).

[2] There is currently a bug in qemu whereby you must not give it more RAM
than /dev/shm or it will crash with a "bus error".  If you run this
command:

    gavin@ravioli gavin> df -h /dev/shm
    Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
    tmpfs                 174M     0  174M   0% /dev/shm

and use no more RAM than the size shown you should be fine.  See this
thread for further details:

	http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2005-02/msg00133.html