QEMU version 3.0.0 User Documentation

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QEMU version 3.0.0 User Documentation

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

1.1 Features

2 QEMU PC System emulator

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Quick Start

2.3 Invocation

2.3.1 Standard options

2.3.2 Block device options

2.3.3 USB options

2.3.4 Display options

2.3.5 i386 target only

2.3.6 Network options

2.3.7 Character device options

2.3.8 Bluetooth(R) options

2.3.9 TPM device options

2.3.10 Linux/Multiboot boot specific

2.3.11 Debug/Expert options

2.3.12 Generic object creation

2.3.13 Device URL Syntax

2.4 Keys in the graphical frontends

2.5 Keys in the character backend multiplexer

2.6 QEMU Monitor

2.6.1 Commands

2.6.2 Integer expressions

2.7 Disk Images

2.7.1 Quick start for disk image creation

2.7.2 Snapshot mode

2.7.3 VM snapshots

2.7.4 qemu-img Invocation

2.7.5 qemu-nbd Invocation

2.7.6 Disk image file formats

2.7.6.1 Read-only formats

2.7.7 Using host drives

2.7.7.1 Linux

2.7.7.2 Windows

2.7.7.3 Mac OS X

2.7.8 Virtual FAT disk images

2.7.9 NBD access

2.7.10 Sheepdog disk images

2.7.11 iSCSI LUNs

2.7.12 GlusterFS disk images

2.7.13 Secure Shell (ssh) disk images

2.7.14 NVMe disk images

2.7.15 Disk image file locking

2.8 Network emulation

2.8.1 Using TAP network interfaces

2.8.1.1 Linux host

2.8.1.2 Windows host

2.8.2 Using the user mode network stack

2.8.3 Hubs

2.8.4 Connecting emulated networks between QEMU instances

2.9 Other Devices

2.9.1 Inter-VM Shared Memory device

2.9.1.1 Migration with ivshmem

2.9.1.2 ivshmem and hugepages

2.10 Direct Linux Boot

2.11 USB emulation

2.11.1 Connecting USB devices

2.11.2 Using host USB devices on a Linux host

2.12 VNC security

2.12.1 Without passwords

2.12.2 With passwords

2.12.3 With x509 certificates

2.12.4 With x509 certificates and client verification

2.12.5 With x509 certificates, client verification and passwords

2.12.6 With SASL authentication

2.12.7 With x509 certificates and SASL authentication

2.12.8 Configuring SASL mechanisms

2.13 TLS setup for network services

2.13.1 Setup the Certificate Authority

2.13.2 Issuing server certificates

2.13.3 Issuing client certificates

2.13.4 TLS x509 credential configuration

2.13.5 TLS Pre-Shared Keys (PSK)

2.14 GDB usage

2.15 Target OS specific information

2.15.1 Linux

2.15.2 Windows

2.15.2.1 SVGA graphic modes support

2.15.2.2 CPU usage reduction

2.15.2.3 Windows 2000 disk full problem

2.15.2.4 Windows 2000 shutdown

2.15.2.5 Share a directory between Unix and Windows

2.15.2.6 Windows XP security problem

2.15.3 MS-DOS and FreeDOS

2.15.3.1 CPU usage reduction

3 QEMU System emulator for non PC targets

3.1 PowerPC System emulator

3.2 Sparc32 System emulator

3.3 Sparc64 System emulator

3.4 MIPS System emulator

3.5 ARM System emulator

3.6 ColdFire System emulator

3.7 Cris System emulator

3.8 Microblaze System emulator

3.9 SH4 System emulator

3.10 Xtensa System emulator

4 QEMU Guest Agent invocation

5 QEMU User space emulator

5.1 Supported Operating Systems

5.2 Features

5.3 Linux User space emulator

5.3.1 Quick Start

5.3.2 Wine launch

5.3.3 Command line options

5.3.4 Other binaries

5.4 BSD User space emulator

5.4.1 BSD Status

5.4.2 Quick Start

5.4.3 Command line options

Appendix A Implementation notes

A.1 CPU emulation

A.1.1 x86 and x86-64 emulation

A.1.2 ARM emulation

A.1.3 MIPS emulation

A.1.4 PowerPC emulation

A.1.5 Sparc32 and Sparc64 emulation

A.1.6 Xtensa emulation

A.2 Translator Internals

A.3 QEMU compared to other emulators

A.4 Managed start up options

A.5 Bibliography

Appendix B Deprecated features

B.1 Build options

B.1.1 GTK 2.x

B.1.2 SDL 1.2

B.2 System emulator command line arguments

B.2.1 -no-kvm (since 1.3.0)

B.2.2 -vnc tls (since 2.5.0)

B.2.3 -vnc x509 (since 2.5.0)

B.2.4 -vnc x509verify (since 2.5.0)

B.2.5 -tftp (since 2.6.0)

B.2.6 -bootp (since 2.6.0)

B.2.7 -redir (since 2.6.0)

B.2.8 -smb (since 2.6.0)

B.2.9 -drive cyls=...,heads=...,secs=...,trans=... (since 2.10.0)

B.2.10 -drive serial=... (since 2.10.0)

B.2.11 -drive addr=... (since 2.10.0)

B.2.12 -usbdevice (since 2.10.0)

B.2.13 -nodefconfig (since 2.11.0)

B.2.14 -balloon (since 2.12.0)

B.2.15 -machine s390-squash-mcss=on|off (since 2.12.0)

B.2.16 -fsdev handle (since 2.12.0)

B.2.17 -no-frame (since 2.12.0)

B.2.18 -rtc-td-hack (since 2.12.0)

B.2.19 -localtime (since 2.12.0)

B.2.20 -startdate (since 2.12.0)

B.2.21 -virtioconsole (since 3.0.0)

B.2.22 -clock (since 3.0.0)

B.2.23 -enable-hax (since 3.0.0)

B.2.24 -drive file=json:{...{’driver’:’file’}} (since 3.0)

B.3 QEMU Machine Protocol (QMP) commands

B.3.1 block-dirty-bitmap-add "autoload" parameter (since 2.12.0)

B.3.2 query-cpus (since 2.12.0)

B.3.3 query-cpus-fast "arch" output member (since 3.0.0)

B.4 System emulator devices

B.4.1 ivshmem (since 2.6.0)

B.4.2 Page size support < 4k for embedded PowerPC CPUs (since 2.12.0)

B.5 System emulator machines

B.5.1 pc-0.10 and pc-0.11 (since 3.0)

B.6 Device options

B.6.1 Block device options

B.6.1.1 "backing": "" (since 2.12.0)

B.6.2 vio-spapr-device device options

B.6.2.1 "irq": "" (since 3.0.0)

Appendix C Supported build platforms

C.1 Linux OS

C.2 Windows

C.3 macOS

C.4 FreeBSD

C.5 NetBSD

C.6 OpenBSD

Appendix D License

Appendix E Index

E.1 Concept Index

E.2 Function Index

E.3 Keystroke Index

E.4 Program Index

E.5 Data Type Index

E.6 Variable Index

1 Introduction

1.1 Features

QEMU is a FAST! processor emulator using dynamic translation to achieve good emulation speed.

QEMU has two operating modes:

Full system emulation. In this mode, QEMU emulates a full system (for example a PC), including one or several processors and various peripherals. It can be used to launch different Operating Systems without rebooting the PC or to debug system code.

User mode emulation. In this mode, QEMU can launch processes compiled for one CPU on another CPU. It can be used to launch the Wine Windows API emulator (https://www.winehq.org) or to ease cross-compilation and cross-debugging.

QEMU has the following features:

QEMU can run without a host kernel driver and yet gives acceptable performance. It uses dynamic translation to native code for reasonable speed, with support for self-modifying code and precise exceptions.

It is portable to several operating systems (GNU/Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X, Windows) and architectures.

It performs accurate software emulation of the FPU.

QEMU user mode emulation has the following features:

Generic Linux system call converter, including most ioctls.

clone() emulation using native CPU clone() to use Linux scheduler for threads.

Accurate signal handling by remapping host signals to target signals.

QEMU full system emulation has the following features:

QEMU uses a full software MMU for maximum portability.

QEMU can optionally use an in-kernel accelerator, like kvm. The accelerators execute most of the guest code natively, while continuing to emulate the rest of the machine.

Various hardware devices can be emulated and in some cases, host devices (e.g. serial and parallel ports, USB, drives) can be used transparently by the guest Operating System. Host device passthrough can be used for talking to external physical peripherals (e.g. a webcam, modem or tape drive).

Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) support. Currently, an in-kernel accelerator is required to use more than one host CPU for emulation.

2 QEMU PC System emulator

2.1 Introduction

The QEMU PC System emulator simulates the following peripherals:

- i440FX host PCI bridge and PIIX3 PCI to ISA bridge

- Cirrus CLGD 5446 PCI VGA card or dummy VGA card with Bochs VESA extensions (hardware level, including all non standard modes).

- PS/2 mouse and keyboard

- 2 PCI IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support

- Floppy disk

- PCI and ISA network adapters

- Serial ports

- IPMI BMC, either and internal or external one

- Creative SoundBlaster 16 sound card

- ENSONIQ AudioPCI ES1370 sound card

- Intel 82801AA AC97 Audio compatible sound card

- Intel HD Audio Controller and HDA codec

- Adlib (OPL2) - Yamaha YM3812 compatible chip

- Gravis Ultrasound GF1 sound card

- CS4231A compatible sound card

- PCI UHCI, OHCI, EHCI or XHCI USB controller and a virtual USB-1.1 hub.

SMP is supported with up to 255 CPUs.

QEMU uses the PC BIOS from the Seabios project and the Plex86/Bochs LGPL VGA BIOS.

QEMU uses YM3812 emulation by Tatsuyuki Satoh.

QEMU uses GUS emulation (GUSEMU32 http://www.deinmeister.de/gusemu/) by Tibor "TS" Schütz.

Note that, by default, GUS shares IRQ(7) with parallel ports and so QEMU must be told to not have parallel ports to have working GUS.

qemu-system-i386 dos.img -soundhw gus -parallel none

Alternatively:

qemu-system-i386 dos.img -device gus,irq=5

Or some other unclaimed IRQ.

CS4231A is the chip used in Windows Sound System and GUSMAX products

2.2 Quick Start

Download and uncompress the linux image (linux.img) and type:

qemu-system-i386 linux.img

Linux should boot and give you a prompt.

2.3 Invocation

qemu-system-i386 [options] [disk_image]

disk_image is a raw hard disk image for IDE hard disk 0. Some targets do not need a disk image.

2.3.1 Standard options

-h

Display help and exit

-version

Display version information and exit

-machine [type=]name[,prop=value[,...]]

Select the emulated machine by name. Use -machine help to list available machines.

For architectures which aim to support live migration compatibility across releases, each release will introduce a new versioned machine type. For example, the 2.8.0 release introduced machine types “pc-i440fx-2.8” and “pc-q35-2.8” for the x86_64/i686 architectures.

To allow live migration of guests from QEMU version 2.8.0, to QEMU version 2.9.0, the 2.9.0 version must support the “pc-i440fx-2.8” and “pc-q35-2.8” machines too. To allow users live migrating VMs to skip multiple intermediate releases when upgrading, new releases of QEMU will support machine types from many previous versions.

Supported machine properties are:

accel=accels1[:accels2[:...]]

This is used to enable an accelerator. Depending on the target architecture, kvm, xen, hax, hvf, whpx or tcg can be available. By default, tcg is used. If there is more than one accelerator specified, the next one is used if the previous one fails to initialize.

kernel_irqchip=on|off

Controls in-kernel irqchip support for the chosen accelerator when available.

gfx_passthru=on|off

Enables IGD GFX passthrough support for the chosen machine when available.

vmport=on|off|auto

Enables emulation of VMWare IO port, for vmmouse etc. auto says to select the value based on accel. For accel=xen the default is off otherwise the default is on.

kvm_shadow_mem=size

Defines the size of the KVM shadow MMU.

dump-guest-core=on|off

Include guest memory in a core dump. The default is on.

mem-merge=on|off

Enables or disables memory merge support. This feature, when supported by the host, de-duplicates identical memory pages among VMs instances (enabled by default).

aes-key-wrap=on|off

Enables or disables AES key wrapping support on s390-ccw hosts. This feature controls whether AES wrapping keys will be created to allow execution of AES cryptographic functions. The default is on.

dea-key-wrap=on|off

Enables or disables DEA key wrapping support on s390-ccw hosts. This feature controls whether DEA wrapping keys will be created to allow execution of DEA cryptographic functions. The default is on.

nvdimm=on|off

Enables or disables NVDIMM support. The default is off.

s390-squash-mcss=on|off

Enables or disables squashing subchannels into the default css. The default is off. NOTE: This property is deprecated and will be removed in future releases. The “s390-squash-mcss=on“ property has been obsoleted by allowing the cssid to be chosen freely. Instead of squashing subchannels into the default channel subsystem image for guests that do not support multiple channel subsystems, all devices can be put into the default channel subsystem image.

enforce-config-section=on|off

If enforce-config-section is set to on, force migration code to send configuration section even if the machine-type sets the migration.send-configuration property to off. NOTE: this parameter is deprecated. Please use -global migration.send-configuration=on|off instead.

memory-encryption=

Memory encryption object to use. The default is none.

-cpu model

Select CPU model (-cpu help for list and additional feature selection)

-accel name[,prop=value[,...]]

thread=single|multi

Controls number of TCG threads. When the TCG is multi-threaded there will be one thread per vCPU therefor taking advantage of additional host cores. The default is to enable multi-threading where both the back-end and front-ends support it and no incompatible TCG features have been enabled (e.g. icount/replay).

-smp [cpus=]n[,cores=cores][,threads=threads][,sockets=sockets][,maxcpus=maxcpus]

Simulate an SMP system with n CPUs. On the PC target, up to 255 CPUs are supported. On Sparc32 target, Linux limits the number of usable CPUs to 4. For the PC target, the number of cores per socket, the number of threads per cores and the total number of sockets can be specified. Missing values will be computed. If any on the three values is given, the total number of CPUs n can be omitted. maxcpus specifies the maximum number of hotpluggable CPUs.

-numa node[,mem=size][,cpus=firstcpu[-lastcpu]][,nodeid=node]

-numa node[,memdev=id][,cpus=firstcpu[-lastcpu]][,nodeid=node]

-numa dist,src=source,dst=destination,val=distance

-numa cpu,node-id=node[,socket-id=x][,core-id=y][,thread-id=z]

Define a NUMA node and assign RAM and VCPUs to it. Set the NUMA distance from a source node to a destination node.

Legacy VCPU assignment uses ‘cpus’ option where firstcpu and lastcpu are CPU indexes. Each ‘cpus’ option represent a contiguous range of CPU indexes (or a single VCPU if lastcpu is omitted). A non-contiguous set of VCPUs can be represented by providing multiple ‘cpus’ options. If ‘cpus’ is omitted on all nodes, VCPUs are automatically split between them.

For example, the following option assigns VCPUs 0, 1, 2 and 5 to a NUMA node:

-numa node,cpus=0-2,cpus=5

‘cpu’ option is a new alternative to ‘cpus’ option which uses ‘socket-id|core-id|thread-id’ properties to assign CPU objects to a node using topology layout properties of CPU. The set of properties is machine specific, and depends on used machine type/‘smp’ options. It could be queried with ‘hotpluggable-cpus’ monitor command. ‘node-id’ property specifies node to which CPU object will be assigned, it’s required for node to be declared with ‘node’ option before it’s used with ‘cpu’ option.

For example:

-M pc \

-smp 1,sockets=2,maxcpus=2 \

-numa node,nodeid=0 -numa node,nodeid=1 \

-numa cpu,node-id=0,socket-id=0 -numa cpu,node-id=1,socket-id=1

‘mem’ assigns a given RAM amount to a node. ‘memdev’ assigns RAM from a given memory backend device to a node. If ‘mem’ and ‘memdev’ are omitted in all nodes, RAM is split equally between them.

‘mem’ and ‘memdev’ are mutually exclusive. Furthermore, if one node uses ‘memdev’, all of them have to use it.

source and destination are NUMA node IDs. distance is the NUMA distance from source to destination. The distance from a node to itself is always 10. If any pair of nodes is given a distance, then all pairs must be given distances. Although, when distances are only given in one direction for each pair of nodes, then the distances in the opposite directions are assumed to be the same. If, however, an asymmetrical pair of distances is given for even one node pair, then all node pairs must be provided distance values for both directions, even when they are symmetrical. When a node is unreachable from another node, set the pair’s distance to 255.

Note that the -numa option doesn’t allocate any of the specified resources, it just assigns existing resources to NUMA nodes. This means that one still has to use the -m, -smp options to allocate RAM and VCPUs respectively.

-add-fd fd=fd,set=set[,opaque=opaque]

Add a file descriptor to an fd set. Valid options are:

fd=fd

This option defines the file descriptor of which a duplicate is added to fd set. The file descriptor cannot be stdin, stdout, or stderr.

set=set

This option defines the ID of the fd set to add the file descriptor to.

opaque=opaque

This option defines a free-form string that can be used to describe fd.

You can open an image using pre-opened file descriptors from an fd set:

qemu-system-i386

-add-fd fd=3,set=2,opaque="rdwr:/path/to/file"

-add-fd fd=4,set=2,opaque="rdonly:/path/to/file"

-drive file=/dev/fdset/2,index=0,media=disk

-set group.id.arg=value

Set parameter arg for item id of type group

-global driver.prop=value

-global driver=driver,property=property,value=value

Set default value of driver’s property prop to value, e.g.:

qemu-system-i386 -global ide-hd.physical_block_size=4096 disk-image.img

In particular, you can use this to set driver properties for devices which are created automatically by the machine model. To create a device which is not created automatically and set properties on it, use -device.

-global driver.prop=value is shorthand for -global driver=driver,property=prop,value=value. The longhand syntax works even when driver contains a dot.

-boot [order=drives][,once=drives][,menu=on|off][,splash=sp_name][,splash-time=sp_time][,reboot-timeout=rb_timeout][,strict=on|off]

Specify boot order drives as a string of drive letters. Valid drive letters depend on the target architecture. The x86 PC uses: a, b (floppy 1 and 2), c (first hard disk), d (first CD-ROM), n-p (Etherboot from network adapter 1-4), hard disk boot is the default. To apply a particular boot order only on the first startup, specify it via once. Note that the order or once parameter should not be used together with the bootindex property of devices, since the firmware implementations normally do not support both at the same time.

Interactive boot menus/prompts can be enabled via menu=on as far as firmware/BIOS supports them. The default is non-interactive boot.

A splash picture could be passed to bios, enabling user to show it as logo, when option splash=sp_name is given and menu=on, If firmware/BIOS supports them. Currently Seabios for X86 system support it. limitation: The splash file could be a jpeg file or a BMP file in 24 BPP format(true color). The resolution should be supported by the SVGA mode, so the recommended is 320x240, 640x480, 800x640.

A timeout could be passed to bios, guest will pause for rb_timeout ms when boot failed, then reboot. If rb_timeout is ’-1’, guest will not reboot, qemu passes ’-1’ to bios by default. Currently Seabios for X86 system support it.

Do strict boot via strict=on as far as firmware/BIOS supports it. This only effects when boot priority is changed by bootindex options. The default is non-strict boot.

# try to boot from network first, then from hard disk

qemu-system-i386 -boot order=nc

# boot from CD-ROM first, switch back to default order after reboot

qemu-system-i386 -boot once=d

# boot with a splash picture for 5 seconds.

qemu-system-i386 -boot menu=on,splash=/root/boot.bmp,splash-time=5000

Note: The legacy format ’-boot drives’ is still supported but its use is discouraged as it may be removed from future versions.

-m [size=]megs[,slots=n,maxmem=size]

Sets guest startup RAM size to megs megabytes. Default is 128 MiB. Optionally, a suffix of “M” or “G” can be used to signify a value in megabytes or gigabytes respectively. Optional pair slots, maxmem could be used to set amount of hotpluggable memory slots and maximum amount of memory. Note that maxmem must be aligned to the page size.

For example, the following command-line sets the guest startup RAM size to 1GB, creates 3 slots to hotplug additional memory and sets the maximum memory the guest can reach to 4GB:

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 1G,slots=3,maxmem=4G

If slots and maxmem are not specified, memory hotplug won’t be enabled and the guest startup RAM will never increase.

-mem-path path

Allocate guest RAM from a temporarily created file in path.

-mem-prealloc

Preallocate memory when using -mem-path.

-k language

Use keyboard layout language (for example fr for French). This option is only needed where it is not easy to get raw PC keycodes (e.g. on Macs, with some X11 servers or with a VNC or curses display). You don’t normally 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 tr

The default is en-us.

-audio-help

Will show the audio subsystem help: list of drivers, tunable parameters.

-soundhw card1[,card2,...] or -soundhw all

Enable audio and selected sound hardware. Use ’help’ to print all available sound hardware.

qemu-system-i386 -soundhw sb16,adlib disk.img

qemu-system-i386 -soundhw es1370 disk.img

qemu-system-i386 -soundhw ac97 disk.img

qemu-system-i386 -soundhw hda disk.img

qemu-system-i386 -soundhw all disk.img

qemu-system-i386 -soundhw help

Note that Linux’s i810_audio OSS kernel (for AC97) module might require manually specifying clocking.

modprobe i810_audio clocking=48000

-balloon virtio[,addr=addr]

Enable virtio balloon device, optionally with PCI address addr. This option is deprecated, use -device virtio-balloon instead.

-device driver[,prop[=value][,...]]

Add device driver. prop=value sets driver properties. Valid properties depend on the driver. To get help on possible drivers and properties, use -device help and -device driver,help.

Some drivers are:

-device ipmi-bmc-sim,id=id[,slave_addr=val][,sdrfile=file][,furareasize=val][,furdatafile=file]

Add an IPMI BMC. This is a simulation of a hardware management interface processor that normally sits on a system. It provides a watchdog and the ability to reset and power control the system. You need to connect this to an IPMI interface to make it useful

The IPMI slave address to use for the BMC. The default is 0x20. This address is the BMC’s address on the I2C network of management controllers. If you don’t know what this means, it is safe to ignore it.

bmc=id

The BMC to connect to, one of ipmi-bmc-sim or ipmi-bmc-extern above.

slave_addr=val

Define slave address to use for the BMC. The default is 0x20.

sdrfile=file

file containing raw Sensor Data Records (SDR) data. The default is none.

fruareasize=val

size of a Field Replaceable Unit (FRU) area. The default is 1024.

frudatafile=file

file containing raw Field Replaceable Unit (FRU) inventory data. The default is none.

-device ipmi-bmc-extern,id=id,chardev=id[,slave_addr=val]

Add a connection to an external IPMI BMC simulator. Instead of locally emulating the BMC like the above item, instead connect to an external entity that provides the IPMI services.

A connection is made to an external BMC simulator. If you do this, it is strongly recommended that you use the "reconnect=" chardev option to reconnect to the simulator if the connection is lost. Note that if this is not used carefully, it can be a security issue, as the interface has the ability to send resets, NMIs, and power off the VM. It’s best if QEMU makes a connection to an external simulator running on a secure port on localhost, so neither the simulator nor QEMU is exposed to any outside network.

See the "lanserv/README.vm" file in the OpenIPMI library for more details on the external interface.

-device isa-ipmi-kcs,bmc=id[,ioport=val][,irq=val]

Add a KCS IPMI interafce on the ISA bus. This also adds a corresponding ACPI and SMBIOS entries, if appropriate.

bmc=id

The BMC to connect to, one of ipmi-bmc-sim or ipmi-bmc-extern above.

ioport=val

Define the I/O address of the interface. The default is 0xca0 for KCS.

irq=val

Define the interrupt to use. The default is 5. To disable interrupts, set this to 0.

-device isa-ipmi-bt,bmc=id[,ioport=val][,irq=val]

Like the KCS interface, but defines a BT interface. The default port is 0xe4 and the default interrupt is 5.

-name name

Sets the name of the guest. This name will be displayed in the SDL window caption. The name will also be used for the VNC server. Also optionally set the top visible process name in Linux. Naming of individual threads can also be enabled on Linux to aid debugging.

-uuid uuid

Set system UUID.

2.3.2 Block device options

-fda file

-fdb file

Use file as floppy disk 0/1 image (see disk_images).

-hda file

-hdb file

-hdc file

-hdd file

Use file as hard disk 0, 1, 2 or 3 image (see disk_images).

-cdrom file

Use file as CD-ROM image (you cannot use -hdc and -cdrom at the same time). You can use the host CD-ROM by using /dev/cdrom as filename (see host_drives).

-blockdev option[,option[,option[,...]]]

Define a new block driver node. Some of the options apply to all block drivers, other options are only accepted for a specific block driver. See below for a list of generic options and options for the most common block drivers.

Options that expect a reference to another node (e.g. file) can be given in two ways. Either you specify the node name of an already existing node (file=node-name), or you define a new node inline, adding options for the referenced node after a dot (file.filename=path,file.aio=native).

A block driver node created with -blockdev can be used for a guest device by specifying its node name for the drive property in a -device argument that defines a block device.

Valid options for any block driver node:

driver

Specifies the block driver to use for the given node.

node-name

This defines the name of the block driver node by which it will be referenced later. The name must be unique, i.e. it must not match the name of a different block driver node, or (if you use -drive as well) the ID of a drive.

