[Sussex] Quick qemu question

[Ronan Chilvers]

Hi Gavin

On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 00:20:27 +0000
Gavin Stevens <starshine at gavmusic.uklinux.net> wrote:

> However, I just need to be sure of something before I go ahead...
> 
> I typed the command: "qemu -cdrom /dev/cdrom" & I saw the Debian DVD
> show its first couple of installation screens. Great.
> 
> What I need to be sure of, is that qemu isn't going to write stuff to
> my hard drive or do anything that could compromise my system.
> 
> So, is the above command safe? or should I use "qemu -snapshot
> /dev/cdrom"?

Are you using a hard disk image?  You'll need to do this if you want to
get through the installer.  Make yourself a sparse (ie: only taking up
the space that's actually used) disk image like this

qemu-img create hda.img 2000M

which will get you a 2GB image to install to.  You then call qemu like
so

qemu -hda hda.img -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d -monitor stdio

and it will boot up with the image as the hard disk.  You might
find the '-monitor stdio' useful - it gives you a control console for
the instance from which you can send special keystrokes, etc and, most
useful for you getting screenshots, you can pause and resume the
emulation as you like.  Type help at the monitor command prompt to get
a list of commands.

Cheers

-- 
Ronan
e: ronan at thelittledot.com
t: 01903 739 997
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