QEMU CPU Emulator User Documentation
QEMU is a FAST! processor emulator using dynamic translation to achieve good emulation speed.
QEMU has two operating modes:
QEMU can run without an host kernel driver and yet gives acceptable performance.
For system emulation, the following hardware targets are supported:
For user emulation, x86, PowerPC, ARM, and Sparc32/64 CPUs are supported.
If you want to compile QEMU yourself, see section 9. Compilation from the sources.
If a precompiled package is available for your distribution - you just have to install it. Otherwise, see section 9. Compilation from the sources.
Download the experimental binary installer at http://www.freeoszoo.org/download.php.
Download the experimental binary installer at http://www.freeoszoo.org/download.php.
The QEMU System emulator simulates the following PC peripherals:
QEMU uses the PC BIOS from the Bochs project and the Plex86/Bochs LGPL VGA BIOS.
Download and uncompress the linux image (`linux.img') and type:
qemu linux.img
Linux should boot and give you a prompt.
usage: qemu [options] [disk_image]
disk_image is a raw hard disk image for IDE hard disk 0.
General options:
fr
for
French). This option is only needed where it is not easy to get raw PC
keycodes (e.g. on Macs or with some X11 servers). You don't need to
use it on PC/Linux or PC/Windows hosts.
The available layouts are:
ar de-ch es fo fr-ca hu ja mk no pt-br sv da en-gb et fr fr-ch is lt nl pl ru th de en-us fi fr-be hr it lv nl-be pt sl trThe default is
en-us
.
Network options:
bin
of
the Unix TFTP client). The host IP address on the guest is as usual
10.0.2.2.
10.0.2.4 smbservermust be added in the file `C:\WINDOWS\LMHOSTS' (for windows 9x/Me) or `C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\LMHOSTS' (Windows NT/2000). Then `dir' can be accessed in `\\smbserver\qemu'. Note that a SAMBA server must be installed on the host OS in `/usr/sbin/smbd'. QEMU was tested succesfully with smbd version 2.2.7a from the Red Hat 9.
# on the host qemu -redir tcp:6001::6000 [...] # this host xterm should open in the guest X11 server xterm -display :1To redirect telnet connections from host port 5555 to telnet port on the guest, use the following:
# on the host qemu -redir tcp:5555::23 [...] telnet localhost 5555Then when you use on the host
telnet localhost 5555
, you
connect to the guest telnet server.
Linux boot specific. When using this options, you can use a given Linux kernel without installing it in the disk image. It can be useful for easier testing of various kernels.
Debug/Expert options:
vc
pty
null
stdio
vc
in graphical mode and stdio
in
non graphical mode.
This option can be used several times to simulate up to 4 serials
ports.
vc
in graphical mode and stdio
in
non graphical mode.
loadvm
in monitor)
During the graphical emulation, you can use the following keys:
In the virtual consoles, you can use Ctrl-Up, Ctrl-Down, Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-PageDown to move in the back log.
During emulation, if you are using the `-nographic' option, use Ctrl-a h to get terminal commands:
The QEMU monitor is used to give complex commands to the QEMU emulator. You can use it to:
The following commands are available:
h
or w
can be specified with the i
format to
respectively select 16 or 32 bit code instruction size.
(qemu) x/10i $eip 0x90107063: ret 0x90107064: sti 0x90107065: lea 0x0(%esi,1),%esi 0x90107069: lea 0x0(%edi,1),%edi 0x90107070: ret 0x90107071: jmp 0x90107080 0x90107073: nop 0x90107074: nop 0x90107075: nop 0x90107076: nop
(qemu) xp/80hx 0xb8000 0x000b8000: 0x0b50 0x0b6c 0x0b65 0x0b78 0x0b38 0x0b36 0x0b2f 0x0b42 0x000b8010: 0x0b6f 0x0b63 0x0b68 0x0b73 0x0b20 0x0b56 0x0b47 0x0b41 0x000b8020: 0x0b42 0x0b69 0x0b6f 0x0b73 0x0b20 0x0b63 0x0b75 0x0b72 0x000b8030: 0x0b72 0x0b65 0x0b6e 0x0b74 0x0b2d 0x0b63 0x0b76 0x0b73 0x000b8040: 0x0b20 0x0b30 0x0b35 0x0b20 0x0b4e 0x0b6f 0x0b76 0x0b20 0x000b8050: 0x0b32 0x0b30 0x0b30 0x0b33 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x000b8060: 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x000b8070: 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x000b8080: 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x000b8090: 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720 0x0720
-
to press several keys
simultaneously. Example:
sendkey ctrl-alt-f1This command is useful to send keys that your graphical user interface intercepts at low level, such as
ctrl-alt-f1
in X Window.