If no node name is specified, it is automatically generated. The generated node name is not intended to be predictable and changes between QEMU invocations. For the top level, an explicit node name must be specified.

read-only

Open the node read-only. Guest write attempts will fail.

cache.direct

The host page cache can be avoided with cache.direct=on. This will attempt to do disk IO directly to the guest’s memory. QEMU may still perform an internal copy of the data.

cache.no-flush

In case you don’t care about data integrity over host failures, you can use cache.no-flush=on. This option tells QEMU that it never needs to write any data to the disk but can instead keep things in cache. If anything goes wrong, like your host losing power, the disk storage getting disconnected accidentally, etc. your image will most probably be rendered unusable.

discard=discard

discard is one of "ignore" (or "off") or "unmap" (or "on") and controls whether discard (also known as trim or unmap) requests are ignored or passed to the filesystem. Some machine types may not support discard requests.

detect-zeroes=detect-zeroes

detect-zeroes is "off", "on" or "unmap" and enables the automatic conversion of plain zero writes by the OS to driver specific optimized zero write commands. You may even choose "unmap" if discard is set to "unmap" to allow a zero write to be converted to an unmap operation.

Driver-specific options for file

This is the protocol-level block driver for accessing regular files.

filename

The path to the image file in the local filesystem

aio

Specifies the AIO backend (threads/native, default: threads)

locking

Specifies whether the image file is protected with Linux OFD / POSIX locks. The default is to use the Linux Open File Descriptor API if available, otherwise no lock is applied. (auto/on/off, default: auto)

Example:

-blockdev driver=file,node-name=disk,filename=disk.img

Driver-specific options for raw

This is the image format block driver for raw images. It is usually stacked on top of a protocol level block driver such as file.

file

Reference to or definition of the data source block driver node (e.g. a file driver node)

Example 1:

-blockdev driver=file,node-name=disk_file,filename=disk.img

-blockdev driver=raw,node-name=disk,file=disk_file

Example 2:

-blockdev driver=raw,node-name=disk,file.driver=file,file.filename=disk.img

Driver-specific options for qcow2

This is the image format block driver for qcow2 images. It is usually stacked on top of a protocol level block driver such as file.

file

Reference to or definition of the data source block driver node (e.g. a file driver node)

backing

Reference to or definition of the backing file block device (default is taken from the image file). It is allowed to pass null here in order to disable the default backing file.

lazy-refcounts

Whether to enable the lazy refcounts feature (on/off; default is taken from the image file)

cache-size

The maximum total size of the L2 table and refcount block caches in bytes (default: 1048576 bytes or 8 clusters, whichever is larger)

l2-cache-size

The maximum size of the L2 table cache in bytes (default: 4/5 of the total cache size)

refcount-cache-size

The maximum size of the refcount block cache in bytes (default: 1/5 of the total cache size)

cache-clean-interval

Clean unused entries in the L2 and refcount caches. The interval is in seconds. The default value is 0 and it disables this feature.

pass-discard-request

Whether discard requests to the qcow2 device should be forwarded to the data source (on/off; default: on if discard=unmap is specified, off otherwise)

pass-discard-snapshot

Whether discard requests for the data source should be issued when a snapshot operation (e.g. deleting a snapshot) frees clusters in the qcow2 file (on/off; default: on)

pass-discard-other

Whether discard requests for the data source should be issued on other occasions where a cluster gets freed (on/off; default: off)

overlap-check

Which overlap checks to perform for writes to the image (none/constant/cached/all; default: cached). For details or finer granularity control refer to the QAPI documentation of blockdev-add.

Example 1:

-blockdev driver=file,node-name=my_file,filename=/tmp/disk.qcow2

-blockdev driver=qcow2,node-name=hda,file=my_file,overlap-check=none,cache-size=16777216

Example 2:

-blockdev driver=qcow2,node-name=disk,file.driver=http,file.filename=http://example.com/image.qcow2

Driver-specific options for other drivers

Please refer to the QAPI documentation of the blockdev-add QMP command.

-drive option[,option[,option[,...]]]

Define a new drive. This includes creating a block driver node (the backend) as well as a guest device, and is mostly a shortcut for defining the corresponding -blockdev and -device options.

-drive accepts all options that are accepted by -blockdev. In addition, it knows the following options:

file=file

This option defines which disk image (see disk_images) to use with this drive. If the filename contains comma, you must double it (for instance, "file=my,,file" to use file "my,file").

Special files such as iSCSI devices can be specified using protocol specific URLs. See the section for "Device URL Syntax" for more information.

if=interface

This option defines on which type on interface the drive is connected. Available types are: ide, scsi, sd, mtd, floppy, pflash, virtio, none.

bus=bus,unit=unit

These options define where is connected the drive by defining the bus number and the unit id.

index=index

This option defines where is connected the drive by using an index in the list of available connectors of a given interface type.

media=media

This option defines the type of the media: disk or cdrom.

cyls=c,heads=h,secs=s[,trans=t]

Force disk physical geometry and the optional BIOS translation (trans=none or lba). These parameters are deprecated, use the corresponding parameters of -device instead.

snapshot=snapshot

snapshot is "on" or "off" and controls snapshot mode for the given drive (see -snapshot).

cache=cache

cache is "none", "writeback", "unsafe", "directsync" or "writethrough" and controls how the host cache is used to access block data. This is a shortcut that sets the cache.direct and cache.no-flush options (as in -blockdev), and additionally cache.writeback, which provides a default for the write-cache option of block guest devices (as in -device). The modes correspond to the following settings:

│ cache.writeback cache.direct cache.no-flush

─────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────

writeback │ on off off

none │ on on off

writethrough │ off off off

directsync │ off on off

unsafe │ on off on

The default mode is cache=writeback.

aio=aio

aio is "threads", or "native" and selects between pthread based disk I/O and native Linux AIO.

format=format

Specify which disk format will be used rather than detecting the format. Can be used to specify format=raw to avoid interpreting an untrusted format header.

serial=serial

This option specifies the serial number to assign to the device. This parameter is deprecated, use the corresponding parameter of -device instead.

addr=addr

Specify the controller’s PCI address (if=virtio only). This parameter is deprecated, use the corresponding parameter of -device instead.

werror=action,rerror=action

Specify which action to take on write and read errors. Valid actions are: "ignore" (ignore the error and try to continue), "stop" (pause QEMU), "report" (report the error to the guest), "enospc" (pause QEMU only if the host disk is full; report the error to the guest otherwise). The default setting is werror=enospc and rerror=report.

copy-on-read=copy-on-read

copy-on-read is "on" or "off" and enables whether to copy read backing file sectors into the image file.

bps=b,bps_rd=r,bps_wr=w

Specify bandwidth throttling limits in bytes per second, either for all request types or for reads or writes only. Small values can lead to timeouts or hangs inside the guest. A safe minimum for disks is 2 MB/s.

bps_max=bm,bps_rd_max=rm,bps_wr_max=wm

Specify bursts in bytes per second, either for all request types or for reads or writes only. Bursts allow the guest I/O to spike above the limit temporarily.

iops=i,iops_rd=r,iops_wr=w

Specify request rate limits in requests per second, either for all request types or for reads or writes only.

iops_max=bm,iops_rd_max=rm,iops_wr_max=wm

Specify bursts in requests per second, either for all request types or for reads or writes only. Bursts allow the guest I/O to spike above the limit temporarily.

iops_size=is

Let every is bytes of a request count as a new request for iops throttling purposes. Use this option to prevent guests from circumventing iops limits by sending fewer but larger requests.

group=g

Join a throttling quota group with given name g. All drives that are members of the same group are accounted for together. Use this option to prevent guests from circumventing throttling limits by using many small disks instead of a single larger disk.

By default, the cache.writeback=on mode is used. It will report data writes as completed as soon as the data is present in the host page cache. This is safe as long as your guest OS makes sure to correctly flush disk caches where needed. If your guest OS does not handle volatile disk write caches correctly and your host crashes or loses power, then the guest may experience data corruption.

For such guests, you should consider using cache.writeback=off. This means that the host page cache will be used to read and write data, but write notification will be sent to the guest only after QEMU has made sure to flush each write to the disk. Be aware that this has a major impact on performance.

When using the -snapshot option, unsafe caching is always used.

Copy-on-read avoids accessing the same backing file sectors repeatedly and is useful when the backing file is over a slow network. By default copy-on-read is off.

Instead of -cdrom you can use:

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=file,index=2,media=cdrom

Instead of -hda, -hdb, -hdc, -hdd, you can use:

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=file,index=0,media=disk

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=file,index=1,media=disk

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=file,index=2,media=disk

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=file,index=3,media=disk

You can open an image using pre-opened file descriptors from an fd set:

qemu-system-i386

-add-fd fd=3,set=2,opaque="rdwr:/path/to/file"

-add-fd fd=4,set=2,opaque="rdonly:/path/to/file"

-drive file=/dev/fdset/2,index=0,media=disk

You can connect a CDROM to the slave of ide0:

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=file,if=ide,index=1,media=cdrom

If you don’t specify the "file=" argument, you define an empty drive:

qemu-system-i386 -drive if=ide,index=1,media=cdrom

Instead of -fda, -fdb, you can use:

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=file,index=0,if=floppy

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=file,index=1,if=floppy

By default, interface is "ide" and index is automatically incremented:

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=a -drive file=b"

is interpreted like:

qemu-system-i386 -hda a -hdb b

-mtdblock file

Use file as on-board Flash memory image.

-sd file

Use file as SecureDigital card image.

-pflash file

Use file as a parallel flash image.

-snapshot

Write to temporary files instead of disk image files. In this case, the raw disk image you use is not written back. You can however force the write back by pressing C-a s (see disk_images).

-fsdev fsdriver,id=id,path=path,[security_model=security_model][,writeout=writeout][,readonly][,socket=socket|sock_fd=sock_fd][,fmode=fmode][,dmode=dmode]

Define a new file system device. Valid options are:

fsdriver

This option specifies the fs driver backend to use. Currently "local", "handle" and "proxy" file system drivers are supported.

id=id

Specifies identifier for this device

path=path

Specifies the export path for the file system device. Files under this path will be available to the 9p client on the guest.

security_model=security_model

Specifies the security model to be used for this export path. Supported security models are "passthrough", "mapped-xattr", "mapped-file" and "none". In "passthrough" security model, files are stored using the same credentials as they are created on the guest. This requires QEMU to run as root. In "mapped-xattr" security model, some of the file attributes like uid, gid, mode bits and link target are stored as file attributes. For "mapped-file" these attributes are stored in the hidden .virtfs_metadata directory. Directories exported by this security model cannot interact with other unix tools. "none" security model is same as passthrough except the sever won’t report failures if it fails to set file attributes like ownership. Security model is mandatory only for local fsdriver. Other fsdrivers (like handle, proxy) don’t take security model as a parameter.

writeout=writeout

This is an optional argument. The only supported value is "immediate". This means that host page cache will be used to read and write data but write notification will be sent to the guest only when the data has been reported as written by the storage subsystem.

readonly

Enables exporting 9p share as a readonly mount for guests. By default read-write access is given.

socket=socket

Enables proxy filesystem driver to use passed socket file for communicating with virtfs-proxy-helper

sock_fd=sock_fd

Enables proxy filesystem driver to use passed socket descriptor for communicating with virtfs-proxy-helper. Usually a helper like libvirt will create socketpair and pass one of the fds as sock_fd

fmode=fmode

Specifies the default mode for newly created files on the host. Works only with security models "mapped-xattr" and "mapped-file".

dmode=dmode

Specifies the default mode for newly created directories on the host. Works only with security models "mapped-xattr" and "mapped-file".

-fsdev option is used along with -device driver "virtio-9p-pci".

-device virtio-9p-pci,fsdev=id,mount_tag=mount_tag

Options for virtio-9p-pci driver are:

fsdev=id

Specifies the id value specified along with -fsdev option

mount_tag=mount_tag

Specifies the tag name to be used by the guest to mount this export point

-virtfs fsdriver[,path=path],mount_tag=mount_tag[,security_model=security_model][,writeout=writeout][,readonly][,socket=socket|sock_fd=sock_fd][,fmode=fmode][,dmode=dmode]

The general form of a Virtual File system pass-through options are:

fsdriver

This option specifies the fs driver backend to use. Currently "local", "handle" and "proxy" file system drivers are supported.

id=id

Specifies identifier for this device

path=path

Specifies the export path for the file system device. Files under this path will be available to the 9p client on the guest.

security_model=security_model

writeout=writeout

readonly

Enables exporting 9p share as a readonly mount for guests. By default read-write access is given.

socket=socket

Enables proxy filesystem driver to use passed socket file for communicating with virtfs-proxy-helper. Usually a helper like libvirt will create socketpair and pass one of the fds as sock_fd

sock_fd

Enables proxy filesystem driver to use passed ’sock_fd’ as the socket descriptor for interfacing with virtfs-proxy-helper

fmode=fmode

Specifies the default mode for newly created files on the host. Works only with security models "mapped-xattr" and "mapped-file".

dmode=dmode

Specifies the default mode for newly created directories on the host. Works only with security models "mapped-xattr" and "mapped-file".

-virtfs_synth

Create synthetic file system image

-iscsi

Configure iSCSI session parameters.

2.3.3 USB options

-usb

Enable the USB driver (if it is not used by default yet).

-usbdevice devname

Add the USB device devname. Note that this option is deprecated, please use -device usb-... instead. See usb_devices.

mouse

Virtual Mouse. This will override the PS/2 mouse emulation when activated.

tablet

Pointer device that uses absolute coordinates (like a touchscreen). This means QEMU is able to report the mouse position without having to grab the mouse. Also overrides the PS/2 mouse emulation when activated.

braille

Braille device. This will use BrlAPI to display the braille output on a real or fake device.

2.3.4 Display options

-display type

Select type of display to use. This option is a replacement for the old style -sdl/-curses/... options. Valid values for type are

sdl

Display video output via SDL (usually in a separate graphics window; see the SDL documentation for other possibilities).

curses

Display video output via curses. For graphics device models which support a text mode, QEMU can display this output using a curses/ncurses interface. Nothing is displayed when the graphics device is in graphical mode or if the graphics device does not support a text mode. Generally only the VGA device models support text mode.

none

Do not display video output. The guest will still see an emulated graphics card, but its output will not be displayed to the QEMU user. This option differs from the -nographic option in that it only affects what is done with video output; -nographic also changes the destination of the serial and parallel port data.

gtk

Display video output in a GTK window. This interface provides drop-down menus and other UI elements to configure and control the VM during runtime.

vnc

Start a VNC server on display <arg>

-nographic

Normally, if QEMU is compiled with graphical window support, it displays output such as guest graphics, guest console, and the QEMU monitor in a window. With this option, you can totally disable graphical output so that QEMU is a simple command line application. The emulated serial port is redirected on the console and muxed with the monitor (unless redirected elsewhere explicitly). Therefore, you can still use QEMU to debug a Linux kernel with a serial console. Use C-a h for help on switching between the console and monitor.

-curses

Normally, if QEMU is compiled with graphical window support, it displays output such as guest graphics, guest console, and the QEMU monitor in a window. With this option, QEMU can display the VGA output when in text mode using a curses/ncurses interface. Nothing is displayed in graphical mode.

-no-frame

Do not use decorations for SDL windows and start them using the whole available screen space. This makes the using QEMU in a dedicated desktop workspace more convenient.

-alt-grab

Use Ctrl-Alt-Shift to grab mouse (instead of Ctrl-Alt). Note that this also affects the special keys (for fullscreen, monitor-mode switching, etc).

-ctrl-grab

Use Right-Ctrl to grab mouse (instead of Ctrl-Alt). Note that this also affects the special keys (for fullscreen, monitor-mode switching, etc).

-no-quit

Disable SDL window close capability.

-sdl

Enable SDL.

-spice option[,option[,...]]

Enable the spice remote desktop protocol. Valid options are

port=<nr>

Set the TCP port spice is listening on for plaintext channels.

addr=<addr>

Set the IP address spice is listening on. Default is any address.

ipv4

ipv6

unix

Force using the specified IP version.

password=<secret>

Set the password you need to authenticate.

sasl

Require that the client use SASL to authenticate with the spice. The exact choice of authentication method used is controlled from the system / user’s SASL configuration file for the ’qemu’ service. This is typically found in /etc/sasl2/qemu.conf. If running QEMU as an unprivileged user, an environment variable SASL_CONF_PATH can be used to make it search alternate locations for the service config. While some SASL auth methods can also provide data encryption (eg GSSAPI), it is recommended that SASL always be combined with the ’tls’ and ’x509’ settings to enable use of SSL and server certificates. This ensures a data encryption preventing compromise of authentication credentials.

disable-ticketing

Allow client connects without authentication.

disable-copy-paste

Disable copy paste between the client and the guest.

disable-agent-file-xfer

Disable spice-vdagent based file-xfer between the client and the guest.

tls-port=<nr>

Set the TCP port spice is listening on for encrypted channels.

x509-dir=<dir>

Set the x509 file directory. Expects same filenames as -vnc $display,x509=$dir

x509-key-file=<file>

x509-key-password=<file>

x509-cert-file=<file>

x509-cacert-file=<file>

x509-dh-key-file=<file>

The x509 file names can also be configured individually.

tls-ciphers=<list>

Specify which ciphers to use.

Force specific channel to be used with or without TLS encryption. The options can be specified multiple times to configure multiple channels. The special name "default" can be used to set the default mode. For channels which are not explicitly forced into one mode the spice client is allowed to pick tls/plaintext as he pleases.

image-compression=[auto_glz|auto_lz|quic|glz|lz|off]

Configure image compression (lossless). Default is auto_glz.

jpeg-wan-compression=[auto|never|always]

zlib-glz-wan-compression=[auto|never|always]

Configure wan image compression (lossy for slow links). Default is auto.

streaming-video=[off|all|filter]

Configure video stream detection. Default is off.

agent-mouse=[on|off]

Enable/disable passing mouse events via vdagent. Default is on.

playback-compression=[on|off]

Enable/disable audio stream compression (using celt 0.5.1). Default is on.

seamless-migration=[on|off]

Enable/disable spice seamless migration. Default is off.

gl=[on|off]

Enable/disable OpenGL context. Default is off.

rendernode=<file>

DRM render node for OpenGL rendering. If not specified, it will pick the first available. (Since 2.9)

-portrait

Rotate graphical output 90 deg left (only PXA LCD).

-rotate deg

Rotate graphical output some deg left (only PXA LCD).

-vga type

Select type of VGA card to emulate. Valid values for type are

cirrus

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. (This card was the default before QEMU 2.2)

std

Standard VGA card with Bochs VBE extensions. If your guest OS supports the VESA 2.0 VBE extensions (e.g. Windows XP) and if you want to use high resolution modes (>= 1280x1024x16) then you should use this option. (This card is the default since QEMU 2.2)

vmware

VMWare SVGA-II compatible adapter. Use it if you have sufficiently recent XFree86/XOrg server or Windows guest with a driver for this card.

qxl

QXL paravirtual graphic card. It is VGA compatible (including VESA 2.0 VBE support). Works best with qxl guest drivers installed though. Recommended choice when using the spice protocol.

tcx

(sun4m only) Sun TCX framebuffer. This is the default framebuffer for sun4m machines and offers both 8-bit and 24-bit colour depths at a fixed resolution of 1024x768.

cg3

(sun4m only) Sun cgthree framebuffer. This is a simple 8-bit framebuffer for sun4m machines available in both 1024x768 (OpenBIOS) and 1152x900 (OBP) resolutions aimed at people wishing to run older Solaris versions.

virtio

Virtio VGA card.

none

Disable VGA card.

-full-screen

Start in full screen.

-g widthxheight[xdepth]

Set the initial graphical resolution and depth (PPC, SPARC only).

-vnc display[,option[,option[,...]]]

Normally, if QEMU is compiled with graphical window support, it displays output such as guest graphics, guest console, and the QEMU monitor in a window. With this option, you can have QEMU listen on VNC display display and redirect the VGA display over the VNC session. It is very useful to enable the usb tablet device when using this option (option -device usb-tablet). When using the VNC display, you must use the -k parameter to set the keyboard layout if you are not using en-us. Valid syntax for the display is

to=L

With this option, QEMU will try next available VNC displays, until the number L, if the origianlly defined "-vnc display" is not available, e.g. port 5900+display is already used by another application. By default, to=0.

host:d

TCP connections will only be allowed from host on display d. By convention the TCP port is 5900+d. Optionally, host can be omitted in which case the server will accept connections from any host.

unix:path

Connections will be allowed over UNIX domain sockets where path is the location of a unix socket to listen for connections on.

none

VNC is initialized but not started. The monitor change command can be used to later start the VNC server.

Following the display value there may be one or more option flags separated by commas. Valid options are

reverse

Connect to a listening VNC client via a “reverse” connection. The client is specified by the display. For reverse network connections (host:d,reverse), the d argument is a TCP port number, not a display number.

websocket

Opens an additional TCP listening port dedicated to VNC Websocket connections. If a bare websocket option is given, the Websocket port is 5700+display. An alternative port can be specified with the syntax websocket=port.

If host is specified connections will only be allowed from this host. It is possible to control the websocket listen address independently, using the syntax websocket=host:port.

If no TLS credentials are provided, the websocket connection runs in unencrypted mode. If TLS credentials are provided, the websocket connection requires encrypted client connections.

password

Require that password based authentication is used for client connections.

The password must be set separately using the set_password command in the pcsys_monitor. The syntax to change your password is: set_password <protocol> <password> where <protocol> could be either "vnc" or "spice".

If you would like to change <protocol> password expiration, you should use expire_password <protocol> <expiration-time> where expiration time could be one of the following options: now, never, +seconds or UNIX time of expiration, e.g. +60 to make password expire in 60 seconds, or 1335196800 to make password expire on "Mon Apr 23 12:00:00 EDT 2012" (UNIX time for this date and time).

You can also use keywords "now" or "never" for the expiration time to allow <protocol> password to expire immediately or never expire.

tls-creds=ID

Provides the ID of a set of TLS credentials to use to secure the VNC server. They will apply to both the normal VNC server socket and the websocket socket (if enabled). Setting TLS credentials will cause the VNC server socket to enable the VeNCrypt auth mechanism. The credentials should have been previously created using the -object tls-creds argument.

The tls-creds parameter obsoletes the tls, x509, and x509verify options, and as such it is not permitted to set both new and old type options at the same time.

tls

Require that client use TLS when communicating with the VNC server. This uses anonymous TLS credentials so is susceptible to a man-in-the-middle attack. It is recommended that this option be combined with either the x509 or x509verify options.

This option is now deprecated in favor of using the tls-creds argument.

x509=/path/to/certificate/dir

Valid if tls is specified. Require that x509 credentials are used for negotiating the TLS session. The server will send its x509 certificate to the client. It is recommended that a password be set on the VNC server to provide authentication of the client when this is used. The path following this option specifies where the x509 certificates are to be loaded from. See the vnc_security section for details on generating certificates.

This option is now deprecated in favour of using the tls-creds argument.

x509verify=/path/to/certificate/dir

Valid if tls is specified. Require that x509 credentials are used for negotiating the TLS session. The server will send its x509 certificate to the client, and request that the client send its own x509 certificate. The server will validate the client’s certificate against the CA certificate, and reject clients when validation fails. If the certificate authority is trusted, this is a sufficient authentication mechanism. You may still wish to set a password on the VNC server as a second authentication layer. The path following this option specifies where the x509 certificates are to be loaded from. See the vnc_security section for details on generating certificates.

This option is now deprecated in favour of using the tls-creds argument.

sasl

Require that the client use SASL to authenticate with the VNC server. The exact choice of authentication method used is controlled from the system / user’s SASL configuration file for the ’qemu’ service. This is typically found in /etc/sasl2/qemu.conf. If running QEMU as an unprivileged user, an environment variable SASL_CONF_PATH can be used to make it search alternate locations for the service config. While some SASL auth methods can also provide data encryption (eg GSSAPI), it is recommended that SASL always be combined with the ’tls’ and ’x509’ settings to enable use of SSL and server certificates. This ensures a data encryption preventing compromise of authentication credentials. See the vnc_security section for details on using SASL authentication.

acl

Turn on access control lists for checking of the x509 client certificate and SASL party. For x509 certs, the ACL check is made against the certificate’s distinguished name. This is something that looks like C=GB,O=ACME,L=Boston,CN=bob. For SASL party, the ACL check is made against the username, which depending on the SASL plugin, may include a realm component, eg bob or bob@EXAMPLE.COM. When the acl flag is set, the initial access list will be empty, with a deny policy. Thus no one will be allowed to use the VNC server until the ACLs have been loaded. This can be achieved using the acl monitor command.

lossy

Enable lossy compression methods (gradient, JPEG, ...). If this option is set, VNC client may receive lossy framebuffer updates depending on its encoding settings. Enabling this option can save a lot of bandwidth at the expense of quality.

non-adaptive

Disable adaptive encodings. Adaptive encodings are enabled by default. An adaptive encoding will try to detect frequently updated screen regions, and send updates in these regions using a lossy encoding (like JPEG). This can be really helpful to save bandwidth when playing videos. Disabling adaptive encodings restores the original static behavior of encodings like Tight.

share=[allow-exclusive|force-shared|ignore]

Set display sharing policy. ’allow-exclusive’ allows clients to ask for exclusive access. As suggested by the rfb spec this is implemented by dropping other connections. Connecting multiple clients in parallel requires all clients asking for a shared session (vncviewer: -shared switch). This is the default. ’force-shared’ disables exclusive client access. Useful for shared desktop sessions, where you don’t want someone forgetting specify -shared disconnect everybody else. ’ignore’ completely ignores the shared flag and allows everybody connect unconditionally. Doesn’t conform to the rfb spec but is traditional QEMU behavior.

key-delay-ms

Set keyboard delay, for key down and key up events, in milliseconds. Default is 10. Keyboards are low-bandwidth devices, so this slowdown can help the device and guest to keep up and not lose events in case events are arriving in bulk. Possible causes for the latter are flaky network connections, or scripts for automated testing.

