QEMU Launcher

QEMU Launcher is a script designed to simplify QEMU virtual machine management.

Invoking it can be as short and sweet as:

# qcl --drive /path/to/drive.img:virtio

...which will allocate 4 threads and 4 GiB of RAM on a PC with a 12-thread CPU and 16 GiB of RAM. Automated allocations aren't a simple 25% or 33% of your resources, but will scale with the resources available.

QEMU Launcher can also greatly simplify setting up guests for Windows:

# qcl --windows vista --drive /path/to/drive.img:scsi

...will set up qemu with an i440FX+PIIX PC with a Realtek NIC. AHCI will not be available, but a standard VGA adapter and a usb-tablet device will be.

QEMU Launcher also has targets for typical PC setups for various years:

# qcl --pcfrom 2001 --drive /path/to/drive.img:ide

...will start qemu with a single-threaded pentium4 (coreduo) CPU, max 1GiB of RAM, a Cirrus VGA card, an AMD PCnet NIC, and generic PS/2 mouse.

Details on why QEMU Launcher makes the hardware choices it does can be found in the wiki under Settings Research Documentation.

License

QEMU Launcher is licensed under the GPLv3. It is not available under a prior or future version of the GPL.

Prerequisites

Command Line Operation

• qemu
• spice (qemu may pull this in)
• tigervnc (for vncviewer)

Operation

System options

--nokvm|--nohvf          Disable KVM/HVF accelleration
--efi <bits>             Boot using <bits>-bit UEFI instead of BIOS
--pcfrom <year>          Emulate hardware from <year>
--ram <MiB>              Specify RAM available to VM
--sound                  Enable sound
--xport <1..99>          Port offset for VNC, SPICE, and telnet
--monitor <monitor>      Specify how qemu-monitor is accessed

   <monitor> is one of the following:

   stdio     (default)   Start monitor in current console
   telnet                Start monitor at telnet:localhost:61<port>
   unix                  Start monitor as a unix socket
   <bin>                 Start monitor in a new console process

   If <monitor> is not stdio, telnet, or unix, then the argument
   is assumed to be the binary of a terminal emulator.

CPU options:

--cores <n>              Emulate <n> cores.  Default is ([cores+2]/3)
--cpu <cpu>              Emulate <cpu> model.  Default is host.

    <cpu> is one of the following:

    pentium             opteron            core-gen1|nehalem
    pentium2            core2duo           westmere
    pentium3            penryn             core-gen2|sandybridge
    pentium4|coreduo    atom64|denverton   core-gen3|ivybridge
    atom32|n270                            core-gen4|haswell
                                           core-gen5|broadwell

Drive options:

--drive <file>:<interface>

    <interface> is one of floppy, ide, scsi, ahci, or virtio

    If <interface> is not specified then qcl will guess based on the file
    extension and machine type.

    Note that ahci cannot be combined with type=pc.  There is no AHCI
    controller for the i440FX chipset.  PIIX provides IDE (ATA) only.

    SATA is only a connector type --  drives still used the ATA (IDE) protocol
    until Intel released AHCI in 2002.

Pointing device options:

QCL will use a PS/2 mouse up until --pcfrom 1999, and usb-tablet with
--pcfrom 2000 and later.  VirtIO setups will use virtio-tablet-pci.

--mouse <qemu-pointer>

    <qemu-pointer> can be anything QEMU accepts, plus "PS/2"
    Common pointers relevant to QCL are:

       ps/2               The standard PS/2 QEMU normally presents the guest
       usb-mouse          Standard USB mouse
       usb-tablet         Standard USB tablet device
       usb-wacom-tablet   QEMU PenPartner Tablet
       vmmouse            ISA bus VM mouse

    Additionally, there are VirtIO devices

       virtio-mouse-pci    Mouse device utilizing VirtIO
       virtio-tablet-pci   USB tablet device utilizing VirtIO

GPU options

QCL uses cirrus-vga up to --pcfrom 2001 and VGA from --pcfrom 2002 forward

--gpu <qemu-gpu>

    <qemu-gpu> can be anything QEMU accepts.
    Common GPUs relevant to QCL are:

        cirrus[-vga]       Cirrus Logic GD-5446
        rage128pro         ATI Rage 128 Pro
        radeon7000         ATI Radeon 7000
        VGA                Standard VESA VGA device
        vmware[-svga]      VMWare SVGA device

Network options:

--forward <port:port> Forward host's <port> to guest's <port>

--nic <qemu-nic>

    <qemu-nic> can be one of the following

        e1000              Intel Gigabit e1000-82540em
        intel              An alias for e1000
        pcnet              AMD PCnet Fast Ethernet Card
        ne2k               An NE2000-compatible Ethernet Card
        tulip              A DEC 21x4x-compatible Ethernet Card
        realtek            An alias for rtl8139
        rtl8139            Realtek 8139 Ethernet Card

--vtap <mac-address>  Use macvtap with <mac-address>

    <mac-address> can be set to 'random' if you want a random MAC
    address or just don't want to be bothered choosing an address.

Display options:

The default is to start a VNC host and launch a VNC viewer.

--gtk                    Use a GTK window (QEMU default)
--qxl                    Use QXL/SPICE instead of VNC
--daemon                 Don't launch SPICE/vncviewer directly