The monitor understands integers expressions for every integer argument. You can use register names to get the value of specifics CPU registers by prefixing them with $.
Since version 0.6.1, QEMU supports many disk image formats, including growable disk images (their size increase as non empty sectors are written), compressed and encrypted disk images.
You can create a disk image with the command:
qemu-img create myimage.img mysize
where myimage.img is the disk image filename and mysize is its
size in kilobytes. You can add an M
suffix to give the size in
megabytes and a G
suffix for gigabytes.
See section 3.6.3 qemu-img
Invocation for more information.
If you use the option `-snapshot', all disk images are
considered as read only. When sectors in written, they are written in
a temporary file created in `/tmp'. You can however force the
write back to the raw disk images by using the commit
monitor
command (or C-a s in the serial console).
qemu-img
Invocationusage: qemu-img command [command options]
The following commands are supported:
Command parameters:
raw
qemu-img
info
to know the real size used by the image or ls -ls
on
Unix/Linux.
qcow
cow
vmdk
cloop
M
(megabyte) and G
(gigabyte) are supported
Command description:
commit
monitor command.
-e
option) or compressed (-c
option).
Only the format qcow
supports encryption or compression. The
compression is read-only. It means that if a compressed sector is
rewritten, then it is rewritten as uncompressed data.
Encryption uses the AES format which is very secure (128 bit keys). Use
a long password (16 characters) to get maximum protection.
Image conversion is also useful to get smaller image when using a
growable format such as qcow
or cow
: the empty sectors
are detected and suppressed from the destination image.
QEMU simulates up to 6 networks cards (NE2000 boards). Each card can be connected to a specific host network interface.
This is the standard way to emulate network. QEMU adds a virtual
network device on your host (called tun0
), and you can then
configure it as if it was a real ethernet card.
As an example, you can download the `linux-test-xxx.tar.gz'
archive and copy the script `qemu-ifup' in `/etc' and
configure properly sudo
so that the command ifconfig
contained in `qemu-ifup' can be executed as root. You must verify
that your host kernel supports the TUN/TAP network interfaces: the
device `/dev/net/tun' must be present.
See section 3.8 Direct Linux Boot to have an example of network use with a Linux distribution.
By using the option `-user-net' or if you have no tun/tap init script, QEMU uses a completely user mode network stack (you don't need root priviledge to use the virtual network). The virtual network configuration is the following:
QEMU Virtual Machine <------> Firewall/DHCP server <-----> Internet (10.0.2.x) | (10.0.2.2) | ----> DNS server (10.0.2.3) | ----> SMB server (10.0.2.4)
The QEMU VM behaves as if it was behind a firewall which blocks all incoming connections. You can use a DHCP client to automatically configure the network in the QEMU VM.
In order to check that the user mode network is working, you can ping the address 10.0.2.2 and verify that you got an address in the range 10.0.2.x from the QEMU virtual DHCP server.
Note that ping
is not supported reliably to the internet as it
would require root priviledges. It means you can only ping the local
router (10.0.2.2).
When using the built-in TFTP server, the router is also the TFTP server.
When using the `-redir' option, TCP or UDP connections can be redirected from the host to the guest. It allows for example to redirect X11, telnet or SSH connections.
This section explains how to launch a Linux kernel inside QEMU without having to make a full bootable image. It is very useful for fast Linux kernel testing. The QEMU network configuration is also explained.
sudo
so that the command ifconfig
contained in
`qemu-ifup' can be executed as root. You must verify that your host
kernel supports the TUN/TAP network interfaces: the device
`/dev/net/tun' must be present.
When network is enabled, there is a virtual network connection between
the host kernel and the emulated kernel. The emulated kernel is seen
from the host kernel at IP address 172.20.0.2 and the host kernel is
seen from the emulated kernel at IP address 172.20.0.1.