2.3.5 i386 target only

-win2k-hack

Use it when installing Windows 2000 to avoid a disk full bug. After Windows 2000 is installed, you no longer need this option (this option slows down the IDE transfers).

-no-fd-bootchk

Disable boot signature checking for floppy disks in BIOS. May be needed to boot from old floppy disks.

-no-acpi

Disable ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) support. Use it if your guest OS complains about ACPI problems (PC target machine only).

-no-hpet

Disable HPET support.

-acpitable [sig=str][,rev=n][,oem_id=str][,oem_table_id=str][,oem_rev=n] [,asl_compiler_id=str][,asl_compiler_rev=n][,data=file1[:file2]...]

Add ACPI table with specified header fields and context from specified files. For file=, take whole ACPI table from the specified files, including all ACPI headers (possible overridden by other options). For data=, only data portion of the table is used, all header information is specified in the command line. If a SLIC table is supplied to QEMU, then the SLIC’s oem_id and oem_table_id fields will override the same in the RSDT and the FADT (a.k.a. FACP), in order to ensure the field matches required by the Microsoft SLIC spec and the ACPI spec.

-smbios file=binary

Load SMBIOS entry from binary file.

-smbios type=0[,vendor=str][,version=str][,date=str][,release=%d.%d][,uefi=on|off]

Specify SMBIOS type 0 fields

-smbios type=1[,manufacturer=str][,product=str][,version=str][,serial=str][,uuid=uuid][,sku=str][,family=str]

Specify SMBIOS type 1 fields

-smbios type=2[,manufacturer=str][,product=str][,version=str][,serial=str][,asset=str][,location=str][,family=str]

Specify SMBIOS type 2 fields

-smbios type=3[,manufacturer=str][,version=str][,serial=str][,asset=str][,sku=str]

Specify SMBIOS type 3 fields

-smbios type=4[,sock_pfx=str][,manufacturer=str][,version=str][,serial=str][,asset=str][,part=str]

Specify SMBIOS type 4 fields

-smbios type=17[,loc_pfx=str][,bank=str][,manufacturer=str][,serial=str][,asset=str][,part=str][,speed=%d]

Specify SMBIOS type 17 fields

2.3.6 Network options

This option is a shortcut for configuring both the on-board (default) guest NIC hardware and the host network backend in one go. The host backend options are the same as with the corresponding -netdev options below. The guest NIC model can be set with model=modelname. Use model=help to list the available device types. The hardware MAC address can be set with mac=macaddr.

The following two example do exactly the same, to show how -nic can be used to shorten the command line length (note that the e1000 is the default on i386, so the model=e1000 parameter could even be omitted here, too):

qemu-system-i386 -netdev user,id=n1,ipv6=off -device e1000,netdev=n1,mac=52:54:98:76:54:32

qemu-system-i386 -nic user,ipv6=off,model=e1000,mac=52:54:98:76:54:32

-nic none

Indicate that no network devices should be configured. It is used to override the default configuration (default NIC with “user” host network backend) which is activated if no other networking options are provided.

-netdev user,id=id[,option][,option][,...]

Configure user mode host network backend which requires no administrator privilege to run. Valid options are:

id=id

Assign symbolic name for use in monitor commands.

ipv4=on|off and ipv6=on|off

Specify that either IPv4 or IPv6 must be enabled. If neither is specified both protocols are enabled.

net=addr[/mask]

Set IP network address the guest will see. Optionally specify the netmask, either in the form a.b.c.d or as number of valid top-most bits. Default is 10.0.2.0/24.

host=addr

Specify the guest-visible address of the host. Default is the 2nd IP in the guest network, i.e. x.x.x.2.

ipv6-net=addr[/int]

Set IPv6 network address the guest will see (default is fec0::/64). The network prefix is given in the usual hexadecimal IPv6 address notation. The prefix size is optional, and is given as the number of valid top-most bits (default is 64).

ipv6-host=addr

Specify the guest-visible IPv6 address of the host. Default is the 2nd IPv6 in the guest network, i.e. xxxx::2.

restrict=on|off

If this option is enabled, the guest will be isolated, i.e. it will not be able to contact the host and no guest IP packets will be routed over the host to the outside. This option does not affect any explicitly set forwarding rules.

hostname=name

Specifies the client hostname reported by the built-in DHCP server.

dhcpstart=addr

Specify the first of the 16 IPs the built-in DHCP server can assign. Default is the 15th to 31st IP in the guest network, i.e. x.x.x.15 to x.x.x.31.

dns=addr

Specify the guest-visible address of the virtual nameserver. The address must be different from the host address. Default is the 3rd IP in the guest network, i.e. x.x.x.3.

ipv6-dns=addr

Specify the guest-visible address of the IPv6 virtual nameserver. The address must be different from the host address. Default is the 3rd IP in the guest network, i.e. xxxx::3.

dnssearch=domain

Provides an entry for the domain-search list sent by the built-in DHCP server. More than one domain suffix can be transmitted by specifying this option multiple times. If supported, this will cause the guest to automatically try to append the given domain suffix(es) in case a domain name can not be resolved.

Example:

qemu-system-i386 -nic user,dnssearch=mgmt.example.org,dnssearch=example.org

domainname=domain

Specifies the client domain name reported by the built-in DHCP server.

tftp=dir

When using the user mode network stack, activate a built-in TFTP server. The files in dir will be exposed as the root of a TFTP server. The TFTP client on the guest must be configured in binary mode (use the command bin of the Unix TFTP client).

bootfile=file

When using the user mode network stack, broadcast file as the BOOTP filename. In conjunction with tftp, this can be used to network boot a guest from a local directory.

Example (using pxelinux):

qemu-system-i386 -hda linux.img -boot n -device e1000,netdev=n1 \

-netdev user,id=n1,tftp=/path/to/tftp/files,bootfile=/pxelinux.0

smb=dir[,smbserver=addr]

When using the user mode network stack, activate a built-in SMB server so that Windows OSes can access to the host files in dir transparently. The IP address of the SMB server can be set to addr. By default the 4th IP in the guest network is used, i.e. x.x.x.4.

In the guest Windows OS, the line:

10.0.2.4 smbserver

must 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.

hostfwd=[tcp|udp]:[hostaddr]:hostport-[guestaddr]:guestport

Redirect incoming TCP or UDP connections to the host port hostport to the guest IP address guestaddr on guest port guestport. If guestaddr is not specified, its value is x.x.x.15 (default first address given by the built-in DHCP server). By specifying hostaddr, the rule can be bound to a specific host interface. If no connection type is set, TCP is used. This option can be given multiple times.

For example, to redirect host X11 connection from screen 1 to guest screen 0, use the following:

# on the host

qemu-system-i386 -nic user,hostfwd=tcp:127.0.0.1:6001-:6000

# this host xterm should open in the guest X11 server

xterm -display :1

To redirect telnet connections from host port 5555 to telnet port on the guest, use the following:

# on the host

qemu-system-i386 -nic user,hostfwd=tcp::5555-:23

telnet localhost 5555

Then when you use on the host telnet localhost 5555, you connect to the guest telnet server.

guestfwd=[tcp]:server:port-dev

guestfwd=[tcp]:server:port-cmd:command

Forward guest TCP connections to the IP address server on port port to the character device dev or to a program executed by cmd:command which gets spawned for each connection. This option can be given multiple times.

You can either use a chardev directly and have that one used throughout QEMU’s lifetime, like in the following example:

# open 10.10.1.1:4321 on bootup, connect 10.0.2.100:1234 to it whenever

# the guest accesses it

qemu-system-i386 -nic user,guestfwd=tcp:10.0.2.100:1234-tcp:10.10.1.1:4321

Or you can execute a command on every TCP connection established by the guest, so that QEMU behaves similar to an inetd process for that virtual server:

# call "netcat 10.10.1.1 4321" on every TCP connection to 10.0.2.100:1234

# and connect the TCP stream to its stdin/stdout

qemu-system-i386 -nic 'user,id=n1,guestfwd=tcp:10.0.2.100:1234-cmd:netcat 10.10.1.1 4321'

Note: Legacy stand-alone options -tftp, -bootp, -smb and -redir are still processed and applied to -net user. Mixing them with the new configuration syntax gives undefined results. Their use for new applications is discouraged as they will be removed from future versions.

-netdev tap,id=id[,fd=h][,ifname=name][,script=file][,downscript=dfile][,br=bridge][,helper=helper]

Configure a host TAP network backend with ID id.

Use the network script file to configure it and the network script dfile to deconfigure it. If name is not provided, the OS automatically provides one. The default network configure script is /etc/qemu-ifup and the default network deconfigure script is /etc/qemu-ifdown. Use script=no or downscript=no to disable script execution.

If running QEMU as an unprivileged user, use the network helper helper to configure the TAP interface and attach it to the bridge. The default network helper executable is /path/to/qemu-bridge-helper and the default bridge device is br0.

fd=h can be used to specify the handle of an already opened host TAP interface.

Examples:

#launch a QEMU instance with the default network script

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -nic tap

#launch a QEMU instance with two NICs, each one connected

#to a TAP device

qemu-system-i386 linux.img \

-netdev tap,id=nd0,ifname=tap0 -device e1000,netdev=nd0 \

-netdev tap,id=nd1,ifname=tap1 -device rtl8139,netdev=nd1

#launch a QEMU instance with the default network helper to

#connect a TAP device to bridge br0

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=n1 \

-netdev tap,id=n1,"helper=/path/to/qemu-bridge-helper"

-netdev bridge,id=id[,br=bridge][,helper=helper]

Connect a host TAP network interface to a host bridge device.

Use the network helper helper to configure the TAP interface and attach it to the bridge. The default network helper executable is /path/to/qemu-bridge-helper and the default bridge device is br0.

Examples:

#launch a QEMU instance with the default network helper to

#connect a TAP device to bridge br0

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -netdev bridge,id=n1 -device virtio-net,netdev=n1

#launch a QEMU instance with the default network helper to

#connect a TAP device to bridge qemubr0

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -netdev bridge,br=qemubr0,id=n1 -device virtio-net,netdev=n1

-netdev socket,id=id[,fd=h][,listen=[host]:port][,connect=host:port]

This host network backend can be used to connect the guest’s network to another QEMU virtual machine using a TCP socket connection. If listen is specified, QEMU waits for incoming connections on port (host is optional). connect is used to connect to another QEMU instance using the listen option. fd=h specifies an already opened TCP socket.

Example:

# launch a first QEMU instance

qemu-system-i386 linux.img \

-device e1000,netdev=n1,mac=52:54:00:12:34:56 \

-netdev socket,id=n1,listen=:1234

# connect the network of this instance to the network of the first instance

qemu-system-i386 linux.img \

-device e1000,netdev=n2,mac=52:54:00:12:34:57 \

-netdev socket,id=n2,connect=127.0.0.1:1234

-netdev socket,id=id[,fd=h][,mcast=maddr:port[,localaddr=addr]]

Configure a socket host network backend to share the guest’s network traffic with another QEMU virtual machines using a UDP multicast socket, effectively making a bus for every QEMU with same multicast address maddr and port. NOTES:

Several QEMU can be running on different hosts and share same bus (assuming correct multicast setup for these hosts).

mcast support is compatible with User Mode Linux (argument ethN=mcast), see http://user-mode-linux.sf.net.

Use fd=h to specify an already opened UDP multicast socket.

Example:

# launch one QEMU instance

qemu-system-i386 linux.img \

-device e1000,netdev=n1,mac=52:54:00:12:34:56 \

-netdev socket,id=n1,mcast=230.0.0.1:1234

# launch another QEMU instance on same "bus"

qemu-system-i386 linux.img \

-device e1000,netdev=n2,mac=52:54:00:12:34:57 \

-netdev socket,id=n2,mcast=230.0.0.1:1234

# launch yet another QEMU instance on same "bus"

qemu-system-i386 linux.img \

-device e1000,netdev=n3,macaddr=52:54:00:12:34:58 \

-netdev socket,id=n3,mcast=230.0.0.1:1234

Example (User Mode Linux compat.):

# launch QEMU instance (note mcast address selected is UML's default)

qemu-system-i386 linux.img \

-device e1000,netdev=n1,mac=52:54:00:12:34:56 \

-netdev socket,id=n1,mcast=239.192.168.1:1102

# launch UML

/path/to/linux ubd0=/path/to/root_fs eth0=mcast

Example (send packets from host’s 1.2.3.4):

qemu-system-i386 linux.img \

-device e1000,netdev=n1,mac=52:54:00:12:34:56 \

-netdev socket,id=n1,mcast=239.192.168.1:1102,localaddr=1.2.3.4

-netdev l2tpv3,id=id,src=srcaddr,dst=dstaddr[,srcport=srcport][,dstport=dstport],txsession=txsession[,rxsession=rxsession][,ipv6][,udp][,cookie64][,counter][,pincounter][,txcookie=txcookie][,rxcookie=rxcookie][,offset=offset]

Configure a L2TPv3 pseudowire host network backend. L2TPv3 (RFC3391) is a popular protocol to transport Ethernet (and other Layer 2) data frames between two systems. It is present in routers, firewalls and the Linux kernel (from version 3.3 onwards).

This transport allows a VM to communicate to another VM, router or firewall directly.

src=srcaddr

source address (mandatory)

dst=dstaddr

destination address (mandatory)

udp

select udp encapsulation (default is ip).

srcport=srcport

source udp port.

dstport=dstport

destination udp port.

ipv6

force v6, otherwise defaults to v4.

rxcookie=rxcookie

txcookie=txcookie

Cookies are a weak form of security in the l2tpv3 specification. Their function is mostly to prevent misconfiguration. By default they are 32 bit.

cookie64

Set cookie size to 64 bit instead of the default 32

counter=off

Force a ’cut-down’ L2TPv3 with no counter as in draft-mkonstan-l2tpext-keyed-ipv6-tunnel-00

pincounter=on

Work around broken counter handling in peer. This may also help on networks which have packet reorder.

offset=offset

Add an extra offset between header and data

For example, to attach a VM running on host 4.3.2.1 via L2TPv3 to the bridge br-lan on the remote Linux host 1.2.3.4:

# Setup tunnel on linux host using raw ip as encapsulation

# on 1.2.3.4

ip l2tp add tunnel remote 4.3.2.1 local 1.2.3.4 tunnel_id 1 peer_tunnel_id 1 \

encap udp udp_sport 16384 udp_dport 16384

ip l2tp add session tunnel_id 1 name vmtunnel0 session_id \

0xFFFFFFFF peer_session_id 0xFFFFFFFF

ifconfig vmtunnel0 mtu 1500

ifconfig vmtunnel0 up

brctl addif br-lan vmtunnel0

# on 4.3.2.1

# launch QEMU instance - if your network has reorder or is very lossy add ,pincounter

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -device e1000,netdev=n1 \

-netdev l2tpv3,id=n1,src=4.2.3.1,dst=1.2.3.4,udp,srcport=16384,dstport=16384,rxsession=0xffffffff,txsession=0xffffffff,counter

-netdev vde,id=id[,sock=socketpath][,port=n][,group=groupname][,mode=octalmode]

Configure VDE backend to connect to PORT n of a vde switch running on host and listening for incoming connections on socketpath. Use GROUP groupname and MODE octalmode to change default ownership and permissions for communication port. This option is only available if QEMU has been compiled with vde support enabled.

Example:

# launch vde switch

vde_switch -F -sock /tmp/myswitch

# launch QEMU instance

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -nic vde,sock=/tmp/myswitch

-netdev vhost-user,chardev=id[,vhostforce=on|off][,queues=n]

Establish a vhost-user netdev, backed by a chardev id. The chardev should be a unix domain socket backed one. The vhost-user uses a specifically defined protocol to pass vhost ioctl replacement messages to an application on the other end of the socket. On non-MSIX guests, the feature can be forced with vhostforce. Use ’queues=n’ to specify the number of queues to be created for multiqueue vhost-user.

Example:

qemu -m 512 -object memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=512M,mem-path=/hugetlbfs,share=on \

-numa node,memdev=mem \

-chardev socket,id=chr0,path=/path/to/socket \

-netdev type=vhost-user,id=net0,chardev=chr0 \

-device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net0

-netdev hubport,id=id,hubid=hubid[,netdev=nd]

Create a hub port on the emulated hub with ID hubid.

The hubport netdev lets you connect a NIC to a QEMU emulated hub instead of a single netdev. Alternatively, you can also connect the hubport to another netdev with ID nd by using the netdev=nd option.

-net nic[,netdev=nd][,macaddr=mac][,model=type] [,name=name][,addr=addr][,vectors=v]

Legacy option to configure or create an on-board (or machine default) Network Interface Card(NIC) and connect it either to the emulated hub with ID 0 (i.e. the default hub), or to the netdev nd. The NIC is an e1000 by default on the PC target. Optionally, the MAC address can be changed to mac, the device address set to addr (PCI cards only), and a name can be assigned for use in monitor commands. Optionally, for PCI cards, you can specify the number v of MSI-X vectors that the card should have; this option currently only affects virtio cards; set v = 0 to disable MSI-X. If no -net option is specified, a single NIC is created. QEMU can emulate several different models of network card. Use -net nic,model=help for a list of available devices for your target.

Configure a host network backend (with the options corresponding to the same -netdev option) and connect it to the emulated hub 0 (the default hub). Use name to specify the name of the hub port.

2.3.7 Character device options

The general form of a character device option is:

-chardev backend,id=id[,mux=on|off][,options]

Backend is one of: null, socket, udp, msmouse, vc, ringbuf, file, pipe, console, serial, pty, stdio, braille, tty, parallel, parport, spicevmc, spiceport. The specific backend will determine the applicable options.

Use -chardev help to print all available chardev backend types.

All devices must have an id, which can be any string up to 127 characters long. It is used to uniquely identify this device in other command line directives.

A character device may be used in multiplexing mode by multiple front-ends. Specify mux=on to enable this mode. A multiplexer is a "1:N" device, and here the "1" end is your specified chardev backend, and the "N" end is the various parts of QEMU that can talk to a chardev. If you create a chardev with id=myid and mux=on, QEMU will create a multiplexer with your specified ID, and you can then configure multiple front ends to use that chardev ID for their input/output. Up to four different front ends can be connected to a single multiplexed chardev. (Without multiplexing enabled, a chardev can only be used by a single front end.) For instance you could use this to allow a single stdio chardev to be used by two serial ports and the QEMU monitor:

-chardev stdio,mux=on,id=char0 \

-mon chardev=char0,mode=readline \

-serial chardev:char0 \

-serial chardev:char0

You can have more than one multiplexer in a system configuration; for instance you could have a TCP port multiplexed between UART 0 and UART 1, and stdio multiplexed between the QEMU monitor and a parallel port:

-chardev stdio,mux=on,id=char0 \

-mon chardev=char0,mode=readline \

-parallel chardev:char0 \

-chardev tcp,...,mux=on,id=char1 \

-serial chardev:char1 \

-serial chardev:char1

When you’re using a multiplexed character device, some escape sequences are interpreted in the input. See Keys in the character backend multiplexer.

Note that some other command line options may implicitly create multiplexed character backends; for instance -serial mon:stdio creates a multiplexed stdio backend connected to the serial port and the QEMU monitor, and -nographic also multiplexes the console and the monitor to stdio.

There is currently no support for multiplexing in the other direction (where a single QEMU front end takes input and output from multiple chardevs).

Every backend supports the logfile option, which supplies the path to a file to record all data transmitted via the backend. The logappend option controls whether the log file will be truncated or appended to when opened.

The available backends are:

-chardev null,id=id

A void device. This device will not emit any data, and will drop any data it receives. The null backend does not take any options.

-chardev socket,id=id[,TCP options or unix options][,server][,nowait][,telnet][,reconnect=seconds][,tls-creds=id]

Create a two-way stream socket, which can be either a TCP or a unix socket. A unix socket will be created if path is specified. Behaviour is undefined if TCP options are specified for a unix socket.

server specifies that the socket shall be a listening socket.

nowait specifies that QEMU should not block waiting for a client to connect to a listening socket.

telnet specifies that traffic on the socket should interpret telnet escape sequences.

reconnect sets the timeout for reconnecting on non-server sockets when the remote end goes away. qemu will delay this many seconds and then attempt to reconnect. Zero disables reconnecting, and is the default.

tls-creds requests enablement of the TLS protocol for encryption, and specifies the id of the TLS credentials to use for the handshake. The credentials must be previously created with the -object tls-creds argument.

TCP and unix socket options are given below:

TCP options: port=port[,host=host][,to=to][,ipv4][,ipv6][,nodelay]

host for a listening socket specifies the local address to be bound. For a connecting socket species the remote host to connect to. host is optional for listening sockets. If not specified it defaults to 0.0.0.0.

port for a listening socket specifies the local port to be bound. For a connecting socket specifies the port on the remote host to connect to. port can be given as either a port number or a service name. port is required.

to is only relevant to listening sockets. If it is specified, and port cannot be bound, QEMU will attempt to bind to subsequent ports up to and including to until it succeeds. to must be specified as a port number.

ipv4 and ipv6 specify that either IPv4 or IPv6 must be used. If neither is specified the socket may use either protocol.

nodelay disables the Nagle algorithm.

unix options: path=path

path specifies the local path of the unix socket. path is required.

-chardev udp,id=id[,host=host],port=port[,localaddr=localaddr][,localport=localport][,ipv4][,ipv6]

Sends all traffic from the guest to a remote host over UDP.

host specifies the remote host to connect to. If not specified it defaults to localhost.

port specifies the port on the remote host to connect to. port is required.

localaddr specifies the local address to bind to. If not specified it defaults to 0.0.0.0.

localport specifies the local port to bind to. If not specified any available local port will be used.

ipv4 and ipv6 specify that either IPv4 or IPv6 must be used. If neither is specified the device may use either protocol.

-chardev msmouse,id=id

Forward QEMU’s emulated msmouse events to the guest. msmouse does not take any options.

-chardev vc,id=id[[,width=width][,height=height]][[,cols=cols][,rows=rows]]

Connect to a QEMU text console. vc may optionally be given a specific size.

width and height specify the width and height respectively of the console, in pixels.

cols and rows specify that the console be sized to fit a text console with the given dimensions.

-chardev ringbuf,id=id[,size=size]

Create a ring buffer with fixed size size. size must be a power of two and defaults to 64K.

-chardev file,id=id,path=path

Log all traffic received from the guest to a file.

path specifies the path of the file to be opened. This file will be created if it does not already exist, and overwritten if it does. path is required.

-chardev pipe,id=id,path=path

Create a two-way connection to the guest. The behaviour differs slightly between Windows hosts and other hosts:

On Windows, a single duplex pipe will be created at \\.pipe\path.

On other hosts, 2 pipes will be created called path.in and path.out. Data written to path.in will be received by the guest. Data written by the guest can be read from path.out. QEMU will not create these fifos, and requires them to be present.

path forms part of the pipe path as described above. path is required.

-chardev console,id=id

Send traffic from the guest to QEMU’s standard output. console does not take any options.

console is only available on Windows hosts.

-chardev serial,id=id,path=path

Send traffic from the guest to a serial device on the host.

On Unix hosts serial will actually accept any tty device, not only serial lines.

path specifies the name of the serial device to open.

-chardev pty,id=id

Create a new pseudo-terminal on the host and connect to it. pty does not take any options.

pty is not available on Windows hosts.

-chardev stdio,id=id[,signal=on|off]

Connect to standard input and standard output of the QEMU process.

signal controls if signals are enabled on the terminal, that includes exiting QEMU with the key sequence Control-c. This option is enabled by default, use signal=off to disable it.

-chardev braille,id=id

Connect to a local BrlAPI server. braille does not take any options.

-chardev tty,id=id,path=path

tty is only available on Linux, Sun, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and DragonFlyBSD hosts. It is an alias for serial.

path specifies the path to the tty. path is required.

-chardev parallel,id=id,path=path

-chardev parport,id=id,path=path

parallel is only available on Linux, FreeBSD and DragonFlyBSD hosts.

Connect to a local parallel port.

path specifies the path to the parallel port device. path is required.

-chardev spicevmc,id=id,debug=debug,name=name

spicevmc is only available when spice support is built in.

debug debug level for spicevmc

name name of spice channel to connect to

Connect to a spice virtual machine channel, such as vdiport.

-chardev spiceport,id=id,debug=debug,name=name

spiceport is only available when spice support is built in.

debug debug level for spicevmc

name name of spice port to connect to

Connect to a spice port, allowing a Spice client to handle the traffic identified by a name (preferably a fqdn).

