Re: running qemu on an AMD64
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>> Could I use Linux to copy the Windows program exe files etc to the
>> Windows fake partition created by qemu and then go into Windows under
>> qemu and then get it to install the software?
>
> For many pieces of software that scheme would work, but for "copy
> protected" discs it will fail. These so-called 'copy protected' discs
> deliberately put bad data on the disc and a special program is loaded at
> install time to read the disc (and also to ensure that the bad stuff is
> there). For example, a naive attempt to back up 'Flight Simulator' will
> result in bad checksums etc.
There are actually more than one way to do this, depending on what you
are trying to do:
1. To create a CD image and use it as a virtual CD-ROM in QEMU you need
to run this command from a terminal:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=image.iso
"qemu-launcher" version 1.8.0~pre0-1, which is available in Debian
Experimental, can also do it, so can some GUI CD burning applications.
To use the CD image, run "qemu" like this...
qemu -hda hard-disk.img -cdrom image.iso
...or browse to it in "qemu-launcher". A "-cdrom" can also point to a
real CD-ROM device, like "/dev/cdrom". In fact, if you do not use
"-cdrom" option, "qemu" will not emulate any CD-ROMs.
2. "qemu" also has this little known option that allows using real
directories as virtual drives. It works like this:
qemu -hda hard-disk.img -hdb fat:/home/user/directory
The guest OS will not be allowed to write to the directory by default.
If you want this, use the following command:
qemu -hda hard-disk.img -hdb fat:rw:/home/user/directory
In any case, you should not modify anything in the directory while the
emulator is running. This will confuse the guest OS, and may result in
corrupted data being read.
3. There is also a way to mount the virtual hard disk, and access it
directly, but it requires root access, and is not really nice. It works
like this:
sudo mount -o loop,offset=32256 /path/to/image.img /mnt/something
Do not forget to umount it before starting the emulator. No disk image
should be used both by guest and host OS at the same time, as it may and
probably will) corrupt the image.
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