qemu.sh
. You should have the following output:
> ./qemu.sh Connected to host network interface: tun0 Linux version 2.4.21 (bellard@voyager.localdomain) (gcc version 3.2.2 20030222 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-5)) #5 Tue Nov 11 18:18:53 CET 2003 BIOS-provided physical RAM map: BIOS-e801: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable) BIOS-e801: 0000000000100000 - 0000000002000000 (usable) 32MB LOWMEM available. On node 0 totalpages: 8192 zone(0): 4096 pages. zone(1): 4096 pages. zone(2): 0 pages. Kernel command line: root=/dev/hda sb=0x220,5,1,5 ide2=noprobe ide3=noprobe ide4=noprobe ide5=noprobe console=ttyS0 ide_setup: ide2=noprobe ide_setup: ide3=noprobe ide_setup: ide4=noprobe ide_setup: ide5=noprobe Initializing CPU#0 Detected 2399.621 MHz processor. Console: colour EGA 80x25 Calibrating delay loop... 4744.80 BogoMIPS Memory: 28872k/32768k available (1210k kernel code, 3508k reserved, 266k data, 64k init, 0k highmem) Dentry cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes) Inode cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes) Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) Buffer-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) Page-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes) CPU: Intel Pentium Pro stepping 03 Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK. POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4 Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039 Initializing RT netlink socket apm: BIOS not found. Starting kswapd Journalled Block Device driver loaded Detected PS/2 Mouse Port. pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with no serial options enabled ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16450 ne.c:v1.10 9/23/94 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com) Last modified Nov 1, 2000 by Paul Gortmaker NE*000 ethercard probe at 0x300: 52 54 00 12 34 56 eth0: NE2000 found at 0x300, using IRQ 9. RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4 ide: Assuming 50MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx hda: QEMU HARDDISK, ATA DISK drive ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 hda: attached ide-disk driver. hda: 20480 sectors (10 MB) w/256KiB Cache, CHS=20/16/63 Partition check: hda: Soundblaster audio driver Copyright (C) by Hannu Savolainen 1993-1996 NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0 IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes TCP: Hash tables configured (established 2048 bind 4096) NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0. EXT2-fs warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem). Freeing unused kernel memory: 64k freed Linux version 2.4.21 (bellard@voyager.localdomain) (gcc version 3.2.2 20030222 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-5)) #5 Tue Nov 11 18:18:53 CET 2003 QEMU Linux test distribution (based on Redhat 9) Type 'exit' to halt the system sh-2.05b#
ls
for example. Type Ctrl-a h to have an help
about the keys you can type inside the virtual serial console. In
particular, use Ctrl-a x to exit QEMU and use Ctrl-a b as
the Magic SysRq key.
. /etc/linuxrcThen enable X11 connections on your PC from the emulated Linux:
xhost +172.20.0.2You can now launch `xterm' or `xlogo' and verify that you have a real Virtual Linux system !
NOTES:
ide1=noprobe ide2=noprobe ide3=noprobe ide4=noprobe ide5=noprobe
QEMU has a primitive support to work with gdb, so that you can do 'Ctrl-C' while the virtual machine is running and inspect its state.
In order to use gdb, launch qemu with the '-s' option. It will wait for a gdb connection:
> qemu -s -kernel arch/i386/boot/bzImage -hda root-2.4.20.img -append "root=/dev/hda" Connected to host network interface: tun0 Waiting gdb connection on port 1234
Then launch gdb on the 'vmlinux' executable:
> gdb vmlinux
In gdb, connect to QEMU:
(gdb) target remote localhost:1234
Then you can use gdb normally. For example, type 'c' to launch the kernel:
(gdb) c
Here are some useful tips in order to use gdb on system code:
info reg
to display all the CPU registers.
x/10i $eip
to display the code at the PC position.
set architecture i8086
to dump 16 bit code. Then use
x/10i $cs*16+*eip
to dump the code at the PC position.
To have access to SVGA graphic modes under X11, use the vesa
or
the cirrus
X11 driver. For optimal performances, use 16 bit
color depth in the guest and the host OS.
When using a 2.6 guest Linux kernel, you should add the option
clock=pit
on the kernel command line because the 2.6 Linux
kernels make very strict real time clock checks by default that QEMU
cannot simulate exactly.
When using a 2.6 guest Linux kernel, verify that the 4G/4G patch is not activated because QEMU is slower with this patch. The QEMU Accelerator Module is also much slower in this case. Earlier Fedora Core 3 Linux kernel (< 2.6.9-1.724_FC3) were known to incorporte this patch by default. Newer kernels don't have it.
If you have a slow host, using Windows 95 is better as it gives the best speed. Windows 2000 is also a good choice.
QEMU emulates a Cirrus Logic GD5446 Video card. All Windows versions starting from Windows 95 should recognize and use this graphic card. For optimal performances, use 16 bit color depth in the guest and the host OS.
Windows 9x does not correctly use the CPU HLT instruction. The result is that it takes host CPU cycles even when idle. You can install the utility from http://www.user.cityline.ru/~maxamn/amnhltm.zip to solve this problem. Note that no such tool is needed for NT, 2000 or XP.
Windows 2000 has a bug which gives a disk full problem during its installation. When installing it, use the `-win2k-hack' QEMU option to enable a specific workaround. After Windows 2000 is installed, you no longer need this option (this option slows down the IDE transfers).
Some releases of Windows XP install correctly but give a security error when booting:
A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license for this computer. Error code: 0x800703e6.
The only known workaround is to boot in Safe mode without networking support.