2.3.8 Bluetooth(R) options

-bt hci[...]

Defines the function of the corresponding Bluetooth HCI. -bt options are matched with the HCIs present in the chosen machine type. For example when emulating a machine with only one HCI built into it, only the first -bt hci[...] option is valid and defines the HCI’s logic. The Transport Layer is decided by the machine type. Currently the machines n800 and n810 have one HCI and all other machines have none.

The following three types are recognized:

-bt hci,null

(default) The corresponding Bluetooth HCI assumes no internal logic and will not respond to any HCI commands or emit events.

-bt hci,host[:id]

(bluez only) The corresponding HCI passes commands / events to / from the physical HCI identified by the name id (default: hci0) on the computer running QEMU. Only available on bluez capable systems like Linux.

-bt hci[,vlan=n]

Add a virtual, standard HCI that will participate in the Bluetooth scatternet n (default 0). Similarly to -net VLANs, devices inside a bluetooth network n can only communicate with other devices in the same network (scatternet).

-bt vhci[,vlan=n]

(Linux-host only) Create a HCI in scatternet n (default 0) attached to the host bluetooth stack instead of to the emulated target. This allows the host and target machines to participate in a common scatternet and communicate. Requires the Linux vhci driver installed. Can be used as following:

qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -bt hci,vlan=5 -bt vhci,vlan=5

-bt device:dev[,vlan=n]

Emulate a bluetooth device dev and place it in network n (default 0). QEMU can only emulate one type of bluetooth devices currently:

keyboard

Virtual wireless keyboard implementing the HIDP bluetooth profile.

2.3.9 TPM device options

The general form of a TPM device option is:

-tpmdev backend,id=id[,options]

The specific backend type will determine the applicable options. The -tpmdev option creates the TPM backend and requires a -device option that specifies the TPM frontend interface model.

Use -tpmdev help to print all available TPM backend types.

The available backends are:

-tpmdev passthrough,id=id,path=path,cancel-path=cancel-path

(Linux-host only) Enable access to the host’s TPM using the passthrough driver.

path specifies the path to the host’s TPM device, i.e., on a Linux host this would be /dev/tpm0. path is optional and by default /dev/tpm0 is used.

cancel-path specifies the path to the host TPM device’s sysfs entry allowing for cancellation of an ongoing TPM command. cancel-path is optional and by default QEMU will search for the sysfs entry to use.

Some notes about using the host’s TPM with the passthrough driver:

The TPM device accessed by the passthrough driver must not be used by any other application on the host.

Since the host’s firmware (BIOS/UEFI) has already initialized the TPM, the VM’s firmware (BIOS/UEFI) will not be able to initialize the TPM again and may therefore not show a TPM-specific menu that would otherwise allow the user to configure the TPM, e.g., allow the user to enable/disable or activate/deactivate the TPM. Further, if TPM ownership is released from within a VM then the host’s TPM will get disabled and deactivated. To enable and activate the TPM again afterwards, the host has to be rebooted and the user is required to enter the firmware’s menu to enable and activate the TPM. If the TPM is left disabled and/or deactivated most TPM commands will fail.

To create a passthrough TPM use the following two options:

-tpmdev passthrough,id=tpm0 -device tpm-tis,tpmdev=tpm0

Note that the -tpmdev id is tpm0 and is referenced by tpmdev=tpm0 in the device option.

-tpmdev emulator,id=id,chardev=dev

(Linux-host only) Enable access to a TPM emulator using Unix domain socket based chardev backend.

chardev specifies the unique ID of a character device backend that provides connection to the software TPM server.

To create a TPM emulator backend device with chardev socket backend:

-chardev socket,id=chrtpm,path=/tmp/swtpm-sock -tpmdev emulator,id=tpm0,chardev=chrtpm -device tpm-tis,tpmdev=tpm0

2.3.10 Linux/Multiboot boot specific

When using these options, you can use a given Linux or Multiboot kernel without installing it in the disk image. It can be useful for easier testing of various kernels.

-kernel bzImage

Use bzImage as kernel image. The kernel can be either a Linux kernel or in multiboot format.

-append cmdline

Use cmdline as kernel command line

-initrd file

Use file as initial ram disk.

-initrd "file1 arg=foo,file2"

This syntax is only available with multiboot.

Use file1 and file2 as modules and pass arg=foo as parameter to the first module.

-dtb file

Use file as a device tree binary (dtb) image and pass it to the kernel on boot.

2.3.11 Debug/Expert options

-fw_cfg [name=]name,file=file

Add named fw_cfg entry with contents from file file.

-fw_cfg [name=]name,string=str

Add named fw_cfg entry with contents from string str.

The terminating NUL character of the contents of str will not be included as part of the fw_cfg item data. To insert contents with embedded NUL characters, you have to use the file parameter.

The fw_cfg entries are passed by QEMU through to the guest.

Example:

-fw_cfg name=opt/com.mycompany/blob,file=./my_blob.bin

creates an fw_cfg entry named opt/com.mycompany/blob with contents from ./my_blob.bin.

-serial dev

Redirect the virtual serial port to host character device dev. The default device is vc in graphical mode and stdio in non graphical mode.

This option can be used several times to simulate up to 4 serial ports.

Use -serial none to disable all serial ports.

Available character devices are:

vc[:WxH]

Virtual console. Optionally, a width and height can be given in pixel with

vc:800x600

It is also possible to specify width or height in characters:

vc:80Cx24C

pty

[Linux only] Pseudo TTY (a new PTY is automatically allocated)

none

No device is allocated.

null

void device

chardev:id

Use a named character device defined with the -chardev option.

/dev/XXX

[Linux only] Use host tty, e.g. /dev/ttyS0. The host serial port parameters are set according to the emulated ones.

/dev/parportN

[Linux only, parallel port only] Use host parallel port N. Currently SPP and EPP parallel port features can be used.

file:filename

Write output to filename. No character can be read.

stdio

[Unix only] standard input/output

pipe:filename

name pipe filename

COMn

[Windows only] Use host serial port n

udp:[remote_host]:remote_port[@[src_ip]:src_port]

This implements UDP Net Console. When remote_host or src_ip are not specified they default to 0.0.0.0. When not using a specified src_port a random port is automatically chosen.

If you just want a simple readonly console you can use netcat or nc, by starting QEMU with: -serial udp::4555 and nc as: nc -u -l -p 4555. Any time QEMU writes something to that port it will appear in the netconsole session.

If you plan to send characters back via netconsole or you want to stop and start QEMU a lot of times, you should have QEMU use the same source port each time by using something like -serial udp::4555@:4556 to QEMU. Another approach is to use a patched version of netcat which can listen to a TCP port and send and receive characters via udp. If you have a patched version of netcat which activates telnet remote echo and single char transfer, then you can use the following options to set up a netcat redirector to allow telnet on port 5555 to access the QEMU port.

QEMU Options:

-serial udp::4555@:4556

netcat options:

-u -P 4555 -L 0.0.0.0:4556 -t -p 5555 -I -T

telnet options:

localhost 5555

tcp:[host]:port[,server][,nowait][,nodelay][,reconnect=seconds]

The TCP Net Console has two modes of operation. It can send the serial I/O to a location or wait for a connection from a location. By default the TCP Net Console is sent to host at the port. If you use the server option QEMU will wait for a client socket application to connect to the port before continuing, unless the nowait option was specified. The nodelay option disables the Nagle buffering algorithm. The reconnect option only applies if noserver is set, if the connection goes down it will attempt to reconnect at the given interval. If host is omitted, 0.0.0.0 is assumed. Only one TCP connection at a time is accepted. You can use telnet to connect to the corresponding character device.

Example to send tcp console to 192.168.0.2 port 4444

-serial tcp:192.168.0.2:4444

Example to listen and wait on port 4444 for connection

-serial tcp::4444,server

Example to not wait and listen on ip 192.168.0.100 port 4444

-serial tcp:192.168.0.100:4444,server,nowait

telnet:host:port[,server][,nowait][,nodelay]

The telnet protocol is used instead of raw tcp sockets. The options work the same as if you had specified -serial tcp. The difference is that the port acts like a telnet server or client using telnet option negotiation. This will also allow you to send the MAGIC_SYSRQ sequence if you use a telnet that supports sending the break sequence. Typically in unix telnet you do it with Control-] and then type "send break" followed by pressing the enter key.

unix:path[,server][,nowait][,reconnect=seconds]

A unix domain socket is used instead of a tcp socket. The option works the same as if you had specified -serial tcp except the unix domain socket path is used for connections.

mon:dev_string

This is a special option to allow the monitor to be multiplexed onto another serial port. The monitor is accessed with key sequence of Control-a and then pressing c. dev_string should be any one of the serial devices specified above. An example to multiplex the monitor onto a telnet server listening on port 4444 would be:

-serial mon:telnet::4444,server,nowait

When the monitor is multiplexed to stdio in this way, Ctrl+C will not terminate QEMU any more but will be passed to the guest instead.

braille

Braille device. This will use BrlAPI to display the braille output on a real or fake device.

msmouse

Three button serial mouse. Configure the guest to use Microsoft protocol.

-parallel dev

Redirect the virtual parallel port to host device dev (same devices as the serial port). On Linux hosts, /dev/parportN can be used to use hardware devices connected on the corresponding host parallel port.

This option can be used several times to simulate up to 3 parallel ports.

Use -parallel none to disable all parallel ports.

-monitor dev

Redirect the monitor to host device dev (same devices as the serial port). The default device is vc in graphical mode and stdio in non graphical mode. Use -monitor none to disable the default monitor.

-qmp dev

Like -monitor but opens in ’control’ mode.

-qmp-pretty dev

Like -qmp but uses pretty JSON formatting.

-mon [chardev=]name[,mode=readline|control][,pretty[=on|off]]

Setup monitor on chardev name. pretty turns on JSON pretty printing easing human reading and debugging.

-debugcon dev

Redirect the debug console to host device dev (same devices as the serial port). The debug console is an I/O port which is typically port 0xe9; writing to that I/O port sends output to this device. The default device is vc in graphical mode and stdio in non graphical mode.

-pidfile file

Store the QEMU process PID in file. It is useful if you launch QEMU from a script.

-singlestep

Run the emulation in single step mode.

--preconfig

Pause QEMU for interactive configuration before the machine is created, which allows querying and configuring properties that will affect machine initialization. Use QMP command ’x-exit-preconfig’ to exit the preconfig state and move to the next state (i.e. run guest if -S isn’t used or pause the second time if -S is used). This option is experimental.

-S

Do not start CPU at startup (you must type ’c’ in the monitor).

-realtime mlock=on|off

Run qemu with realtime features. mlocking qemu and guest memory can be enabled via mlock=on (enabled by default).

-overcommit mem-lock=on|off

-overcommit cpu-pm=on|off

Run qemu with hints about host resource overcommit. The default is to assume that host overcommits all resources.

Locking qemu and guest memory can be enabled via mem-lock=on (disabled by default). This works when host memory is not overcommitted and reduces the worst-case latency for guest. This is equivalent to realtime.

Guest ability to manage power state of host cpus (increasing latency for other processes on the same host cpu, but decreasing latency for guest) can be enabled via cpu-pm=on (disabled by default). This works best when host CPU is not overcommitted. When used, host estimates of CPU cycle and power utilization will be incorrect, not taking into account guest idle time.

-gdb dev

Wait for gdb connection on device dev (see gdb_usage). Typical connections will likely be TCP-based, but also UDP, pseudo TTY, or even stdio are reasonable use case. The latter is allowing to start QEMU from within gdb and establish the connection via a pipe:

(gdb) target remote | exec qemu-system-i386 -gdb stdio ...

-s

Shorthand for -gdb tcp::1234, i.e. open a gdbserver on TCP port 1234 (see gdb_usage).

-d item1[,...]

Enable logging of specified items. Use ’-d help’ for a list of log items.

-D logfile

Output log in logfile instead of to stderr

-dfilter range1[,...]

Filter debug output to that relevant to a range of target addresses. The filter spec can be either start+size, start-size or start..end where start end and size are the addresses and sizes required. For example:

-dfilter 0x8000..0x8fff,0xffffffc000080000+0x200,0xffffffc000060000-0x1000

Will dump output for any code in the 0x1000 sized block starting at 0x8000 and the 0x200 sized block starting at 0xffffffc000080000 and another 0x1000 sized block starting at 0xffffffc00005f000.

-L path

Set the directory for the BIOS, VGA BIOS and keymaps.

To list all the data directories, use -L help.

-bios file

Set the filename for the BIOS.

-enable-kvm

Enable KVM full virtualization support. This option is only available if KVM support is enabled when compiling.

-enable-hax

Enable HAX (Hardware-based Acceleration eXecution) support. This option is only available if HAX support is enabled when compiling. HAX is only applicable to MAC and Windows platform, and thus does not conflict with KVM. This option is deprecated, use -accel hax instead.

-xen-domid id

Specify xen guest domain id (XEN only).

-xen-create

Create domain using xen hypercalls, bypassing xend. Warning: should not be used when xend is in use (XEN only).

-xen-attach

Attach to existing xen domain. xend will use this when starting QEMU (XEN only). Restrict set of available xen operations to specified domain id (XEN only).

-no-reboot

Exit instead of rebooting.

-no-shutdown

Don’t exit QEMU on guest shutdown, but instead only stop the emulation. This allows for instance switching to monitor to commit changes to the disk image.

-loadvm file

Start right away with a saved state (loadvm in monitor)

-daemonize

Daemonize the QEMU process after initialization. QEMU will not detach from standard IO until it is ready to receive connections on any of its devices. This option is a useful way for external programs to launch QEMU without having to cope with initialization race conditions.

-option-rom file

Load the contents of file as an option ROM. This option is useful to load things like EtherBoot.

-rtc [base=utc|localtime|date][,clock=host|vm][,driftfix=none|slew]

Specify base as utc or localtime to let the RTC start at the current UTC or local time, respectively. localtime is required for correct date in MS-DOS or Windows. To start at a specific point in time, provide date in the format 2006-06-17T16:01:21 or 2006-06-17. The default base is UTC.

By default the RTC is driven by the host system time. This allows using of the RTC as accurate reference clock inside the guest, specifically if the host time is smoothly following an accurate external reference clock, e.g. via NTP. If you want to isolate the guest time from the host, you can set clock to rt instead. To even prevent it from progressing during suspension, you can set it to vm.

Enable driftfix (i386 targets only) if you experience time drift problems, specifically with Windows’ ACPI HAL. This option will try to figure out how many timer interrupts were not processed by the Windows guest and will re-inject them.

-icount [shift=N|auto][,rr=record|replay,rrfile=filename,rrsnapshot=snapshot]

Enable virtual instruction counter. The virtual cpu will execute one instruction every 2^N ns of virtual time. If auto is specified then the virtual cpu speed will be automatically adjusted to keep virtual time within a few seconds of real time.

When the virtual cpu is sleeping, the virtual time will advance at default speed unless sleep=on|off is specified. With sleep=on|off, the virtual time will jump to the next timer deadline instantly whenever the virtual cpu goes to sleep mode and will not advance if no timer is enabled. This behavior give deterministic execution times from the guest point of view.

Note that while this option can give deterministic behavior, it does not provide cycle accurate emulation. Modern CPUs contain superscalar out of order cores with complex cache hierarchies. The number of instructions executed often has little or no correlation with actual performance.

align=on will activate the delay algorithm which will try to synchronise the host clock and the virtual clock. The goal is to have a guest running at the real frequency imposed by the shift option. Whenever the guest clock is behind the host clock and if align=on is specified then we print a message to the user to inform about the delay. Currently this option does not work when shift is auto. Note: The sync algorithm will work for those shift values for which the guest clock runs ahead of the host clock. Typically this happens when the shift value is high (how high depends on the host machine).

When rr option is specified deterministic record/replay is enabled. Replay log is written into filename file in record mode and read from this file in replay mode.

Option rrsnapshot is used to create new vm snapshot named snapshot at the start of execution recording. In replay mode this option is used to load the initial VM state.

-watchdog model

Create a virtual hardware watchdog device. Once enabled (by a guest action), the watchdog must be periodically polled by an agent inside the guest or else the guest will be restarted. Choose a model for which your guest has drivers.

The model is the model of hardware watchdog to emulate. Use -watchdog help to list available hardware models. Only one watchdog can be enabled for a guest.

The following models may be available:

ib700

iBASE 700 is a very simple ISA watchdog with a single timer.

i6300esb

Intel 6300ESB I/O controller hub is a much more featureful PCI-based dual-timer watchdog.

diag288

A virtual watchdog for s390x backed by the diagnose 288 hypercall (currently KVM only).

-watchdog-action action

The action controls what QEMU will do when the watchdog timer expires. The default is reset (forcefully reset the guest). Other possible actions are: shutdown (attempt to gracefully shutdown the guest), poweroff (forcefully poweroff the guest), inject-nmi (inject a NMI into the guest), pause (pause the guest), debug (print a debug message and continue), or none (do nothing).

Note that the shutdown action requires that the guest responds to ACPI signals, which it may not be able to do in the sort of situations where the watchdog would have expired, and thus -watchdog-action shutdown is not recommended for production use.

Examples:

-watchdog i6300esb -watchdog-action pause

-watchdog ib700

-echr numeric_ascii_value

Change the escape character used for switching to the monitor when using monitor and serial sharing. The default is 0x01 when using the -nographic option. 0x01 is equal to pressing Control-a. You can select a different character from the ascii control keys where 1 through 26 map to Control-a through Control-z. For instance you could use the either of the following to change the escape character to Control-t.

-echr 0x14

-echr 20

-virtioconsole c

Set virtio console. This option is deprecated, please use -device virtconsole instead.

-show-cursor

Show cursor.

-tb-size n

Set TB size.

-incoming tcp:[host]:port[,to=maxport][,ipv4][,ipv6]

-incoming rdma:host:port[,ipv4][,ipv6]

Prepare for incoming migration, listen on a given tcp port.

-incoming unix:socketpath

Prepare for incoming migration, listen on a given unix socket.

-incoming fd:fd

Accept incoming migration from a given filedescriptor.

-incoming exec:cmdline

Accept incoming migration as an output from specified external command.

-incoming defer

Wait for the URI to be specified via migrate_incoming. The monitor can be used to change settings (such as migration parameters) prior to issuing the migrate_incoming to allow the migration to begin.

-only-migratable

Only allow migratable devices. Devices will not be allowed to enter an unmigratable state.

-nodefaults

Don’t create default devices. Normally, QEMU sets the default devices like serial port, parallel port, virtual console, monitor device, VGA adapter, floppy and CD-ROM drive and others. The -nodefaults option will disable all those default devices.

-chroot dir

Immediately before starting guest execution, chroot to the specified directory. Especially useful in combination with -runas. This option is not supported for Windows hosts.

-runas user

Immediately before starting guest execution, drop root privileges, switching to the specified user.

-prom-env variable=value

Set OpenBIOS nvram variable to given value (PPC, SPARC only).

-semihosting

Enable semihosting mode (ARM, M68K, Xtensa, MIPS only).

-semihosting-config [enable=on|off][,target=native|gdb|auto][,arg=str[,...]]

Enable and configure semihosting (ARM, M68K, Xtensa, MIPS only).

target=native|gdb|auto

Defines where the semihosting calls will be addressed, to QEMU (native) or to GDB (gdb). The default is auto, which means gdb during debug sessions and native otherwise.

arg=str1,arg=str2,...

Allows the user to pass input arguments, and can be used multiple times to build up a list. The old-style -kernel/-append method of passing a command line is still supported for backward compatibility. If both the --semihosting-config arg and the -kernel/-append are specified, the former is passed to semihosting as it always takes precedence.

-old-param

Old param mode (ARM only).

-sandbox arg[,obsolete=string][,elevateprivileges=string][,spawn=string][,resourcecontrol=string]

Enable Seccomp mode 2 system call filter. ’on’ will enable syscall filtering and ’off’ will disable it. The default is ’off’.

obsolete=string

Enable Obsolete system calls

elevateprivileges=string

Disable set*uid|gid system calls

spawn=string

Disable *fork and execve

resourcecontrol=string

Disable process affinity and schedular priority

-readconfig file

Read device configuration from file. This approach is useful when you want to spawn QEMU process with many command line options but you don’t want to exceed the command line character limit.

-writeconfig file

Write device configuration to file. The file can be either filename to save command line and device configuration into file or dash -) character to print the output to stdout. This can be later used as input file for -readconfig option.

-no-user-config

The -no-user-config option makes QEMU not load any of the user-provided config files on sysconfdir.

-trace-unassigned

Trace unassigned memory or i/o accesses to stderr.

-trace [[enable=]pattern][,events=file][,file=file]

Specify tracing options.

[enable=]pattern

Immediately enable events matching pattern (either event name or a globbing pattern). This option is only available if QEMU has been compiled with the simple, log or ftrace tracing backend. To specify multiple events or patterns, specify the -trace option multiple times.

Use -trace help to print a list of names of trace points.

events=file

Immediately enable events listed in file. The file must contain one event name (as listed in the trace-events-all file) per line; globbing patterns are accepted too. This option is only available if QEMU has been compiled with the simple, log or ftrace tracing backend.

file=file

Log output traces to file. This option is only available if QEMU has been compiled with the simple tracing backend.

-enable-fips

Enable FIPS 140-2 compliance mode.

-msg timestamp[=on|off]

prepend a timestamp to each log message.(default:on)

-dump-vmstate file

Dump json-encoded vmstate information for current machine type to file in file

2.3.12 Generic object creation

-object typename[,prop1=value1,...]

Create a new object of type typename setting properties in the order they are specified. Note that the ’id’ property must be set. These objects are placed in the ’/objects’ path.

Creates a memory file backend object, which can be used to back the guest RAM with huge pages.

The id parameter is a unique ID that will be used to reference this memory region when configuring the -numa argument.

The size option provides the size of the memory region, and accepts common suffixes, eg 500M.

The mem-path provides the path to either a shared memory or huge page filesystem mount.

The share boolean option determines whether the memory region is marked as private to QEMU, or shared. The latter allows a co-operating external process to access the QEMU memory region.

The share is also required for pvrdma devices due to limitations in the RDMA API provided by Linux.

Setting share=on might affect the ability to configure NUMA bindings for the memory backend under some circumstances, see Documentation/vm/numa_memory_policy.txt on the Linux kernel source tree for additional details.

Setting the discard-data boolean option to on indicates that file contents can be destroyed when QEMU exits, to avoid unnecessarily flushing data to the backing file. Note that discard-data is only an optimization, and QEMU might not discard file contents if it aborts unexpectedly or is terminated using SIGKILL.

The merge boolean option enables memory merge, also known as MADV_MERGEABLE, so that Kernel Samepage Merging will consider the pages for memory deduplication.

Setting the dump boolean option to off excludes the memory from core dumps. This feature is also known as MADV_DONTDUMP.

The prealloc boolean option enables memory preallocation.

The host-nodes option binds the memory range to a list of NUMA host nodes.

The policy option sets the NUMA policy to one of the following values:

default

default host policy

preferred

prefer the given host node list for allocation

bind

restrict memory allocation to the given host node list

interleave

interleave memory allocations across the given host node list

The align option specifies the base address alignment when QEMU mmap(2) mem-path, and accepts common suffixes, eg 2M. Some backend store specified by mem-path requires an alignment different than the default one used by QEMU, eg the device DAX /dev/dax0.0 requires 2M alignment rather than 4K. In such cases, users can specify the required alignment via this option.

Creates a memory backend object, which can be used to back the guest RAM. Memory backend objects offer more control than the -m option that is traditionally used to define guest RAM. Please refer to memory-backend-file for a description of the options.

Creates an anonymous memory file backend object, which allows QEMU to share the memory with an external process (e.g. when using vhost-user). The memory is allocated with memfd and optional sealing. (Linux only)

The seal option creates a sealed-file, that will block further resizing the memory (’on’ by default).

The hugetlb option specify the file to be created resides in the hugetlbfs filesystem (since Linux 4.14). Used in conjunction with the hugetlb option, the hugetlbsize option specify the hugetlb page size on systems that support multiple hugetlb page sizes (it must be a power of 2 value supported by the system).

In some versions of Linux, the hugetlb option is incompatible with the seal option (requires at least Linux 4.16).

Please refer to memory-backend-file for a description of the other options.

-object rng-random,id=id,filename=/dev/random

Creates a random number generator backend which obtains entropy from a device on the host. The id parameter is a unique ID that will be used to reference this entropy backend from the virtio-rng device. The filename parameter specifies which file to obtain entropy from and if omitted defaults to /dev/random.

-object rng-egd,id=id,chardev=chardevid

Creates a random number generator backend which obtains entropy from an external daemon running on the host. The id parameter is a unique ID that will be used to reference this entropy backend from the virtio-rng device. The chardev parameter is the unique ID of a character device backend that provides the connection to the RNG daemon.

-object tls-creds-anon,id=id,endpoint=endpoint,dir=/path/to/cred/dir,verify-peer=on|off

Creates a TLS anonymous credentials object, which can be used to provide TLS support on network backends. The id parameter is a unique ID which network backends will use to access the credentials. The endpoint is either server or client depending on whether the QEMU network backend that uses the credentials will be acting as a client or as a server. If verify-peer is enabled (the default) then once the handshake is completed, the peer credentials will be verified, though this is a no-op for anonymous credentials.

