Qemu is a CPU emulator which allows you to run guest operating systems inside the currently running OS. Sorta like VmWare but better cause of FOSS and also worse cause it isn't exactly intuitive.

I use to check out random operating systems and to test bootable iso images which I create. At some point of time, virtualization technologies like Xen should supercede the use of an emulator.

Visit the Qemu Site for details.

Contents 1 FreeBSD 2 Linux 3 Guest OS 3.1 Disk Image 3.2 Booting ISO 3.3 Running Guest OS

FreeBSD

See Qemu On FreeBSD Section

Linux

See Qemu on Linux

Guest OS

Disk Image

Keep images in ~/images/ and isos in ~/isos/

> cd images
> qemu-img create foo.img 10
Formating 'foo.img', fmt=raw, size=10 kB
> ls -lh foo.img 
-rw-r--r--  1 shanu  shanu    10K Sep  3 12:26 foo.img

• Create seperate disks for each guest OS

Booting ISO

> cd images
> qemu -hda ~/images/foo.img -cdrom ~/iso/foo.iso -net nic -net tap,script=~/bin/qemu-ifup -boot d

Running Guest OS

> cd images
> qemu -hda ~/images/foo.img -net nic -net tap,script=~/bin/qemu-ifup