Future QEMU releases are likely to correct this bug.
DOS does not correctly use the CPU HLT instruction. The result is that it takes host CPU cycles even when idle. You can install the utility from http://www.vmware.com/software/dosidle210.zip to solve this problem.
Use the executable `qemu-system-ppc' to simulate a complete PREP or PowerMac PowerPC system.
QEMU emulates the following PowerMac peripherals:
QEMU emulates the following PREP peripherals:
QEMU uses the Open Hack'Ware Open Firmware Compatible BIOS available at http://site.voila.fr/jmayer/OpenHackWare/index.htm.
You can read the qemu PC system emulation chapter to have more informations about QEMU usage.
The following options are specific to the PowerPC emulation:
More information is available at http://jocelyn.mayer.free.fr/qemu-ppc/.
Use the executable `qemu-system-sparc' to simulate a JavaStation (sun4m architecture). The emulation is somewhat complete.
QEMU emulates the following sun4m peripherals:
The number of peripherals is fixed in the architecture.
QEMU uses the Proll, a PROM replacement available at http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/linux/. The required QEMU-specific patches are included with the sources.
A sample Linux 2.6 series kernel and ram disk image are available on the QEMU web site. Please note that currently neither Linux 2.4 series, NetBSD, nor OpenBSD kernels work.
The following options are specific to the Sparc emulation:
Use the executable `qemu-system-sparc64' to simulate a Sun4u machine. The emulator is not usable for anything yet.
QEMU emulates the following sun4u peripherals:
Use the executable `qemu-system-mips' to simulate a MIPS machine. The emulator begins to launch a Linux kernel.
In order to launch a Linux process, QEMU needs the process executable itself and all the target (x86) dynamic libraries used by it.
qemu-i386 -L / /bin/ls
-L /
tells that the x86 dynamic linker must be searched with a
`/' prefix.
qemu-i386 -L / qemu-i386 -L / /bin/ls
LD_LIBRARY_PATH
is not set:
unset LD_LIBRARY_PATHThen you can launch the precompiled `ls' x86 executable:
qemu-i386 tests/i386/lsYou can look at `qemu-binfmt-conf.sh' so that QEMU is automatically launched by the Linux kernel when you try to launch x86 executables. It requires the
binfmt_misc
module in the
Linux kernel.
qemu-i386 /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/qemu-i386 /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386
qemu-i386 /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386
${HOME}/.wine
directory is saved to ${HOME}/.wine.org
.
qemu-i386 /usr/local/qemu-i386/wine/bin/wine /usr/local/qemu-i386/wine/c/Program\ Files/putty.exe
usage: qemu-i386 [-h] [-d] [-L path] [-s size] program [arguments...]
Debug options:
First you must decompress the sources:
cd /tmp tar zxvf qemu-x.y.z.tar.gz cd qemu-x.y.z
Then you configure QEMU and build it (usually no options are needed):
./configure make
Then type as root user:
make install
to install QEMU in `/usr/local'.
In order to compile QEMU succesfully, it is very important that you have the right tools. The most important one is gcc. I cannot guaranty that QEMU works if you do not use a tested gcc version. Look at 'configure' and 'Makefile' if you want to make a different gcc version work.
host gcc binutils glibc linux distribution ---------------------------------------------------------------------- x86 3.2 2.13.2 2.1.3 2.4.18 2.96 2.11.93.0.2 2.2.5 2.4.18 Red Hat 7.3 3.2.2 2.13.90.0.18 2.3.2 2.4.20 Red Hat 9 PowerPC 3.3 [4] 2.13.90.0.18 2.3.1 2.4.20briq 3.2 Alpha 3.3 [1] 2.14.90.0.4 2.2.5 2.2.20 [2] Debian 3.0 Sparc32 2.95.4 2.12.90.0.1 2.2.5 2.4.18 Debian 3.0 ARM 2.95.4 2.12.90.0.1 2.2.5 2.4.9 [3] Debian 3.0 [1] On Alpha, QEMU needs the gcc 'visibility' attribute only available for gcc version >= 3.3. [2] Linux >= 2.4.20 is necessary for precise exception support (untested). [3] 2.4.9-ac10-rmk2-np1-cerf2 [4] gcc 2.95.x generates invalid code when using too many register variables. You must use gcc 3.x on PowerPC.
./configure --enable-mingw32If necessary, you can change the cross-prefix according to the prefix choosen for the MinGW tools with --cross-prefix. You can also use --prefix to set the Win32 install path.
Note: Currently, Wine does not seem able to launch QEMU for Win32.
The Mac OS X patches are not fully merged in QEMU, so you should look at the QEMU mailing list archive to have all the necessary information.
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