The dir parameter tells QEMU where to find the credential files. For server endpoints, this directory may contain a file dh-params.pem providing diffie-hellman parameters to use for the TLS server. If the file is missing, QEMU will generate a set of DH parameters at startup. This is a computationally expensive operation that consumes random pool entropy, so it is recommended that a persistent set of parameters be generated upfront and saved.

-object tls-creds-psk,id=id,endpoint=endpoint,dir=/path/to/keys/dir[,username=username]

Creates a TLS Pre-Shared Keys (PSK) credentials object, which can be used to provide TLS support on network backends. The id parameter is a unique ID which network backends will use to access the credentials. The endpoint is either server or client depending on whether the QEMU network backend that uses the credentials will be acting as a client or as a server. For clients only, username is the username which will be sent to the server. If omitted it defaults to “qemu”.

The dir parameter tells QEMU where to find the keys file. It is called “dir/keys.psk” and contains “username:key” pairs. This file can most easily be created using the GnuTLS psktool program.

For server endpoints, dir may also contain a file dh-params.pem providing diffie-hellman parameters to use for the TLS server. If the file is missing, QEMU will generate a set of DH parameters at startup. This is a computationally expensive operation that consumes random pool entropy, so it is recommended that a persistent set of parameters be generated up front and saved.

-object tls-creds-x509,id=id,endpoint=endpoint,dir=/path/to/cred/dir,priority=priority,verify-peer=on|off,passwordid=id

Creates a TLS anonymous credentials object, which can be used to provide TLS support on network backends. The id parameter is a unique ID which network backends will use to access the credentials. The endpoint is either server or client depending on whether the QEMU network backend that uses the credentials will be acting as a client or as a server. If verify-peer is enabled (the default) then once the handshake is completed, the peer credentials will be verified. With x509 certificates, this implies that the clients must be provided with valid client certificates too.

For x509 certificate credentials the directory will contain further files providing the x509 certificates. The certificates must be stored in PEM format, in filenames ca-cert.pem, ca-crl.pem (optional), server-cert.pem (only servers), server-key.pem (only servers), client-cert.pem (only clients), and client-key.pem (only clients).

For the server-key.pem and client-key.pem files which contain sensitive private keys, it is possible to use an encrypted version by providing the passwordid parameter. This provides the ID of a previously created secret object containing the password for decryption.

The priority parameter allows to override the global default priority used by gnutls. This can be useful if the system administrator needs to use a weaker set of crypto priorities for QEMU without potentially forcing the weakness onto all applications. Or conversely if one wants wants a stronger default for QEMU than for all other applications, they can do this through this parameter. Its format is a gnutls priority string as described at https://gnutls.org/manual/html_node/Priority-Strings.html.

-object filter-buffer,id=id,netdev=netdevid,interval=t[,queue=all|rx|tx][,status=on|off]

Interval t can’t be 0, this filter batches the packet delivery: all packets arriving in a given interval on netdev netdevid are delayed until the end of the interval. Interval is in microseconds. status is optional that indicate whether the netfilter is on (enabled) or off (disabled), the default status for netfilter will be ’on’.

queue all|rx|tx is an option that can be applied to any netfilter.

all: the filter is attached both to the receive and the transmit queue of the netdev (default).

rx: the filter is attached to the receive queue of the netdev, where it will receive packets sent to the netdev.

tx: the filter is attached to the transmit queue of the netdev, where it will receive packets sent by the netdev.

-object filter-mirror,id=id,netdev=netdevid,outdev=chardevid,queue=all|rx|tx[,vnet_hdr_support]

filter-mirror on netdev netdevid,mirror net packet to chardevchardevid, if it has the vnet_hdr_support flag, filter-mirror will mirror packet with vnet_hdr_len.

-object filter-redirector,id=id,netdev=netdevid,indev=chardevid,outdev=chardevid,queue=all|rx|tx[,vnet_hdr_support]

filter-redirector on netdev netdevid,redirect filter’s net packet to chardev chardevid,and redirect indev’s packet to filter.if it has the vnet_hdr_support flag, filter-redirector will redirect packet with vnet_hdr_len. Create a filter-redirector we need to differ outdev id from indev id, id can not be the same. we can just use indev or outdev, but at least one of indev or outdev need to be specified.

-object filter-rewriter,id=id,netdev=netdevid,queue=all|rx|tx,[vnet_hdr_support]

Filter-rewriter is a part of COLO project.It will rewrite tcp packet to secondary from primary to keep secondary tcp connection,and rewrite tcp packet to primary from secondary make tcp packet can be handled by client.if it has the vnet_hdr_support flag, we can parse packet with vnet header.

usage: colo secondary: -object filter-redirector,id=f1,netdev=hn0,queue=tx,indev=red0 -object filter-redirector,id=f2,netdev=hn0,queue=rx,outdev=red1 -object filter-rewriter,id=rew0,netdev=hn0,queue=all

-object filter-dump,id=id,netdev=dev[,file=filename][,maxlen=len]

Dump the network traffic on netdev dev to the file specified by filename. At most len bytes (64k by default) per packet are stored. The file format is libpcap, so it can be analyzed with tools such as tcpdump or Wireshark.

-object colo-compare,id=id,primary_in=chardevid,secondary_in=chardevid,outdev=chardevid[,vnet_hdr_support]

Colo-compare gets packet from primary_inchardevid and secondary_inchardevid, than compare primary packet with secondary packet. If the packets are same, we will output primary packet to outdevchardevid, else we will notify colo-frame do checkpoint and send primary packet to outdevchardevid. if it has the vnet_hdr_support flag, colo compare will send/recv packet with vnet_hdr_len.

we must use it with the help of filter-mirror and filter-redirector.

primary:

-netdev tap,id=hn0,vhost=off,script=/etc/qemu-ifup,downscript=/etc/qemu-ifdown

-device e1000,id=e0,netdev=hn0,mac=52:a4:00:12:78:66

-chardev socket,id=mirror0,host=3.3.3.3,port=9003,server,nowait

-chardev socket,id=compare1,host=3.3.3.3,port=9004,server,nowait

-chardev socket,id=compare0,host=3.3.3.3,port=9001,server,nowait

-chardev socket,id=compare0-0,host=3.3.3.3,port=9001

-chardev socket,id=compare_out,host=3.3.3.3,port=9005,server,nowait

-chardev socket,id=compare_out0,host=3.3.3.3,port=9005

-object filter-mirror,id=m0,netdev=hn0,queue=tx,outdev=mirror0

-object filter-redirector,netdev=hn0,id=redire0,queue=rx,indev=compare_out

-object filter-redirector,netdev=hn0,id=redire1,queue=rx,outdev=compare0

-object colo-compare,id=comp0,primary_in=compare0-0,secondary_in=compare1,outdev=compare_out0

secondary:

-netdev tap,id=hn0,vhost=off,script=/etc/qemu-ifup,down script=/etc/qemu-ifdown

-device e1000,netdev=hn0,mac=52:a4:00:12:78:66

-chardev socket,id=red0,host=3.3.3.3,port=9003

-chardev socket,id=red1,host=3.3.3.3,port=9004

-object filter-redirector,id=f1,netdev=hn0,queue=tx,indev=red0

-object filter-redirector,id=f2,netdev=hn0,queue=rx,outdev=red1

If you want to know the detail of above command line, you can read the colo-compare git log.

-object cryptodev-backend-builtin,id=id[,queues=queues]

Creates a cryptodev backend which executes crypto opreation from the QEMU cipher APIS. The id parameter is a unique ID that will be used to reference this cryptodev backend from the virtio-crypto device. The queues parameter is optional, which specify the queue number of cryptodev backend, the default of queues is 1.

# qemu-system-x86_64 \

[...] \

-object cryptodev-backend-builtin,id=cryptodev0 \

-device virtio-crypto-pci,id=crypto0,cryptodev=cryptodev0 \

[...]

-object cryptodev-vhost-user,id=id,chardev=chardevid[,queues=queues]

Creates a vhost-user cryptodev backend, backed by a chardev chardevid. The id parameter is a unique ID that will be used to reference this cryptodev backend from the virtio-crypto device. The chardev should be a unix domain socket backed one. The vhost-user uses a specifically defined protocol to pass vhost ioctl replacement messages to an application on the other end of the socket. The queues parameter is optional, which specify the queue number of cryptodev backend for multiqueue vhost-user, the default of queues is 1.

# qemu-system-x86_64 \

[...] \

-chardev socket,id=chardev0,path=/path/to/socket \

-object cryptodev-vhost-user,id=cryptodev0,chardev=chardev0 \

-device virtio-crypto-pci,id=crypto0,cryptodev=cryptodev0 \

[...]

-object secret,id=id,data=string,format=raw|base64[,keyid=secretid,iv=string]

-object secret,id=id,file=filename,format=raw|base64[,keyid=secretid,iv=string]

Defines a secret to store a password, encryption key, or some other sensitive data. The sensitive data can either be passed directly via the data parameter, or indirectly via the file parameter. Using the data parameter is insecure unless the sensitive data is encrypted.

The sensitive data can be provided in raw format (the default), or base64. When encoded as JSON, the raw format only supports valid UTF-8 characters, so base64 is recommended for sending binary data. QEMU will convert from which ever format is provided to the format it needs internally. eg, an RBD password can be provided in raw format, even though it will be base64 encoded when passed onto the RBD sever.

For added protection, it is possible to encrypt the data associated with a secret using the AES-256-CBC cipher. Use of encryption is indicated by providing the keyid and iv parameters. The keyid parameter provides the ID of a previously defined secret that contains the AES-256 decryption key. This key should be 32-bytes long and be base64 encoded. The iv parameter provides the random initialization vector used for encryption of this particular secret and should be a base64 encrypted string of the 16-byte IV.

The simplest (insecure) usage is to provide the secret inline

# $QEMU -object secret,id=sec0,data=letmein,format=raw

The simplest secure usage is to provide the secret via a file

# printf "letmein" > mypasswd.txt # $QEMU -object secret,id=sec0,file=mypasswd.txt,format=raw

For greater security, AES-256-CBC should be used. To illustrate usage, consider the openssl command line tool which can encrypt the data. Note that when encrypting, the plaintext must be padded to the cipher block size (32 bytes) using the standard PKCS#5/6 compatible padding algorithm.

First a master key needs to be created in base64 encoding:

# openssl rand -base64 32 > key.b64

# KEY=$(base64 -d key.b64 | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%02X"')

Each secret to be encrypted needs to have a random initialization vector generated. These do not need to be kept secret

# openssl rand -base64 16 > iv.b64

# IV=$(base64 -d iv.b64 | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%02X"')

The secret to be defined can now be encrypted, in this case we’re telling openssl to base64 encode the result, but it could be left as raw bytes if desired.

# SECRET=$(printf "letmein" |

openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -a -K $KEY -iv $IV)

When launching QEMU, create a master secret pointing to key.b64 and specify that to be used to decrypt the user password. Pass the contents of iv.b64 to the second secret

# $QEMU \

-object secret,id=secmaster0,format=base64,file=key.b64 \

-object secret,id=sec0,keyid=secmaster0,format=base64,\

data=$SECRET,iv=$(<iv.b64)

-object sev-guest,id=id,cbitpos=cbitpos,reduced-phys-bits=val,[sev-device=string,policy=policy,handle=handle,dh-cert-file=file,session-file=file]

Create a Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) guest object, which can be used to provide the guest memory encryption support on AMD processors.

When memory encryption is enabled, one of the physical address bit (aka the C-bit) is utilized to mark if a memory page is protected. The cbitpos is used to provide the C-bit position. The C-bit position is Host family dependent hence user must provide this value. On EPYC, the value should be 47.

When memory encryption is enabled, we loose certain bits in physical address space. The reduced-phys-bits is used to provide the number of bits we loose in physical address space. Similar to C-bit, the value is Host family dependent. On EPYC, the value should be 5.

The sev-device provides the device file to use for communicating with the SEV firmware running inside AMD Secure Processor. The default device is ’/dev/sev’. If hardware supports memory encryption then /dev/sev devices are created by CCP driver.

The policy provides the guest policy to be enforced by the SEV firmware and restrict what configuration and operational commands can be performed on this guest by the hypervisor. The policy should be provided by the guest owner and is bound to the guest and cannot be changed throughout the lifetime of the guest. The default is 0.

If guest policy allows sharing the key with another SEV guest then handle can be use to provide handle of the guest from which to share the key.

The dh-cert-file and session-file provides the guest owner’s Public Diffie-Hillman key defined in SEV spec. The PDH and session parameters are used for establishing a cryptographic session with the guest owner to negotiate keys used for attestation. The file must be encoded in base64.

e.g to launch a SEV guest

# $QEMU \

......

-object sev-guest,id=sev0,cbitpos=47,reduced-phys-bits=5 \

-machine ...,memory-encryption=sev0

.....

2.3.13 Device URL Syntax

In addition to using normal file images for the emulated storage devices, QEMU can also use networked resources such as iSCSI devices. These are specified using a special URL syntax.

iSCSI

iSCSI support allows QEMU to access iSCSI resources directly and use as images for the guest storage. Both disk and cdrom images are supported.

Syntax for specifying iSCSI LUNs is “iscsi://<target-ip>[:<port>]/<target-iqn>/<lun>”

By default qemu will use the iSCSI initiator-name ’iqn.2008-11.org.linux-kvm[:<name>]’ but this can also be set from the command line or a configuration file.

Since version Qemu 2.4 it is possible to specify a iSCSI request timeout to detect stalled requests and force a reestablishment of the session. The timeout is specified in seconds. The default is 0 which means no timeout. Libiscsi 1.15.0 or greater is required for this feature.

Example (without authentication):

qemu-system-i386 -iscsi initiator-name=iqn.2001-04.com.example:my-initiator \

-cdrom iscsi://192.0.2.1/iqn.2001-04.com.example/2 \

-drive file=iscsi://192.0.2.1/iqn.2001-04.com.example/1

Example (CHAP username/password via URL):

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=iscsi://user%password@192.0.2.1/iqn.2001-04.com.example/1

Example (CHAP username/password via environment variables):

LIBISCSI_CHAP_USERNAME="user" \

LIBISCSI_CHAP_PASSWORD="password" \

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=iscsi://192.0.2.1/iqn.2001-04.com.example/1

NBD

QEMU supports NBD (Network Block Devices) both using TCP protocol as well as Unix Domain Sockets.

Syntax for specifying a NBD device using TCP “nbd:<server-ip>:<port>[:exportname=<export>]”

Syntax for specifying a NBD device using Unix Domain Sockets “nbd:unix:<domain-socket>[:exportname=<export>]”

Example for TCP

qemu-system-i386 --drive file=nbd:192.0.2.1:30000

Example for Unix Domain Sockets

qemu-system-i386 --drive file=nbd:unix:/tmp/nbd-socket

SSH

QEMU supports SSH (Secure Shell) access to remote disks.

Examples:

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=ssh://user@host/path/to/disk.img

qemu-system-i386 -drive file.driver=ssh,file.user=user,file.host=host,file.port=22,file.path=/path/to/disk.img

Currently authentication must be done using ssh-agent. Other authentication methods may be supported in future.

Sheepdog

Sheepdog is a distributed storage system for QEMU. QEMU supports using either local sheepdog devices or remote networked devices.

Syntax for specifying a sheepdog device

sheepdog[+tcp|+unix]://[host:port]/vdiname[?socket=path][#snapid|#tag]

Example

qemu-system-i386 --drive file=sheepdog://192.0.2.1:30000/MyVirtualMachine

See also https://sheepdog.github.io/sheepdog/.

GlusterFS

GlusterFS is a user space distributed file system. QEMU supports the use of GlusterFS volumes for hosting VM disk images using TCP, Unix Domain Sockets and RDMA transport protocols.

Syntax for specifying a VM disk image on GlusterFS volume is

URI:

gluster[+type]://[host[:port]]/volume/path[?socket=...][,debug=N][,logfile=...]

JSON:

'json:{"driver":"qcow2","file":{"driver":"gluster","volume":"testvol","path":"a.img","debug":N,"logfile":"...",

"server":[{"type":"tcp","host":"...","port":"..."},

{"type":"unix","socket":"..."}]}}'

Example

URI:

qemu-system-x86_64 --drive file=gluster://192.0.2.1/testvol/a.img,

file.debug=9,file.logfile=/var/log/qemu-gluster.log

JSON:

qemu-system-x86_64 'json:{"driver":"qcow2",

"file":{"driver":"gluster",

"volume":"testvol","path":"a.img",

"debug":9,"logfile":"/var/log/qemu-gluster.log",

"server":[{"type":"tcp","host":"1.2.3.4","port":24007},

{"type":"unix","socket":"/var/run/glusterd.socket"}]}}'

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive driver=qcow2,file.driver=gluster,file.volume=testvol,file.path=/path/a.img,

file.debug=9,file.logfile=/var/log/qemu-gluster.log,

file.server.0.type=tcp,file.server.0.host=1.2.3.4,file.server.0.port=24007,

file.server.1.type=unix,file.server.1.socket=/var/run/glusterd.socket

See also http://www.gluster.org.

HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/FTPS

QEMU supports read-only access to files accessed over http(s) and ftp(s).

Syntax using a single filename:

where:

protocol

’http’, ’https’, ’ftp’, or ’ftps’.

username

Optional username for authentication to the remote server.

password

Optional password for authentication to the remote server.

host

Address of the remote server.

path

Path on the remote server, including any query string.

The following options are also supported:

url

The full URL when passing options to the driver explicitly.

readahead

The amount of data to read ahead with each range request to the remote server. This value may optionally have the suffix ’T’, ’G’, ’M’, ’K’, ’k’ or ’b’. If it does not have a suffix, it will be assumed to be in bytes. The value must be a multiple of 512 bytes. It defaults to 256k.

sslverify

Whether to verify the remote server’s certificate when connecting over SSL. It can have the value ’on’ or ’off’. It defaults to ’on’.

Send this cookie (it can also be a list of cookies separated by ’;’) with each outgoing request. Only supported when using protocols such as HTTP which support cookies, otherwise ignored.

timeout

Set the timeout in seconds of the CURL connection. This timeout is the time that CURL waits for a response from the remote server to get the size of the image to be downloaded. If not set, the default timeout of 5 seconds is used.

Note that when passing options to qemu explicitly, driver is the value of <protocol>.

Example: boot from a remote Fedora 20 live ISO image

qemu-system-x86_64 --drive media=cdrom,file=http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/20/Live/x86_64/Fedora-Live-Desktop-x86_64-20-1.iso,readonly

qemu-system-x86_64 --drive media=cdrom,file.driver=http,file.url=http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/20/Live/x86_64/Fedora-Live-Desktop-x86_64-20-1.iso,readonly

Example: boot from a remote Fedora 20 cloud image using a local overlay for writes, copy-on-read, and a readahead of 64k

qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o backing_file='json:{"file.driver":"http",, "file.url":"https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/20/Images/x86_64/Fedora-x86_64-20-20131211.1-sda.qcow2",, "file.readahead":"64k"}' /tmp/Fedora-x86_64-20-20131211.1-sda.qcow2

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=/tmp/Fedora-x86_64-20-20131211.1-sda.qcow2,copy-on-read=on

Example: boot from an image stored on a VMware vSphere server with a self-signed certificate using a local overlay for writes, a readahead of 64k and a timeout of 10 seconds.

qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o backing_file='json:{"file.driver":"https",, "file.url":"https://user:password@vsphere.example.com/folder/test/test-flat.vmdk?dcPath=Datacenter&dsName=datastore1",, "file.sslverify":"off",, "file.readahead":"64k",, "file.timeout":10}' /tmp/test.qcow2

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=/tmp/test.qcow2

2.4 Keys in the graphical frontends

During the graphical emulation, you can use special key combinations to change modes. The default key mappings are shown below, but if you use -alt-grab then the modifier is Ctrl-Alt-Shift (instead of Ctrl-Alt) and if you use -ctrl-grab then the modifier is the right Ctrl key (instead of Ctrl-Alt):

Ctrl-Alt-f

Toggle full screen

Ctrl-Alt-+

Enlarge the screen

Ctrl-Alt--

Shrink the screen

Ctrl-Alt-u

Restore the screen’s un-scaled dimensions

Ctrl-Alt-n

Switch to virtual console ’n’. Standard console mappings are:

Target system display

Monitor

Serial port

Ctrl-Alt

Toggle mouse and keyboard grab.

In the virtual consoles, you can use Ctrl-Up, Ctrl-Down, Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-PageDown to move in the back log.

2.5 Keys in the character backend multiplexer

During emulation, if you are using a character backend multiplexer (which is the default if you are using -nographic) then several commands are available via an escape sequence. These key sequences all start with an escape character, which is Ctrl-a by default, but can be changed with -echr. The list below assumes you’re using the default.

Ctrl-a h

Print this help

Ctrl-a x

Exit emulator

Ctrl-a s

Save disk data back to file (if -snapshot)

Ctrl-a t

Toggle console timestamps

Ctrl-a b

Send break (magic sysrq in Linux)

Ctrl-a c

Rotate between the frontends connected to the multiplexer (usually this switches between the monitor and the console)

Ctrl-a Ctrl-a

Send the escape character to the frontend

2.6 QEMU Monitor

The QEMU monitor is used to give complex commands to the QEMU emulator. You can use it to:

- Remove or insert removable media images (such as CD-ROM or floppies).

- Freeze/unfreeze the Virtual Machine (VM) and save or restore its state from a disk file.

- Inspect the VM state without an external debugger.

2.6.1 Commands

The following commands are available:

help or ? [cmd]

Show the help for all commands or just for command cmd.

commit

Commit changes to the disk images (if -snapshot is used) or backing files. If the backing file is smaller than the snapshot, then the backing file will be resized to be the same size as the snapshot. If the snapshot is smaller than the backing file, the backing file will not be truncated. If you want the backing file to match the size of the smaller snapshot, you can safely truncate it yourself once the commit operation successfully completes.

q or quit

Quit the emulator.

exit_preconfig

This command makes QEMU exit the preconfig state and proceed with VM initialization using configuration data provided on the command line and via the QMP monitor during the preconfig state. The command is only available during the preconfig state (i.e. when the –preconfig command line option was in use).

block_resize

Resize a block image while a guest is running. Usually requires guest action to see the updated size. Resize to a lower size is supported, but should be used with extreme caution. Note that this command only resizes image files, it can not resize block devices like LVM volumes.

block_stream

Copy data from a backing file into a block device.

block_job_set_speed

Set maximum speed for a background block operation.

block_job_cancel

Stop an active background block operation (streaming, mirroring).

block_job_complete

Manually trigger completion of an active background block operation. For mirroring, this will switch the device to the destination path.

block_job_pause

Pause an active block streaming operation.

block_job_resume

Resume a paused block streaming operation.

eject [-f] device

Eject a removable medium (use -f to force it).

drive_del device

Remove host block device. The result is that guest generated IO is no longer submitted against the host device underlying the disk. Once a drive has been deleted, the QEMU Block layer returns -EIO which results in IO errors in the guest for applications that are reading/writing to the device. These errors are always reported to the guest, regardless of the drive’s error actions (drive options rerror, werror).

change device setting

Change the configuration of a device.

change diskdevice filename [format [read-only-mode]]

Change the medium for a removable disk device to point to filename. eg

(qemu) change ide1-cd0 /path/to/some.iso

format is optional.

read-only-mode may be used to change the read-only status of the device. It accepts the following values:

retain

Retains the current status; this is the default.

read-only

Makes the device read-only.

read-write

Makes the device writable.

change vnc display,options

Change the configuration of the VNC server. The valid syntax for display and options are described at sec_invocation. eg

(qemu) change vnc localhost:1

change vnc password [password]

Change the password associated with the VNC server. If the new password is not supplied, the monitor will prompt for it to be entered. VNC passwords are only significant up to 8 letters. eg

(qemu) change vnc password

Password: ********

screendump filename

Save screen into PPM image filename.

logfile filename

Output logs to filename.

trace-event

changes status of a trace event

trace-file on|off|flush

Open, close, or flush the trace file. If no argument is given, the status of the trace file is displayed.

log item1[,...]

Activate logging of the specified items.

savevm [tag|id]

Create a snapshot of the whole virtual machine. If tag is provided, it is used as human readable identifier. If there is already a snapshot with the same tag or ID, it is replaced. More info at vm_snapshots.

loadvm tag|id

Set the whole virtual machine to the snapshot identified by the tag tag or the unique snapshot ID id.

delvm tag|id

Delete the snapshot identified by tag or id.

singlestep [off]

Run the emulation in single step mode. If called with option off, the emulation returns to normal mode.

stop

Stop emulation.

c or cont

Resume emulation.

system_wakeup

Wakeup guest from suspend.

gdbserver [port]

Start gdbserver session (default port=1234)

x/fmt addr

Virtual memory dump starting at addr.

xp /fmt addr

Physical memory dump starting at addr.

fmt is a format which tells the command how to format the data. Its syntax is: /{count}{format}{size}

count

is the number of items to be dumped.

format

can be x (hex), d (signed decimal), u (unsigned decimal), o (octal), c (char) or i (asm instruction).

size

can be b (8 bits), h (16 bits), w (32 bits) or g (64 bits). On x86, h or w can be specified with the i format to respectively select 16 or 32 bit code instruction size.

