lucrnz / qemu-run

[deprecated] quickly run qemu vms!

Warning

This project is deprecated and wont be supported anymore!

I might rewrite it in the future in another (safer) programming language.

Please use an alternative like libvirtd.

qemu-run

Quickly launch QEMU virtual machines from your terminal. Without scripts, or bloated UI programs.

How to install: Unix-like systems

For doing this, simple clone this repo, and build it, you will need tools like git, a compiler and make.

git clone --recurse-submodules [email protected]:lucrnz/qemu-run.git
cd qemu-run
make
sudo mv qemu-run.bin /usr/bin/qemu-run

How to use: Making your first VM

First be sure to have QEMU installed, after that we need to setup a directory where you are gonna save all your virtual machines. This are gonna be stored into an environment variable. For doing this we simple edit our bashrc to add this directories:

echo "export QEMURUN_VM_PATH=\"$HOME/VM\"" >> $HOME/.bashrc

You can also specify multiple directories, by separating them by ":" , for example:

echo "export QEMURUN_VM_PATH=\"$HOME/VM:/media/volume/VM\"" >> $HOME/.bashrc

For this simple example, let's stick with $HOME/VM Now, grab yourself an ISO of any operative system you want to emulate. For this example, we are gonna download one of the smallest GNU/Linux distros: TinyCore.

cd $HOME/VM
mkdir tinycore
cd tinycore
wget http://www.tinycorelinux.net/12.x/x86/release/TinyCore-current.iso -O tinycore.iso
echo "sys=x32" > config.ini # Initialize the VM config file.
echo "cdrom=tinycore.iso" >> config.ini
qemu-run tinycore

You should be see Tiny Core Linux booting up 😃

If you need a hard drive (for example, you are installing a GNU/Linux like Debian)

qemu-img create -f qcow2 disk.qcow2 64G # Replace the size as you like.