Examples:

Dump 10 instructions at the current instruction pointer:

(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

Dump 80 16 bit values at the start of the video memory.

(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

gpa2hva addr

Print the host virtual address at which the guest’s physical address addr is mapped.

gpa2hpa addr

Print the host physical address at which the guest’s physical address addr is mapped.

p or print/fmt expr

Print expression value. Only the format part of fmt is used.

i/fmt addr [.index]

Read I/O port.

o/fmt addr val

Write to I/O port.

sendkey keys

Send keys to the guest. keys could be the name of the key or the raw value in hexadecimal format. Use - to press several keys simultaneously. Example:

sendkey ctrl-alt-f1

This command is useful to send keys that your graphical user interface intercepts at low level, such as ctrl-alt-f1 in X Window.

system_reset

Reset the system.

system_powerdown

Power down the system (if supported).

sum addr size

Compute the checksum of a memory region.

device_add config

Add device.

device_del id

Remove device id. id may be a short ID or a QOM object path.

cpu index

Set the default CPU.

mouse_move dx dy [dz]

Move the active mouse to the specified coordinates dx dy with optional scroll axis dz.

mouse_button val

Change the active mouse button state val (1=L, 2=M, 4=R).

mouse_set index

Set which mouse device receives events at given index, index can be obtained with

info mice

wavcapture filename [frequency [bits [channels]]]

Capture audio into filename. Using sample rate frequency bits per sample bits and number of channels channels.

Defaults:

- Sample rate = 44100 Hz - CD quality

- Bits = 16

- Number of channels = 2 - Stereo

stopcapture index

Stop capture with a given index, index can be obtained with

info capture

memsave addr size file

save to disk virtual memory dump starting at addr of size size.

pmemsave addr size file

save to disk physical memory dump starting at addr of size size.

boot_set bootdevicelist

Define new values for the boot device list. Those values will override the values specified on the command line through the -boot option.

The values that can be specified here depend on the machine type, but are the same that can be specified in the -boot command line option.

nmi cpu

Inject an NMI on the default CPU (x86/s390) or all CPUs (ppc64).

ringbuf_write device data

Write data to ring buffer character device device. data must be a UTF-8 string.

ringbuf_read device

Read and print up to size bytes from ring buffer character device device. Certain non-printable characters are printed \uXXXX, where XXXX is the character code in hexadecimal. Character \ is printed \\. Bug: can screw up when the buffer contains invalid UTF-8 sequences, NUL characters, after the ring buffer lost data, and when reading stops because the size limit is reached.

migrate [-d] [-b] [-i] uri

Migrate to uri (using -d to not wait for completion). -b for migration with full copy of disk -i for migration with incremental copy of disk (base image is shared)

migrate_cancel

Cancel the current VM migration.

migrate_continue state

Continue migration from the paused state state

migrate_incoming uri

Continue an incoming migration using the uri (that has the same syntax as the -incoming option).

migrate_recover uri

Continue a paused incoming postcopy migration using the uri.

migrate_pause

Pause an ongoing migration. Currently it only supports postcopy.

migrate_set_cache_size value

Set cache size to value (in bytes) for xbzrle migrations.

migrate_set_speed value

Set maximum speed to value (in bytes) for migrations.

migrate_set_downtime second

Set maximum tolerated downtime (in seconds) for migration.

migrate_set_capability capability state

Enable/Disable the usage of a capability capability for migration.

migrate_set_parameter parameter value

Set the parameter parameter for migration.

migrate_start_postcopy

Switch in-progress migration to postcopy mode. Ignored after the end of migration (or once already in postcopy).

x_colo_lost_heartbeat

Tell COLO that heartbeat is lost, a failover or takeover is needed.

client_migrate_info protocol hostname port tls-port cert-subject

Set migration information for remote display. This makes the server ask the client to automatically reconnect using the new parameters once migration finished successfully. Only implemented for SPICE.

dump-guest-memory [-p] filename begin length

dump-guest-memory [-z|-l|-s|-w] filename

Dump guest memory to protocol. The file can be processed with crash or gdb. Without -z|-l|-s|-w, the dump format is ELF. -p: do paging to get guest’s memory mapping. -z: dump in kdump-compressed format, with zlib compression. -l: dump in kdump-compressed format, with lzo compression. -s: dump in kdump-compressed format, with snappy compression. -w: dump in Windows crashdump format (can be used instead of ELF-dump converting), for Windows x64 guests with vmcoreinfo driver only filename: dump file name. begin: the starting physical address. It’s optional, and should be specified together with length. length: the memory size, in bytes. It’s optional, and should be specified together with begin.

dump-skeys filename

Save guest storage keys to a file.

migration_mode mode

Enables or disables migration mode.

snapshot_blkdev

Snapshot device, using snapshot file as target if provided

snapshot_blkdev_internal

Take an internal snapshot on device if it support

snapshot_delete_blkdev_internal

Delete an internal snapshot on device if it support

drive_mirror

Start mirroring a block device’s writes to a new destination, using the specified target.

drive_backup

Start a point-in-time copy of a block device to a specificed target.

drive_add

Add drive to PCI storage controller.

pcie_aer_inject_error

Inject PCIe AER error

netdev_add

Add host network device.

netdev_del

Remove host network device.

object_add

Create QOM object.

object_del

Destroy QOM object.

hostfwd_add

Redirect TCP or UDP connections from host to guest (requires -net user).

hostfwd_remove

Remove host-to-guest TCP or UDP redirection.

balloon value

Request VM to change its memory allocation to value (in MB).

set_link name [on|off]

Switch link name on (i.e. up) or off (i.e. down).

watchdog_action

Change watchdog action.

acl_show aclname

List all the matching rules in the access control list, and the default policy. There are currently two named access control lists, vnc.x509dname and vnc.username matching on the x509 client certificate distinguished name, and SASL username respectively.

acl_policy aclname allow|deny

Set the default access control list policy, used in the event that none of the explicit rules match. The default policy at startup is always deny.

acl_add aclname match allow|deny [index]

Add a match rule to the access control list, allowing or denying access. The match will normally be an exact username or x509 distinguished name, but can optionally include wildcard globs. eg *@EXAMPLE.COM to allow all users in the EXAMPLE.COM kerberos realm. The match will normally be appended to the end of the ACL, but can be inserted earlier in the list if the optional index parameter is supplied.

acl_remove aclname match

Remove the specified match rule from the access control list.

acl_reset aclname

Remove all matches from the access control list, and set the default policy back to deny.

nbd_server_start host:port

Start an NBD server on the given host and/or port. If the -a option is included, all of the virtual machine’s block devices that have an inserted media on them are automatically exported; in this case, the -w option makes the devices writable too.

nbd_server_add device [ name ]

Export a block device through QEMU’s NBD server, which must be started beforehand with nbd_server_start. The -w option makes the exported device writable too. The export name is controlled by name, defaulting to device.

nbd_server_remove [-f] name

Stop exporting a block device through QEMU’s NBD server, which was previously started with nbd_server_add. The -f option forces the server to drop the export immediately even if clients are connected; otherwise the command fails unless there are no clients.

nbd_server_stop

Stop the QEMU embedded NBD server.

mce cpu bank status mcgstatus addr misc

Inject an MCE on the given CPU (x86 only).

getfd fdname

If a file descriptor is passed alongside this command using the SCM_RIGHTS mechanism on unix sockets, it is stored using the name fdname for later use by other monitor commands.

closefd fdname

Close the file descriptor previously assigned to fdname using the getfd command. This is only needed if the file descriptor was never used by another monitor command.

block_passwd device password

Set the encrypted device device password to password

This command is now obsolete and will always return an error since 2.10

block_set_io_throttle device bps bps_rd bps_wr iops iops_rd iops_wr

Change I/O throttle limits for a block drive to bps bps_rd bps_wr iops iops_rd iops_wr. device can be a block device name, a qdev ID or a QOM path.

set_password [ vnc | spice ] password [ action-if-connected ]

Change spice/vnc password. Use zero to make the password stay valid forever. action-if-connected specifies what should happen in case a connection is established: fail makes the password change fail. disconnect changes the password and disconnects the client. keep changes the password and keeps the connection up. keep is the default.

expire_password [ vnc | spice ] expire-time

Specify when a password for spice/vnc becomes invalid. expire-time accepts:

now

Invalidate password instantly.

never

Password stays valid forever.

+nsec

Password stays valid for nsec seconds starting now.

nsec

Password is invalidated at the given time. nsec are the seconds passed since 1970, i.e. unix epoch.

chardev-add args

chardev-add accepts the same parameters as the -chardev command line switch.

chardev-change args

chardev-change accepts existing chardev id and then the same arguments as the -chardev command line switch (except for "id").

chardev-remove id

Removes the chardev id.

chardev-send-break id

Send a break on the chardev id.

qemu-io device command

Executes a qemu-io command on the given block device.

cpu-add id

Add CPU with id id

qom-list [path]

Print QOM properties of object at location path

qom-set path property value

Set QOM property property of object at location path to value value

info subcommand

Show various information about the system state.

info version

Show the version of QEMU.

info network

Show the network state.

info chardev

Show the character devices.

info block

Show info of one block device or all block devices.

info blockstats

Show block device statistics.

info block-jobs

Show progress of ongoing block device operations.

info registers

Show the cpu registers.

info lapic

Show local APIC state

info ioapic

Show io APIC state

info cpus

Show infos for each CPU.

info history

Show the command line history.

info irq

Show the interrupts statistics (if available).

info pic

Show PIC state.

info pci

Show PCI information.

info tlb

Show virtual to physical memory mappings.

info mem

Show the active virtual memory mappings.

info mtree

Show memory tree.

info jit

Show dynamic compiler info.

info opcount

Show dynamic compiler opcode counters

info kvm

Show KVM information.

info numa

Show NUMA information.

info usb

Show guest USB devices.

info usbhost

Show host USB devices.

info profile

Show profiling information.

info capture

Show capture information.

info snapshots

Show the currently saved VM snapshots.

info status

Show the current VM status (running|paused).

info mice

Show which guest mouse is receiving events.

info vnc

Show the vnc server status.

info spice

Show the spice server status.

info name

Show the current VM name.

info uuid

Show the current VM UUID.

info cpustats

Show CPU statistics.

info usernet

Show user network stack connection states.

info migrate

Show migration status.

info migrate_capabilities

Show current migration capabilities.

info migrate_parameters

Show current migration parameters.

info migrate_cache_size

Show current migration xbzrle cache size.

info balloon

Show balloon information.

info qtree

Show device tree.

info qdm

Show qdev device model list.

info qom-tree

Show QOM composition tree.

info roms

Show roms.

info trace-events

Show available trace-events & their state.

info tpm

Show the TPM device.

info memdev

Show memory backends

info memory-devices

Show memory devices.

info iothreads

Show iothread’s identifiers.

info rocker name

Show rocker switch.

info rocker-ports name-ports

Show rocker ports.

info rocker-of-dpa-flows name [tbl_id]

Show rocker OF-DPA flow tables.

info rocker-of-dpa-groups name [type]

Show rocker OF-DPA groups.

info skeys address

Display the value of a storage key (s390 only)

info cmma address

Display the values of the CMMA storage attributes for a range of pages (s390 only)

info dump

Display the latest dump status.

info ramblock

Dump all the ramblocks of the system.

info hotpluggable-cpus

Show information about hotpluggable CPUs

info vm-generation-id

Show Virtual Machine Generation ID

info memory_size_summary

Display the amount of initially allocated and present hotpluggable (if enabled) memory in bytes.

info sev

Show SEV information.

2.6.2 Integer expressions

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 $.

2.7 Disk Images

QEMU supports many disk image formats, including growable disk images (their size increase as non empty sectors are written), compressed and encrypted disk images.

2.7.1 Quick start for disk image creation

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 qemu_img_invocation for more information.

2.7.2 Snapshot mode

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).

2.7.3 VM snapshots

VM snapshots are snapshots of the complete virtual machine including CPU state, RAM, device state and the content of all the writable disks. In order to use VM snapshots, you must have at least one non removable and writable block device using the qcow2 disk image format. Normally this device is the first virtual hard drive.

Use the monitor command savevm to create a new VM snapshot or replace an existing one. A human readable name can be assigned to each snapshot in addition to its numerical ID.

Use loadvm to restore a VM snapshot and delvm to remove a VM snapshot. info snapshots lists the available snapshots with their associated information:

(qemu) info snapshots

Snapshot devices: hda

Snapshot list (from hda):

ID TAG VM SIZE DATE VM CLOCK

1 start 41M 2006-08-06 12:38:02 00:00:14.954

2 40M 2006-08-06 12:43:29 00:00:18.633

3 msys 40M 2006-08-06 12:44:04 00:00:23.514

A VM snapshot is made of a VM state info (its size is shown in info snapshots) and a snapshot of every writable disk image. The VM state info is stored in the first qcow2 non removable and writable block device. The disk image snapshots are stored in every disk image. The size of a snapshot in a disk image is difficult to evaluate and is not shown by info snapshots because the associated disk sectors are shared among all the snapshots to save disk space (otherwise each snapshot would need a full copy of all the disk images).

When using the (unrelated) -snapshot option (disk_images_snapshot_mode), you can always make VM snapshots, but they are deleted as soon as you exit QEMU.

VM snapshots currently have the following known limitations:

They cannot cope with removable devices if they are removed or inserted after a snapshot is done.

A few device drivers still have incomplete snapshot support so their state is not saved or restored properly (in particular USB).

2.7.4 qemu-img Invocation

qemu-img [standard options] command [command options]

qemu-img allows you to create, convert and modify images offline. It can handle all image formats supported by QEMU.

Warning: Never use qemu-img to modify images in use by a running virtual machine or any other process; this may destroy the image. Also, be aware that querying an image that is being modified by another process may encounter inconsistent state.

Standard options:

-h, --help

Display this help and exit

-V, --version

Display version information and exit

-T, --trace [[enable=]pattern][,events=file][,file=file]

Specify tracing options.

[enable=]pattern

Use -trace help to print a list of names of trace points.

events=file

file=file

Log output traces to file. This option is only available if QEMU has been compiled with the simple tracing backend.

The following commands are supported:

amend [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-p] [-q] [-f fmt] [-t cache] -o options filename

bench [-c count] [-d depth] [-f fmt] [--flush-interval=flush_interval] [-n] [--no-drain] [-o offset] [--pattern=pattern] [-q] [-s buffer_size] [-S step_size] [-t cache] [-w] [-U] filename

check [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt] [-r [leaks | all]] [-T src_cache] [-U] filename

commit [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-b base] [-d] [-p] filename

compare [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [-F fmt] [-T src_cache] [-p] [-q] [-s] [-U] filename1 filename2

convert [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [--target-image-opts] [-U] [-c] [-p] [-q] [-n] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-T src_cache] [-O output_fmt] [-B backing_file] [-o options] [-l snapshot_param] [-S sparse_size] [-m num_coroutines] [-W] filename [filename2 [...]] output_filename

create [--object objectdef] [-q] [-f fmt] [-b backing_file] [-F backing_fmt] [-u] [-o options] filename [size]

dd [--image-opts] [-U] [-f fmt] [-O output_fmt] [bs=block_size] [count=blocks] [skip=blocks] if=input of=output

info [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt] [--backing-chain] [-U] filename

map [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt] [-U] filename

measure [--output=ofmt] [-O output_fmt] [-o options] [--size N | [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [-l snapshot_param] filename]

snapshot [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-U] [-q] [-l | -a snapshot | -c snapshot | -d snapshot] filename

rebase [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-U] [-q] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-T src_cache] [-p] [-u] -b backing_file [-F backing_fmt] filename

resize [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [--preallocation=prealloc] [-q] [--shrink] filename [+ | -]size

Command parameters:

filename

is a disk image filename

fmt

is the disk image format. It is guessed automatically in most cases. See below for a description of the supported disk formats.

size

is the disk image size in bytes. Optional suffixes k or K (kilobyte, 1024) M (megabyte, 1024k) and G (gigabyte, 1024M) and T (terabyte, 1024G) are supported. b is ignored.

output_filename

is the destination disk image filename

output_fmt

is the destination format

options

is a comma separated list of format specific options in a name=value format. Use -o ? for an overview of the options supported by the used format or see the format descriptions below for details.

snapshot_param

is param used for internal snapshot, format is ’snapshot.id=[ID],snapshot.name=[NAME]’ or ’[ID_OR_NAME]’

--object objectdef

is a QEMU user creatable object definition. See the qemu(1) manual page for a description of the object properties. The most common object type is a secret, which is used to supply passwords and/or encryption keys.

--image-opts

Indicates that the source filename parameter is to be interpreted as a full option string, not a plain filename. This parameter is mutually exclusive with the -f parameter.

--target-image-opts

Indicates that the output_filename parameter(s) are to be interpreted as a full option string, not a plain filename. This parameter is mutually exclusive with the -O parameters. It is currently required to also use the -n parameter to skip image creation. This restriction may be relaxed in a future release.

--force-share (-U)

If specified, qemu-img will open the image in shared mode, allowing other QEMU processes to open it in write mode. For example, this can be used to get the image information (with ’info’ subcommand) when the image is used by a running guest. Note that this could produce inconsistent results because of concurrent metadata changes, etc. This option is only allowed when opening images in read-only mode.

--backing-chain

will enumerate information about backing files in a disk image chain. Refer below for further description.

-c

indicates that target image must be compressed (qcow format only)

-h

with or without a command shows help and lists the supported formats

-p

display progress bar (compare, convert and rebase commands only). If the -p option is not used for a command that supports it, the progress is reported when the process receives a SIGUSR1 or SIGINFO signal.

-q

Quiet mode - do not print any output (except errors). There’s no progress bar in case both -q and -p options are used.

-S size

indicates the consecutive number of bytes that must contain only zeros for qemu-img to create a sparse image during conversion. This value is rounded down to the nearest 512 bytes. You may use the common size suffixes like k for kilobytes.

-t cache

specifies the cache mode that should be used with the (destination) file. See the documentation of the emulator’s -drive cache=... option for allowed values.

-T src_cache

specifies the cache mode that should be used with the source file(s). See the documentation of the emulator’s -drive cache=... option for allowed values.

Parameters to snapshot subcommand:

snapshot

is the name of the snapshot to create, apply or delete

-a

applies a snapshot (revert disk to saved state)

-c

creates a snapshot

-d

deletes a snapshot

-l

lists all snapshots in the given image

Parameters to compare subcommand:

-f

First image format

-F

Second image format

-s

Strict mode - fail on different image size or sector allocation

Parameters to convert subcommand:

-n

Skip the creation of the target volume

-m

Number of parallel coroutines for the convert process

-W

Allow out-of-order writes to the destination. This option improves performance, but is only recommended for preallocated devices like host devices or other raw block devices.

-C

Try to use copy offloading to move data from source image to target. This may improve performance if the data is remote, such as with NFS or iSCSI backends, but will not automatically sparsify zero sectors, and may result in a fully allocated target image depending on the host support for getting allocation information.

Parameters to dd subcommand:

bs=block_size

defines the block size

count=blocks

sets the number of input blocks to copy

if=input

sets the input file

of=output

sets the output file

skip=blocks

sets the number of input blocks to skip

Command description:

amend [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-p] [-p] [-f fmt] [-t cache] -o options filename

Amends the image format specific options for the image file filename. Not all file formats support this operation.

bench [-c count] [-d depth] [-f fmt] [--flush-interval=flush_interval] [-n] [--no-drain] [-o offset] [--pattern=pattern] [-q] [-s buffer_size] [-S step_size] [-t cache] [-w] [-U] filename

Run a simple sequential I/O benchmark on the specified image. If -w is specified, a write test is performed, otherwise a read test is performed.

A total number of count I/O requests is performed, each buffer_size bytes in size, and with depth requests in parallel. The first request starts at the position given by offset, each following request increases the current position by step_size. If step_size is not given, buffer_size is used for its value.

If flush_interval is specified for a write test, the request queue is drained and a flush is issued before new writes are made whenever the number of remaining requests is a multiple of flush_interval. If additionally --no-drain is specified, a flush is issued without draining the request queue first.

If -n is specified, the native AIO backend is used if possible. On Linux, this option only works if -t none or -t directsync is specified as well.

For write tests, by default a buffer filled with zeros is written. This can be overridden with a pattern byte specified by pattern.

check [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt] [-r [leaks | all]] [-T src_cache] [-U] filename

Perform a consistency check on the disk image filename. The command can output in the format ofmt which is either human or json.

If -r is specified, qemu-img tries to repair any inconsistencies found during the check. -r leaks repairs only cluster leaks, whereas -r all fixes all kinds of errors, with a higher risk of choosing the wrong fix or hiding corruption that has already occurred.

Only the formats qcow2, qed and vdi support consistency checks.

In case the image does not have any inconsistencies, check exits with 0. Other exit codes indicate the kind of inconsistency found or if another error occurred. The following table summarizes all exit codes of the check subcommand:

Check completed, the image is (now) consistent

Check not completed because of internal errors

Check completed, image is corrupted

Check completed, image has leaked clusters, but is not corrupted

Checks are not supported by the image format

If -r is specified, exit codes representing the image state refer to the state after (the attempt at) repairing it. That is, a successful -r all will yield the exit code 0, independently of the image state before.

commit [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-b base] [-d] [-p] filename

Commit the changes recorded in filename in its base image or backing file. If the backing file is smaller than the snapshot, then the backing file will be resized to be the same size as the snapshot. If the snapshot is smaller than the backing file, the backing file will not be truncated. If you want the backing file to match the size of the smaller snapshot, you can safely truncate it yourself once the commit operation successfully completes.

The image filename is emptied after the operation has succeeded. If you do not need filename afterwards and intend to drop it, you may skip emptying filename by specifying the -d flag.

If the backing chain of the given image file filename has more than one layer, the backing file into which the changes will be committed may be specified as base (which has to be part of filename’s backing chain). If base is not specified, the immediate backing file of the top image (which is filename) will be used. Note that after a commit operation all images between base and the top image will be invalid and may return garbage data when read. For this reason, -b implies -d (so that the top image stays valid).

compare [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [-F fmt] [-T src_cache] [-p] [-q] [-s] [-U] filename1 filename2

Check if two images have the same content. You can compare images with different format or settings.

The format is probed unless you specify it by -f (used for filename1) and/or -F (used for filename2) option.

By default, images with different size are considered identical if the larger image contains only unallocated and/or zeroed sectors in the area after the end of the other image. In addition, if any sector is not allocated in one image and contains only zero bytes in the second one, it is evaluated as equal. You can use Strict mode by specifying the -s option. When compare runs in Strict mode, it fails in case image size differs or a sector is allocated in one image and is not allocated in the second one.

By default, compare prints out a result message. This message displays information that both images are same or the position of the first different byte. In addition, result message can report different image size in case Strict mode is used.

Compare exits with 0 in case the images are equal and with 1 in case the images differ. Other exit codes mean an error occurred during execution and standard error output should contain an error message. The following table sumarizes all exit codes of the compare subcommand:

Images are identical

Images differ

Error on opening an image

Error on checking a sector allocation

Error on reading data

convert [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [--target-image-opts] [-U] [-C] [-c] [-p] [-q] [-n] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-T src_cache] [-O output_fmt] [-B backing_file] [-o options] [-l snapshot_param] [-S sparse_size] [-m num_coroutines] [-W] filename [filename2 [...]] output_filename

Convert the disk image filename or a snapshot snapshot_param to disk image output_filename using format output_fmt. It can be optionally compressed (-c option) or use any format specific options like encryption (-o option).

Only the formats qcow and qcow2 support compression. The compression is read-only. It means that if a compressed sector is rewritten, then it is rewritten as uncompressed data.

Image conversion is also useful to get smaller image when using a growable format such as qcow: the empty sectors are detected and suppressed from the destination image.

sparse_size indicates the consecutive number of bytes (defaults to 4k) that must contain only zeros for qemu-img to create a sparse image during conversion. If sparse_size is 0, the source will not be scanned for unallocated or zero sectors, and the destination image will always be fully allocated.

You can use the backing_file option to force the output image to be created as a copy on write image of the specified base image; the backing_file should have the same content as the input’s base image, however the path, image format, etc may differ.

If a relative path name is given, the backing file is looked up relative to the directory containing output_filename.

If the -n option is specified, the target volume creation will be skipped. This is useful for formats such as rbd if the target volume has already been created with site specific options that cannot be supplied through qemu-img.

Out of order writes can be enabled with -W to improve performance. This is only recommended for preallocated devices like host devices or other raw block devices. Out of order write does not work in combination with creating compressed images.

num_coroutines specifies how many coroutines work in parallel during the convert process (defaults to 8).

create [--object objectdef] [-q] [-f fmt] [-b backing_file] [-F backing_fmt] [-u] [-o options] filename [size]

Create the new disk image filename of size size and format fmt. Depending on the file format, you can add one or more options that enable additional features of this format.

If the option backing_file is specified, then the image will record only the differences from backing_file. No size needs to be specified in this case. backing_file will never be modified unless you use the commit monitor command (or qemu-img commit).

If a relative path name is given, the backing file is looked up relative to the directory containing filename.

Note that a given backing file will be opened to check that it is valid. Use the -u option to enable unsafe backing file mode, which means that the image will be created even if the associated backing file cannot be opened. A matching backing file must be created or additional options be used to make the backing file specification valid when you want to use an image created this way.

The size can also be specified using the size option with -o, it doesn’t need to be specified separately in this case.

dd [--image-opts] [-U] [-f fmt] [-O output_fmt] [bs=block_size] [count=blocks] [skip=blocks] if=input of=output

Dd copies from input file to output file converting it from fmt format to output_fmt format.

The data is by default read and written using blocks of 512 bytes but can be modified by specifying block_size. If count=blocks is specified dd will stop reading input after reading blocks input blocks.

The size syntax is similar to dd(1)’s size syntax.

info [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt] [--backing-chain] [-U] filename

Give information about the disk image filename. Use it in particular to know the size reserved on disk which can be different from the displayed size. If VM snapshots are stored in the disk image, they are displayed too. The command can output in the format ofmt which is either human or json.

If a disk image has a backing file chain, information about each disk image in the chain can be recursively enumerated by using the option --backing-chain.

For instance, if you have an image chain like:

base.qcow2 <- snap1.qcow2 <- snap2.qcow2

To enumerate information about each disk image in the above chain, starting from top to base, do:

qemu-img info --backing-chain snap2.qcow2

map [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt] filename

Dump the metadata of image filename and its backing file chain. In particular, this commands dumps the allocation state of every sector of filename, together with the topmost file that allocates it in the backing file chain.

Two option formats are possible. The default format (human) only dumps known-nonzero areas of the file. Known-zero parts of the file are omitted altogether, and likewise for parts that are not allocated throughout the chain. qemu-img output will identify a file from where the data can be read, and the offset in the file. Each line will include four fields, the first three of which are hexadecimal numbers. For example the first line of:

Offset Length Mapped to File

0 0x20000 0x50000 /tmp/overlay.qcow2

0x100000 0x10000 0x95380000 /tmp/backing.qcow2

means that 0x20000 (131072) bytes starting at offset 0 in the image are available in /tmp/overlay.qcow2 (opened in raw format) starting at offset 0x50000 (327680). Data that is compressed, encrypted, or otherwise not available in raw format will cause an error if human format is in use. Note that file names can include newlines, thus it is not safe to parse this output format in scripts.

The alternative format json will return an array of dictionaries in JSON format. It will include similar information in the start, length, offset fields; it will also include other more specific information:

- whether the sectors contain actual data or not (boolean field data; if false, the sectors are either unallocated or stored as optimized all-zero clusters);

- whether the data is known to read as zero (boolean field zero);

- in order to make the output shorter, the target file is expressed as a depth; for example, a depth of 2 refers to the backing file of the backing file of filename.

In JSON format, the offset field is optional; it is absent in cases where human format would omit the entry or exit with an error. If data is false and the offset field is present, the corresponding sectors in the file are not yet in use, but they are preallocated.

For more information, consult include/block/block.h in QEMU’s source code.

measure [--output=ofmt] [-O output_fmt] [-o options] [--size N | [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [-l snapshot_param] filename]

Calculate the file size required for a new image. This information can be used to size logical volumes or SAN LUNs appropriately for the image that will be placed in them. The values reported are guaranteed to be large enough to fit the image. The command can output in the format ofmt which is either human or json.

If the size N is given then act as if creating a new empty image file using qemu-img create. If filename is given then act as if converting an existing image file using qemu-img convert. The format of the new file is given by output_fmt while the format of an existing file is given by fmt.

A snapshot in an existing image can be specified using snapshot_param.

The following fields are reported:

required size: 524288

fully allocated size: 1074069504

The required size is the file size of the new image. It may be smaller than the virtual disk size if the image format supports compact representation.

The fully allocated size is the file size of the new image once data has been written to all sectors. This is the maximum size that the image file can occupy with the exception of internal snapshots, dirty bitmaps, vmstate data, and other advanced image format features.

snapshot [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-U] [-q] [-l | -a snapshot | -c snapshot | -d snapshot] filename

List, apply, create or delete snapshots in image filename.

rebase [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-U] [-q] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-T src_cache] [-p] [-u] -b backing_file [-F backing_fmt] filename

Changes the backing file of an image. Only the formats qcow2 and qed support changing the backing file.

The backing file is changed to backing_file and (if the image format of filename supports this) the backing file format is changed to backing_fmt. If backing_file is specified as “” (the empty string), then the image is rebased onto no backing file (i.e. it will exist independently of any backing file).

If a relative path name is given, the backing file is looked up relative to the directory containing filename.

cache specifies the cache mode to be used for filename, whereas src_cache specifies the cache mode for reading backing files.

There are two different modes in which rebase can operate:

Safe mode

This is the default mode and performs a real rebase operation. The new backing file may differ from the old one and qemu-img rebase will take care of keeping the guest-visible content of filename unchanged.

In order to achieve this, any clusters that differ between backing_file and the old backing file of filename are merged into filename before actually changing the backing file.

Note that the safe mode is an expensive operation, comparable to converting an image. It only works if the old backing file still exists.

Unsafe mode

qemu-img uses the unsafe mode if -u is specified. In this mode, only the backing file name and format of filename is changed without any checks on the file contents. The user must take care of specifying the correct new backing file, or the guest-visible content of the image will be corrupted.

This mode is useful for renaming or moving the backing file to somewhere else. It can be used without an accessible old backing file, i.e. you can use it to fix an image whose backing file has already been moved/renamed.

You can use rebase to perform a “diff” operation on two disk images. This can be useful when you have copied or cloned a guest, and you want to get back to a thin image on top of a template or base image.

Say that base.img has been cloned as modified.img by copying it, and that the modified.img guest has run so there are now some changes compared to base.img. To construct a thin image called diff.qcow2 that contains just the differences, do:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b modified.img diff.qcow2

qemu-img rebase -b base.img diff.qcow2

At this point, modified.img can be discarded, since base.img + diff.qcow2 contains the same information.

resize [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [--preallocation=prealloc] [-q] [--shrink] filename [+ | -]size

Change the disk image as if it had been created with size.

Before using this command to shrink a disk image, you MUST use file system and partitioning tools inside the VM to reduce allocated file systems and partition sizes accordingly. Failure to do so will result in data loss!

When shrinking images, the --shrink option must be given. This informs qemu-img that the user acknowledges all loss of data beyond the truncated image’s end.

After using this command to grow a disk image, you must use file system and partitioning tools inside the VM to actually begin using the new space on the device.

When growing an image, the --preallocation option may be used to specify how the additional image area should be allocated on the host. See the format description in the NOTES section which values are allowed. Using this option may result in slightly more data being allocated than necessary.

2.7.5 qemu-nbd Invocation

qemu-nbd [OPTION]... filename

qemu-nbd -d dev

Export a QEMU disk image using the NBD protocol.

filename is a disk image filename, or a set of block driver options if –image-opts is specified.

dev is an NBD device.

--object type,id=id,...props...

Define a new instance of the type object class identified by id. See the qemu(1) manual page for full details of the properties supported. The common object types that it makes sense to define are the secret object, which is used to supply passwords and/or encryption keys, and the tls-creds object, which is used to supply TLS credentials for the qemu-nbd server.

-p, --port=port

The TCP port to listen on (default ‘10809’)

-o, --offset=offset

The offset into the image

-b, --bind=iface

The interface to bind to (default ‘0.0.0.0’)

-k, --socket=path

Use a unix socket with path path

--image-opts

Treat filename as a set of image options, instead of a plain filename. If this flag is specified, the -f flag should not be used, instead the ’format=’ option should be set.

-f, --format=fmt

Force the use of the block driver for format fmt instead of auto-detecting

-r, --read-only

Export the disk as read-only

-P, --partition=num

Only expose partition num

-s, --snapshot

Use filename as an external snapshot, create a temporary file with backing_file=filename, redirect the write to the temporary one

-l, --load-snapshot=snapshot_param

Load an internal snapshot inside filename and export it as an read-only device, snapshot_param format is ’snapshot.id=[ID],snapshot.name=[NAME]’ or ’[ID_OR_NAME]’

-n, --nocache

--cache=cache

The cache mode to be used with the file. See the documentation of the emulator’s -drive cache=... option for allowed values.

--aio=aio

Set the asynchronous I/O mode between ‘threads’ (the default) and ‘native’ (Linux only).

--discard=discard

Control whether discard (also known as trim or unmap) requests are ignored or passed to the filesystem. discard is one of ‘ignore’ (or ‘off’), ‘unmap’ (or ‘on’). The default is ‘ignore’.

--detect-zeroes=detect-zeroes

Control the automatic conversion of plain zero writes by the OS to driver-specific optimized zero write commands. detect-zeroes is one of ‘off’, ‘on’ or ‘unmap’. ‘unmap’ converts a zero write to an unmap operation and can only be used if discard is set to ‘unmap’. The default is ‘off’.

-c, --connect=dev

Connect filename to NBD device dev

-d, --disconnect

Disconnect the device dev

-e, --shared=num

Allow up to num clients to share the device (default ‘1’)

-t, --persistent

Don’t exit on the last connection

-x, --export-name=name

Set the NBD volume export name. This switches the server to use the new style NBD protocol negotiation

-D, --description=description

Set the NBD volume export description, as a human-readable string. Requires the use of -x

--tls-creds=ID

Enable mandatory TLS encryption for the server by setting the ID of the TLS credentials object previously created with the –object option.

--fork

Fork off the server process and exit the parent once the server is running.

-v, --verbose

Display extra debugging information

-h, --help

Display this help and exit

-V, --version

Display version information and exit

-T, --trace [[enable=]pattern][,events=file][,file=file]

Specify tracing options.

[enable=]pattern

Use -trace help to print a list of names of trace points.

events=file

file=file

Log output traces to file. This option is only available if QEMU has been compiled with the simple tracing backend.

QEMU block driver reference manual

2.7.6 Disk image file formats

QEMU supports many image file formats that can be used with VMs as well as with any of the tools (like qemu-img). This includes the preferred formats raw and qcow2 as well as formats that are supported for compatibility with older QEMU versions or other hypervisors.

Depending on the image format, different options can be passed to qemu-img create and qemu-img convert using the -o option. This section describes each format and the options that are supported for it.

raw

Raw disk image format. This format has the advantage of being simple and easily exportable to all other emulators. If your file system supports holes (for example in ext2 or ext3 on Linux or NTFS on Windows), then only the written sectors will reserve space. Use qemu-img info to know the real size used by the image or ls -ls on Unix/Linux.

Supported options:

preallocation

Preallocation mode (allowed values: off, falloc, full). falloc mode preallocates space for image by calling posix_fallocate(). full mode preallocates space for image by writing zeros to underlying storage.

qcow2

QEMU image format, the most versatile format. Use it to have smaller images (useful if your filesystem does not supports holes, for example on Windows), zlib based compression and support of multiple VM snapshots.

Supported options:

compat

Determines the qcow2 version to use. compat=0.10 uses the traditional image format that can be read by any QEMU since 0.10. compat=1.1 enables image format extensions that only QEMU 1.1 and newer understand (this is the default). Amongst others, this includes zero clusters, which allow efficient copy-on-read for sparse images.

backing_file

File name of a base image (see create subcommand)

backing_fmt

Image format of the base image

encryption

This option is deprecated and equivalent to encrypt.format=aes

encrypt.format

If this is set to luks, it requests that the qcow2 payload (not qcow2 header) be encrypted using the LUKS format. The passphrase to use to unlock the LUKS key slot is given by the encrypt.key-secret parameter. LUKS encryption parameters can be tuned with the other encrypt.* parameters.

If this is set to aes, the image is encrypted with 128-bit AES-CBC. The encryption key is given by the encrypt.key-secret parameter. This encryption format is considered to be flawed by modern cryptography standards, suffering from a number of design problems:

- The AES-CBC cipher is used with predictable initialization vectors based on the sector number. This makes it vulnerable to chosen plaintext attacks which can reveal the existence of encrypted data.

- The user passphrase is directly used as the encryption key. A poorly chosen or short passphrase will compromise the security of the encryption.

- In the event of the passphrase being compromised there is no way to change the passphrase to protect data in any qcow images. The files must be cloned, using a different encryption passphrase in the new file. The original file must then be securely erased using a program like shred, though even this is ineffective with many modern storage technologies.

The use of this is no longer supported in system emulators. Support only remains in the command line utilities, for the purposes of data liberation and interoperability with old versions of QEMU. The luks format should be used instead.

encrypt.key-secret

Provides the ID of a secret object that contains the passphrase (encrypt.format=luks) or encryption key (encrypt.format=aes).

encrypt.cipher-alg

Name of the cipher algorithm and key length. Currently defaults to aes-256. Only used when encrypt.format=luks.

encrypt.cipher-mode

Name of the encryption mode to use. Currently defaults to xts. Only used when encrypt.format=luks.

encrypt.ivgen-alg

Name of the initialization vector generator algorithm. Currently defaults to plain64. Only used when encrypt.format=luks.

encrypt.ivgen-hash-alg

Name of the hash algorithm to use with the initialization vector generator (if required). Defaults to sha256. Only used when encrypt.format=luks.

encrypt.hash-alg

Name of the hash algorithm to use for PBKDF algorithm Defaults to sha256. Only used when encrypt.format=luks.

encrypt.iter-time

Amount of time, in milliseconds, to use for PBKDF algorithm per key slot. Defaults to 2000. Only used when encrypt.format=luks.

cluster_size

Changes the qcow2 cluster size (must be between 512 and 2M). Smaller cluster sizes can improve the image file size whereas larger cluster sizes generally provide better performance.

preallocation

Preallocation mode (allowed values: off, metadata, falloc, full). An image with preallocated metadata is initially larger but can improve performance when the image needs to grow. falloc and full preallocations are like the same options of raw format, but sets up metadata also.

lazy_refcounts

If this option is set to on, reference count updates are postponed with the goal of avoiding metadata I/O and improving performance. This is particularly interesting with cache=writethrough which doesn’t batch metadata updates. The tradeoff is that after a host crash, the reference count tables must be rebuilt, i.e. on the next open an (automatic) qemu-img check -r all is required, which may take some time.

This option can only be enabled if compat=1.1 is specified.

nocow

If this option is set to on, it will turn off COW of the file. It’s only valid on btrfs, no effect on other file systems.

Btrfs has low performance when hosting a VM image file, even more when the guest on the VM also using btrfs as file system. Turning off COW is a way to mitigate this bad performance. Generally there are two ways to turn off COW on btrfs: a) Disable it by mounting with nodatacow, then all newly created files will be NOCOW. b) For an empty file, add the NOCOW file attribute. That’s what this option does.

Note: this option is only valid to new or empty files. If there is an existing file which is COW and has data blocks already, it couldn’t be changed to NOCOW by setting nocow=on. One can issue lsattr filename to check if the NOCOW flag is set or not (Capital ’C’ is NOCOW flag).

qed

Old QEMU image format with support for backing files and compact image files (when your filesystem or transport medium does not support holes).

When converting QED images to qcow2, you might want to consider using the lazy_refcounts=on option to get a more QED-like behaviour.

Supported options:

backing_file

File name of a base image (see create subcommand).

backing_fmt

Image file format of backing file (optional). Useful if the format cannot be autodetected because it has no header, like some vhd/vpc files.

cluster_size

Changes the cluster size (must be power-of-2 between 4K and 64K). Smaller cluster sizes can improve the image file size whereas larger cluster sizes generally provide better performance.

table_size

Changes the number of clusters per L1/L2 table (must be power-of-2 between 1 and 16). There is normally no need to change this value but this option can be used for performance benchmarking.

qcow

Old QEMU image format with support for backing files, compact image files, encryption and compression.

Supported options:

backing_file

File name of a base image (see create subcommand)

encryption

This option is deprecated and equivalent to encrypt.format=aes

encrypt.format

The use of this is no longer supported in system emulators. Support only remains in the command line utilities, for the purposes of data liberation and interoperability with old versions of QEMU.

Users requiring native encryption should use the qcow2 format instead with encrypt.format=luks.

encrypt.key-secret

Provides the ID of a secret object that contains the encryption key (encrypt.format=aes).

luks

LUKS v1 encryption format, compatible with Linux dm-crypt/cryptsetup

Supported options:

key-secret

Provides the ID of a secret object that contains the passphrase.

cipher-alg

Name of the cipher algorithm and key length. Currently defaults to aes-256.

cipher-mode

Name of the encryption mode to use. Currently defaults to xts.

ivgen-alg

Name of the initialization vector generator algorithm. Currently defaults to plain64.

ivgen-hash-alg

Name of the hash algorithm to use with the initialization vector generator (if required). Defaults to sha256.

hash-alg

Name of the hash algorithm to use for PBKDF algorithm Defaults to sha256.

iter-time

Amount of time, in milliseconds, to use for PBKDF algorithm per key slot. Defaults to 2000.

vdi

VirtualBox 1.1 compatible image format. Supported options:

static

If this option is set to on, the image is created with metadata preallocation.

vmdk

VMware 3 and 4 compatible image format.

Supported options:

backing_file

File name of a base image (see create subcommand).

compat6

Create a VMDK version 6 image (instead of version 4)

hwversion

Specify vmdk virtual hardware version. Compat6 flag cannot be enabled if hwversion is specified.

subformat

Specifies which VMDK subformat to use. Valid options are monolithicSparse (default), monolithicFlat, twoGbMaxExtentSparse, twoGbMaxExtentFlat and streamOptimized.

vpc

VirtualPC compatible image format (VHD). Supported options:

subformat

Specifies which VHD subformat to use. Valid options are dynamic (default) and fixed.

VHDX

Hyper-V compatible image format (VHDX). Supported options:

subformat

Specifies which VHDX subformat to use. Valid options are dynamic (default) and fixed.

block_state_zero

Force use of payload blocks of type ’ZERO’. Can be set to on (default) or off. When set to off, new blocks will be created as PAYLOAD_BLOCK_NOT_PRESENT, which means parsers are free to return arbitrary data for those blocks. Do not set to off when using qemu-img convert with subformat=dynamic.

block_size

Block size; min 1 MB, max 256 MB. 0 means auto-calculate based on image size.

log_size

Log size; min 1 MB.

2.7.6.1 Read-only formats

More disk image file formats are supported in a read-only mode.

bochs

Bochs images of growing type.

cloop

Linux Compressed Loop image, useful only to reuse directly compressed CD-ROM images present for example in the Knoppix CD-ROMs.

dmg

Apple disk image.

parallels

Parallels disk image format.

2.7.7 Using host drives

In addition to disk image files, QEMU can directly access host devices. We describe here the usage for QEMU version >= 0.8.3.

2.7.7.1 Linux

On Linux, you can directly use the host device filename instead of a disk image filename provided you have enough privileges to access it. For example, use /dev/cdrom to access to the CDROM.

You can specify a CDROM device even if no CDROM is loaded. QEMU has specific code to detect CDROM insertion or removal. CDROM ejection by the guest OS is supported. Currently only data CDs are supported.

Floppy

You can specify a floppy device even if no floppy is loaded. Floppy removal is currently not detected accurately (if you change floppy without doing floppy access while the floppy is not loaded, the guest OS will think that the same floppy is loaded). Use of the host’s floppy device is deprecated, and support for it will be removed in a future release.

Hard disks

Hard disks can be used. Normally you must specify the whole disk (/dev/hdb instead of /dev/hdb1) so that the guest OS can see it as a partitioned disk. WARNING: unless you know what you do, it is better to only make READ-ONLY accesses to the hard disk otherwise you may corrupt your host data (use the -snapshot command line option or modify the device permissions accordingly).

2.7.7.2 Windows

The preferred syntax is the drive letter (e.g. d:). The alternate syntax \\.\d: is supported. /dev/cdrom is supported as an alias to the first CDROM drive.

Currently there is no specific code to handle removable media, so it is better to use the change or eject monitor commands to change or eject media.

Hard disks

Hard disks can be used with the syntax: \\.\PhysicalDriveN where N is the drive number (0 is the first hard disk). /dev/hda is supported as an alias to the first hard disk drive \\.\PhysicalDrive0.

WARNING: unless you know what you do, it is better to only make READ-ONLY accesses to the hard disk otherwise you may corrupt your host data (use the -snapshot command line so that the modifications are written in a temporary file).

2.7.7.3 Mac OS X

/dev/cdrom is an alias to the first CDROM.

Currently there is no specific code to handle removable media, so it is better to use the change or eject monitor commands to change or eject media.

2.7.8 Virtual FAT disk images

QEMU can automatically create a virtual FAT disk image from a directory tree. In order to use it, just type:

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -hdb fat:/my_directory

Then you access access to all the files in the /my_directory directory without having to copy them in a disk image or to export them via SAMBA or NFS. The default access is read-only.

Floppies can be emulated with the :floppy: option:

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -fda fat:floppy:/my_directory

A read/write support is available for testing (beta stage) with the :rw: option:

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -fda fat:floppy:rw:/my_directory

What you should never do:

use non-ASCII filenames ;

use "-snapshot" together with ":rw:" ;

expect it to work when loadvm’ing ;

write to the FAT directory on the host system while accessing it with the guest system.

2.7.9 NBD access

QEMU can access directly to block device exported using the Network Block Device protocol.

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -hdb nbd://my_nbd_server.mydomain.org:1024/

If the NBD server is located on the same host, you can use an unix socket instead of an inet socket:

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -hdb nbd+unix://?socket=/tmp/my_socket

In this case, the block device must be exported using qemu-nbd:

qemu-nbd --socket=/tmp/my_socket my_disk.qcow2

The use of qemu-nbd allows sharing of a disk between several guests:

qemu-nbd --socket=/tmp/my_socket --share=2 my_disk.qcow2

and then you can use it with two guests:

qemu-system-i386 linux1.img -hdb nbd+unix://?socket=/tmp/my_socket

qemu-system-i386 linux2.img -hdb nbd+unix://?socket=/tmp/my_socket

If the nbd-server uses named exports (supported since NBD 2.9.18, or with QEMU’s own embedded NBD server), you must specify an export name in the URI:

qemu-system-i386 -cdrom nbd://localhost/debian-500-ppc-netinst

qemu-system-i386 -cdrom nbd://localhost/openSUSE-11.1-ppc-netinst

The URI syntax for NBD is supported since QEMU 1.3. An alternative syntax is also available. Here are some example of the older syntax:

qemu-system-i386 linux.img -hdb nbd:my_nbd_server.mydomain.org:1024

qemu-system-i386 linux2.img -hdb nbd:unix:/tmp/my_socket

qemu-system-i386 -cdrom nbd:localhost:10809:exportname=debian-500-ppc-netinst

2.7.10 Sheepdog disk images

Sheepdog is a distributed storage system for QEMU. It provides highly available block level storage volumes that can be attached to QEMU-based virtual machines.

You can create a Sheepdog disk image with the command:

qemu-img create sheepdog:///image size

where image is the Sheepdog image name and size is its size.

To import the existing filename to Sheepdog, you can use a convert command.

qemu-img convert filename sheepdog:///image

You can boot from the Sheepdog disk image with the command:

qemu-system-i386 sheepdog:///image

You can also create a snapshot of the Sheepdog image like qcow2.

qemu-img snapshot -c tag sheepdog:///image

where tag is a tag name of the newly created snapshot.

To boot from the Sheepdog snapshot, specify the tag name of the snapshot.

qemu-system-i386 sheepdog:///image#tag

You can create a cloned image from the existing snapshot.

qemu-img create -b sheepdog:///base#tag sheepdog:///image

where base is an image name of the source snapshot and tag is its tag name.

You can use an unix socket instead of an inet socket:

qemu-system-i386 sheepdog+unix:///image?socket=path

If the Sheepdog daemon doesn’t run on the local host, you need to specify one of the Sheepdog servers to connect to.

qemu-img create sheepdog://hostname:port/image size

qemu-system-i386 sheepdog://hostname:port/image

2.7.11 iSCSI LUNs

iSCSI is a popular protocol used to access SCSI devices across a computer network.

There are two different ways iSCSI devices can be used by QEMU.

The first method is to mount the iSCSI LUN on the host, and make it appear as any other ordinary SCSI device on the host and then to access this device as a /dev/sd device from QEMU. How to do this differs between host OSes.

The second method involves using the iSCSI initiator that is built into QEMU. This provides a mechanism that works the same way regardless of which host OS you are running QEMU on. This section will describe this second method of using iSCSI together with QEMU.

In QEMU, iSCSI devices are described using special iSCSI URLs

URL syntax:

iscsi://[<username>[%<password>]@]<host>[:<port>]/<target-iqn-name>/<lun>

Username and password are optional and only used if your target is set up using CHAP authentication for access control. Alternatively the username and password can also be set via environment variables to have these not show up in the process list

export LIBISCSI_CHAP_USERNAME=<username>

export LIBISCSI_CHAP_PASSWORD=<password>

iscsi://<host>/<target-iqn-name>/<lun>

Various session related parameters can be set via special options, either in a configuration file provided via ’-readconfig’ or directly on the command line.

If the initiator-name is not specified qemu will use a default name of ’iqn.2008-11.org.linux-kvm[:<uuid>’] where <uuid> is the UUID of the virtual machine. If the UUID is not specified qemu will use ’iqn.2008-11.org.linux-kvm[:<name>’] where <name> is the name of the virtual machine.

Setting a specific initiator name to use when logging in to the target

-iscsi initiator-name=iqn.qemu.test:my-initiator

Controlling which type of header digest to negotiate with the target

-iscsi header-digest=CRC32C|CRC32C-NONE|NONE-CRC32C|NONE

These can also be set via a configuration file

[iscsi]

user = "CHAP username"

password = "CHAP password"

initiator-name = "iqn.qemu.test:my-initiator"

# header digest is one of CRC32C|CRC32C-NONE|NONE-CRC32C|NONE

header-digest = "CRC32C"

Setting the target name allows different options for different targets

[iscsi "iqn.target.name"]

user = "CHAP username"

password = "CHAP password"

initiator-name = "iqn.qemu.test:my-initiator"

# header digest is one of CRC32C|CRC32C-NONE|NONE-CRC32C|NONE

header-digest = "CRC32C"

Howto use a configuration file to set iSCSI configuration options:

cat >iscsi.conf <<EOF

[iscsi]

user = "me"

password = "my password"

initiator-name = "iqn.qemu.test:my-initiator"

header-digest = "CRC32C"

EOF

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=iscsi://127.0.0.1/iqn.qemu.test/1 \

-readconfig iscsi.conf

Howto set up a simple iSCSI target on loopback and accessing it via QEMU:

This example shows how to set up an iSCSI target with one CDROM and one DISK

using the Linux STGT software target. This target is available on Red Hat based

systems as the package 'scsi-target-utils'.

tgtd --iscsi portal=127.0.0.1:3260

tgtadm --lld iscsi --op new --mode target --tid 1 -T iqn.qemu.test

tgtadm --lld iscsi --mode logicalunit --op new --tid 1 --lun 1 \

-b /IMAGES/disk.img --device-type=disk

tgtadm --lld iscsi --mode logicalunit --op new --tid 1 --lun 2 \

-b /IMAGES/cd.iso --device-type=cd

tgtadm --lld iscsi --op bind --mode target --tid 1 -I ALL

qemu-system-i386 -iscsi initiator-name=iqn.qemu.test:my-initiator \

-boot d -drive file=iscsi://127.0.0.1/iqn.qemu.test/1 \

-cdrom iscsi://127.0.0.1/iqn.qemu.test/2

2.7.12 GlusterFS disk images

GlusterFS is a user space distributed file system.

You can boot from the GlusterFS disk image with the command:

URI:

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster[+type]://[host[:port]]/volume/path

[?socket=...][,file.debug=9][,file.logfile=...]

JSON:

qemu-system-x86_64 'json:{"driver":"qcow2",

"file":{"driver":"gluster",

"volume":"testvol","path":"a.img","debug":9,"logfile":"...",

"server":[{"type":"tcp","host":"...","port":"..."},

{"type":"unix","socket":"..."}]}}'

gluster is the protocol.

type specifies the transport type used to connect to gluster management daemon (glusterd). Valid transport types are tcp and unix. In the URI form, if a transport type isn’t specified, then tcp type is assumed.

host specifies the server where the volume file specification for the given volume resides. This can be either a hostname or an ipv4 address. If transport type is unix, then host field should not be specified. Instead socket field needs to be populated with the path to unix domain socket.

port is the port number on which glusterd is listening. This is optional and if not specified, it defaults to port 24007. If the transport type is unix, then port should not be specified.

volume is the name of the gluster volume which contains the disk image.

path is the path to the actual disk image that resides on gluster volume.

debug is the logging level of the gluster protocol driver. Debug levels are 0-9, with 9 being the most verbose, and 0 representing no debugging output. The default level is 4. The current logging levels defined in the gluster source are 0 - None, 1 - Emergency, 2 - Alert, 3 - Critical, 4 - Error, 5 - Warning, 6 - Notice, 7 - Info, 8 - Debug, 9 - Trace

logfile is a commandline option to mention log file path which helps in logging to the specified file and also help in persisting the gfapi logs. The default is stderr.

You can create a GlusterFS disk image with the command:

qemu-img create gluster://host/volume/path size

Examples

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster://1.2.3.4/testvol/a.img

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster+tcp://1.2.3.4/testvol/a.img

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster+tcp://1.2.3.4:24007/testvol/dir/a.img

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster+tcp://[1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8]/testvol/dir/a.img

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster+tcp://[1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8]:24007/testvol/dir/a.img

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster+tcp://server.domain.com:24007/testvol/dir/a.img

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster+unix:///testvol/dir/a.img?socket=/tmp/glusterd.socket

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster+rdma://1.2.3.4:24007/testvol/a.img

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=gluster://1.2.3.4/testvol/a.img,file.debug=9,file.logfile=/var/log/qemu-gluster.log

qemu-system-x86_64 'json:{"driver":"qcow2",

"file":{"driver":"gluster",

"volume":"testvol","path":"a.img",

"debug":9,"logfile":"/var/log/qemu-gluster.log",

"server":[{"type":"tcp","host":"1.2.3.4","port":24007},

{"type":"unix","socket":"/var/run/glusterd.socket"}]}}'

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive driver=qcow2,file.driver=gluster,file.volume=testvol,file.path=/path/a.img,

file.debug=9,file.logfile=/var/log/qemu-gluster.log,

file.server.0.type=tcp,file.server.0.host=1.2.3.4,file.server.0.port=24007,

file.server.1.type=unix,file.server.1.socket=/var/run/glusterd.socket

2.7.13 Secure Shell (ssh) disk images

You can access disk images located on a remote ssh server by using the ssh protocol:

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=ssh://[user@]server[:port]/path[?host_key_check=host_key_check]

Alternative syntax using properties:

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file.driver=ssh[,file.user=user],file.host=server[,file.port=port],file.path=path[,file.host_key_check=host_key_check]

ssh is the protocol.

user is the remote user. If not specified, then the local username is tried.

server specifies the remote ssh server. Any ssh server can be used, but it must implement the sftp-server protocol. Most Unix/Linux systems should work without requiring any extra configuration.

port is the port number on which sshd is listening. By default the standard ssh port (22) is used.

path is the path to the disk image.

The optional host_key_check parameter controls how the remote host’s key is checked. The default is yes which means to use the local .ssh/known_hosts file. Setting this to no turns off known-hosts checking. Or you can check that the host key matches a specific fingerprint: host_key_check=md5:78:45:8e:14:57:4f:d5:45:83:0a:0e:f3:49:82:c9:c8 (sha1: can also be used as a prefix, but note that OpenSSH tools only use MD5 to print fingerprints).

Currently authentication must be done using ssh-agent. Other authentication methods may be supported in future.

Note: Many ssh servers do not support an fsync-style operation. The ssh driver cannot guarantee that disk flush requests are obeyed, and this causes a risk of disk corruption if the remote server or network goes down during writes. The driver will print a warning when fsync is not supported:

warning: ssh server ssh.example.com:22 does not support fsync

With sufficiently new versions of libssh2 and OpenSSH, fsync is supported.

2.7.14 NVMe disk images

NVM Express (NVMe) storage controllers can be accessed directly by a userspace driver in QEMU. This bypasses the host kernel file system and block layers while retaining QEMU block layer functionalities, such as block jobs, I/O throttling, image formats, etc. Disk I/O performance is typically higher than with -drive file=/dev/sda using either thread pool or linux-aio.

The controller will be exclusively used by the QEMU process once started. To be able to share storage between multiple VMs and other applications on the host, please use the file based protocols.

Before starting QEMU, bind the host NVMe controller to the host vfio-pci driver. For example:

# modprobe vfio-pci

# lspci -n -s 0000:06:0d.0

06:0d.0 0401: 1102:0002 (rev 08)

# echo 0000:06:0d.0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:06:0d.0/driver/unbind

# echo 1102 0002 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/vfio-pci/new_id

# qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=nvme://host:bus:slot.func/namespace

Alternative syntax using properties:

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file.driver=nvme,file.device=host:bus:slot.func,file.namespace=namespace

host:bus:slot.func is the NVMe controller’s PCI device address on the host.

namespace is the NVMe namespace number, starting from 1.

2.7.15 Disk image file locking

By default, QEMU tries to protect image files from unexpected concurrent access, as long as it’s supported by the block protocol driver and host operating system. If multiple QEMU processes (including QEMU emulators and utilities) try to open the same image with conflicting accessing modes, all but the first one will get an error.

This feature is currently supported by the file protocol on Linux with the Open File Descriptor (OFD) locking API, and can be configured to fall back to POSIX locking if the POSIX host doesn’t support Linux OFD locking.

To explicitly enable image locking, specify "locking=on" in the file protocol driver options. If OFD locking is not possible, a warning will be printed and the POSIX locking API will be used. In this case there is a risk that the lock will get silently lost when doing hot plugging and block jobs, due to the shortcomings of the POSIX locking API.

QEMU transparently handles lock handover during shared storage migration. For shared virtual disk images between multiple VMs, the "share-rw" device option should be used.

By default, the guest has exclusive write access to its disk image. If the guest can safely share the disk image with other writers the -device ...,share-rw=on parameter can be used. This is only safe if the guest is running software, such as a cluster file system, that coordinates disk accesses to avoid corruption.

Note that share-rw=on only declares the guest’s ability to share the disk. Some QEMU features, such as image file formats, require exclusive write access to the disk image and this is unaffected by the share-rw=on option.

Alternatively, locking can be fully disabled by "locking=off" block device option. In the command line, the option is usually in the form of "file.locking=off" as the protocol driver is normally placed as a "file" child under a format driver. For example:

-blockdev driver=qcow2,file.filename=/path/to/image,file.locking=off,file.driver=file

To check if image locking is active, check the output of the "lslocks" command on host and see if there are locks held by the QEMU process on the image file. More than one byte could be locked by the QEMU instance, each byte of which reflects a particular permission that is acquired or protected by the running block driver.

2.8 Network emulation

QEMU can simulate several network cards (e.g. PCI or ISA cards on the PC target) and can connect them to a network backend on the host or an emulated hub. The various host network backends can either be used to connect the NIC of the guest to a real network (e.g. by using a TAP devices or the non-privileged user mode network stack), or to other guest instances running in another QEMU process (e.g. by using the socket host network backend).

2.8.1 Using TAP network interfaces

This is the standard way to connect QEMU to a real network. QEMU adds a virtual network device on your host (called tapN), and you can then configure it as if it was a real ethernet card.

2.8.1.1 Linux host

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 TAP network interfaces: the device /dev/net/tun must be present.

See sec_invocation to have examples of command lines using the TAP network interfaces.

2.8.1.2 Windows host

There is a virtual ethernet driver for Windows 2000/XP systems, called TAP-Win32. But it is not included in standard QEMU for Windows, so you will need to get it separately. It is part of OpenVPN package, so download OpenVPN from : https://openvpn.net/.

2.8.2 Using the user mode network stack

By using the option -net user (default configuration if no -net option is specified), QEMU uses a completely user mode network stack (you don’t need root privilege to use the virtual network). The virtual network configuration is the following:

guest (10.0.2.15) <------> Firewall/DHCP server <-----> Internet

| (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. The DHCP server assign addresses to the hosts starting from 10.0.2.15.

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 ICMP traffic in general does not work with user mode networking. ping, aka. ICMP echo, to the local router (10.0.2.2) shall work, however. If you’re using QEMU on Linux >= 3.0, it can use unprivileged ICMP ping sockets to allow ping to the Internet. The host admin has to set the ping_group_range in order to grant access to those sockets. To allow ping for GID 100 (usually users group):

echo 100 100 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ping_group_range

When using the built-in TFTP server, the router is also the TFTP server.

When using the '-netdev user,hostfwd=...' 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.

2.8.3 Hubs

QEMU can simulate several hubs. A hub can be thought of as a virtual connection between several network devices. These devices can be for example QEMU virtual ethernet cards or virtual Host ethernet devices (TAP devices). You can connect guest NICs or host network backends to such a hub using the -netdev hubport or -nic hubport options. The legacy -net option also connects the given device to the emulated hub with ID 0 (i.e. the default hub) unless you specify a netdev with -net nic,netdev=xxx here.

2.8.4 Connecting emulated networks between QEMU instances

Using the -netdev socket (or -nic socket or -net socket) option, it is possible to create emulated networks that span several QEMU instances. See the description of the -netdev socket option in the Invocation chapter to have a basic example.

2.9 Other Devices

2.9.1 Inter-VM Shared Memory device

On Linux hosts, a shared memory device is available. The basic syntax is:

qemu-system-x86_64 -device ivshmem-plain,memdev=hostmem

where hostmem names a host memory backend. For a POSIX shared memory backend, use something like

-object memory-backend-file,size=1M,share,mem-path=/dev/shm/ivshmem,id=hostmem

If desired, interrupts can be sent between guest VMs accessing the same shared memory region. Interrupt support requires using a shared memory server and using a chardev socket to connect to it. The code for the shared memory server is qemu.git/contrib/ivshmem-server. An example syntax when using the shared memory server is:

# First start the ivshmem server once and for all

ivshmem-server -p pidfile -S path -m shm-name -l shm-size -n vectors

# Then start your qemu instances with matching arguments

qemu-system-x86_64 -device ivshmem-doorbell,vectors=vectors,chardev=id

-chardev socket,path=path,id=id

When using the server, the guest will be assigned a VM ID (>=0) that allows guests using the same server to communicate via interrupts. Guests can read their VM ID from a device register (see ivshmem-spec.txt).

2.9.1.1 Migration with ivshmem

With device property master=on, the guest will copy the shared memory on migration to the destination host. With master=off, the guest will not be able to migrate with the device attached. In the latter case, the device should be detached and then reattached after migration using the PCI hotplug support.

At most one of the devices sharing the same memory can be master. The master must complete migration before you plug back the other devices.

2.9.1.2 ivshmem and hugepages

Instead of specifying the <shm size> using POSIX shm, you may specify a memory backend that has hugepage support:

qemu-system-x86_64 -object memory-backend-file,size=1G,mem-path=/dev/hugepages/my-shmem-file,share,id=mb1

-device ivshmem-plain,memdev=mb1

ivshmem-server also supports hugepages mount points with the -m memory path argument.

2.10 Direct Linux Boot

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 syntax is:

qemu-system-i386 -kernel arch/i386/boot/bzImage -hda root-2.4.20.img -append "root=/dev/hda"

Use -kernel to provide the Linux kernel image and -append to give the kernel command line arguments. The -initrd option can be used to provide an INITRD image.

When using the direct Linux boot, a disk image for the first hard disk hda is required because its boot sector is used to launch the Linux kernel.

If you do not need graphical output, you can disable it and redirect the virtual serial port and the QEMU monitor to the console with the -nographic option. The typical command line is:

qemu-system-i386 -kernel arch/i386/boot/bzImage -hda root-2.4.20.img \

-append "root=/dev/hda console=ttyS0" -nographic

Use Ctrl-a c to switch between the serial console and the monitor (see pcsys_keys).

2.11 USB emulation

QEMU can emulate a PCI UHCI, OHCI, EHCI or XHCI USB controller. You can plug virtual USB devices or real host USB devices (only works with certain host operating systems). QEMU will automatically create and connect virtual USB hubs as necessary to connect multiple USB devices.

2.11.1 Connecting USB devices

USB devices can be connected with the -device usb-... command line option or the device_add monitor command. Available devices are:

usb-mouse

Virtual Mouse. This will override the PS/2 mouse emulation when activated.

usb-tablet

usb-storage,drive=drive_id

Mass storage device backed by drive_id (see disk_images)

usb-uas

USB attached SCSI device, see usb-storage.txt for details

usb-bot

Bulk-only transport storage device, see usb-storage.txt for details here, too

usb-mtp,x-root=dir

Media transfer protocol device, using dir as root of the file tree that is presented to the guest.

usb-host,hostbus=bus,hostaddr=addr

Pass through the host device identified by bus and addr

usb-host,vendorid=vendor,productid=product

Pass through the host device identified by vendor and product ID

usb-wacom-tablet

Virtual Wacom PenPartner tablet. This device is similar to the tablet above but it can be used with the tslib library because in addition to touch coordinates it reports touch pressure.

usb-kbd

Standard USB keyboard. Will override the PS/2 keyboard (if present).

usb-serial,chardev=id

Serial converter. This emulates an FTDI FT232BM chip connected to host character device id.

usb-braille,chardev=id

Braille device. This will use BrlAPI to display the braille output on a real or fake device referenced by id.

usb-net[,netdev=id]

Network adapter that supports CDC ethernet and RNDIS protocols. id specifies a netdev defined with -netdev …,id=id. For instance, user-mode networking can be used with

qemu-system-i386 [...] -netdev user,id=net0 -device usb-net,netdev=net0

usb-ccid

Smartcard reader device

usb-audio

USB audio device

usb-bt-dongle

Bluetooth dongle for the transport layer of HCI. It is connected to HCI scatternet 0 by default (corresponds to -bt hci,vlan=0). Note that the syntax for the -device usb-bt-dongle option is not as useful yet as it was with the legacy -usbdevice option. So to configure an USB bluetooth device, you might need to use "-usbdevice bt[:hci-type]" instead. This configures a bluetooth dongle whose type is specified in the same format as with the -bt hci option, see allowed HCI types. If no type is given, the HCI logic corresponds to -bt hci,vlan=0. This USB device implements the USB Transport Layer of HCI. Example usage:

qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -usbdevice bt:hci,vlan=3 -bt device:keyboard,vlan=3

2.11.2 Using host USB devices on a Linux host

WARNING: this is an experimental feature. QEMU will slow down when using it. USB devices requiring real time streaming (i.e. USB Video Cameras) are not supported yet.

If you use an early Linux 2.4 kernel, verify that no Linux driver is actually using the USB device. A simple way to do that is simply to disable the corresponding kernel module by renaming it from mydriver.o to mydriver.o.disabled.

Verify that /proc/bus/usb is working (most Linux distributions should enable it by default). You should see something like that:

ls /proc/bus/usb

001 devices drivers

Since only root can access to the USB devices directly, you can either launch QEMU as root or change the permissions of the USB devices you want to use. For testing, the following suffices:

chown -R myuid /proc/bus/usb

Launch QEMU and do in the monitor:

info usbhost

Device 1.2, speed 480 Mb/s

Class 00: USB device 1234:5678, USB DISK

You should see the list of the devices you can use (Never try to use hubs, it won’t work).

Add the device in QEMU by using:

device_add usb-host,vendorid=0x1234,productid=0x5678

Normally the guest OS should report that a new USB device is plugged. You can use the option -device usb-host,... to do the same.

Now you can try to use the host USB device in QEMU.

When relaunching QEMU, you may have to unplug and plug again the USB device to make it work again (this is a bug).

2.12 VNC security

The VNC server capability provides access to the graphical console of the guest VM across the network. This has a number of security considerations depending on the deployment scenarios.

2.12.1 Without passwords

The simplest VNC server setup does not include any form of authentication. For this setup it is recommended to restrict it to listen on a UNIX domain socket only. For example

qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -vnc unix:/home/joebloggs/.qemu-myvm-vnc

This ensures that only users on local box with read/write access to that path can access the VNC server. To securely access the VNC server from a remote machine, a combination of netcat+ssh can be used to provide a secure tunnel.

2.12.2 With passwords

The VNC protocol has limited support for password based authentication. Since the protocol limits passwords to 8 characters it should not be considered to provide high security. The password can be fairly easily brute-forced by a client making repeat connections. For this reason, a VNC server using password authentication should be restricted to only listen on the loopback interface or UNIX domain sockets. Password authentication is not supported when operating in FIPS 140-2 compliance mode as it requires the use of the DES cipher. Password authentication is requested with the password option, and then once QEMU is running the password is set with the monitor. Until the monitor is used to set the password all clients will be rejected.

qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -vnc :1,password -monitor stdio

(qemu) change vnc password

Password: ********

(qemu)

2.12.3 With x509 certificates

The QEMU VNC server also implements the VeNCrypt extension allowing use of TLS for encryption of the session, and x509 certificates for authentication. The use of x509 certificates is strongly recommended, because TLS on its own is susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. Basic x509 certificate support provides a secure session, but no authentication. This allows any client to connect, and provides an encrypted session.

qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -vnc :1,tls,x509=/etc/pki/qemu -monitor stdio

In the above example /etc/pki/qemu should contain at least three files, ca-cert.pem, server-cert.pem and server-key.pem. Unprivileged users will want to use a private directory, for example $HOME/.pki/qemu. NB the server-key.pem file should be protected with file mode 0600 to only be readable by the user owning it.

2.12.4 With x509 certificates and client verification

Certificates can also provide a means to authenticate the client connecting. The server will request that the client provide a certificate, which it will then validate against the CA certificate. This is a good choice if deploying in an environment with a private internal certificate authority.

qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -vnc :1,tls,x509verify=/etc/pki/qemu -monitor stdio

2.12.5 With x509 certificates, client verification and passwords

Finally, the previous method can be combined with VNC password authentication to provide two layers of authentication for clients.

qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -vnc :1,password,tls,x509verify=/etc/pki/qemu -monitor stdio

(qemu) change vnc password

Password: ********

(qemu)

2.12.6 With SASL authentication

The SASL authentication method is a VNC extension, that provides an easily extendable, pluggable authentication method. This allows for integration with a wide range of authentication mechanisms, such as PAM, GSSAPI/Kerberos, LDAP, SQL databases, one-time keys and more. The strength of the authentication depends on the exact mechanism configured. If the chosen mechanism also provides a SSF layer, then it will encrypt the datastream as well.

Refer to the later docs on how to choose the exact SASL mechanism used for authentication, but assuming use of one supporting SSF, then QEMU can be launched with:

qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -vnc :1,sasl -monitor stdio

2.12.7 With x509 certificates and SASL authentication

If the desired SASL authentication mechanism does not supported SSF layers, then it is strongly advised to run it in combination with TLS and x509 certificates. This provides securely encrypted data stream, avoiding risk of compromising of the security credentials. This can be enabled, by combining the ’sasl’ option with the aforementioned TLS + x509 options:

qemu-system-i386 [...OPTIONS...] -vnc :1,tls,x509,sasl -monitor stdio

2.12.8 Configuring SASL mechanisms

The following documentation assumes use of the Cyrus SASL implementation on a Linux host, but the principles should apply to any other SASL implementation or host. When SASL is enabled, the mechanism configuration will be loaded from system default SASL service config /etc/sasl2/qemu.conf. If running QEMU as an unprivileged user, an environment variable SASL_CONF_PATH can be used to make it search alternate locations for the service config file.

If the TLS option is enabled for VNC, then it will provide session encryption, otherwise the SASL mechanism will have to provide encryption. In the latter case the list of possible plugins that can be used is drastically reduced. In fact only the GSSAPI SASL mechanism provides an acceptable level of security by modern standards. Previous versions of QEMU referred to the DIGEST-MD5 mechanism, however, it has multiple serious flaws described in detail in RFC 6331 and thus should never be used any more. The SCRAM-SHA-1 mechanism provides a simple username/password auth facility similar to DIGEST-MD5, but does not support session encryption, so can only be used in combination with TLS.

When not using TLS the recommended configuration is

mech_list: gssapi

keytab: /etc/qemu/krb5.tab

This says to use the ’GSSAPI’ mechanism with the Kerberos v5 protocol, with the server principal stored in /etc/qemu/krb5.tab. For this to work the administrator of your KDC must generate a Kerberos principal for the server, with a name of ’qemu/somehost.example.com@EXAMPLE.COM’ replacing ’somehost.example.com’ with the fully qualified host name of the machine running QEMU, and ’EXAMPLE.COM’ with the Kerberos Realm.

When using TLS, if username+password authentication is desired, then a reasonable configuration is

mech_list: scram-sha-1

sasldb_path: /etc/qemu/passwd.db

The saslpasswd2 program can be used to populate the passwd.db file with accounts.

Other SASL configurations will be left as an exercise for the reader. Note that all mechanisms, except GSSAPI, should be combined with use of TLS to ensure a secure data channel.

2.13 TLS setup for network services

Almost all network services in QEMU have the ability to use TLS for session data encryption, along with x509 certificates for simple client authentication. What follows is a description of how to generate certificates suitable for usage with QEMU, and applies to the VNC server, character devices with the TCP backend, NBD server and client, and migration server and client.

At a high level, QEMU requires certificates and private keys to be provided in PEM format. Aside from the core fields, the certificates should include various extension data sets, including v3 basic constraints data, key purpose, key usage and subject alt name.

The GnuTLS package includes a command called certtool which can be used to easily generate certificates and keys in the required format with expected data present. Alternatively a certificate management service may be used.

At a minimum it is necessary to setup a certificate authority, and issue certificates to each server. If using x509 certificates for authentication, then each client will also need to be issued a certificate.

Assuming that the QEMU network services will only ever be exposed to clients on a private intranet, there is no need to use a commercial certificate authority to create certificates. A self-signed CA is sufficient, and in fact likely to be more secure since it removes the ability of malicious 3rd parties to trick the CA into mis-issuing certs for impersonating your services. The only likely exception where a commercial CA might be desirable is if enabling the VNC websockets server and exposing it directly to remote browser clients. In such a case it might be useful to use a commercial CA to avoid needing to install custom CA certs in the web browsers.

The recommendation is for the server to keep its certificates in either /etc/pki/qemu or for unprivileged users in $HOME/.pki/qemu.

2.13.1 Setup the Certificate Authority

This step only needs to be performed once per organization / organizational unit. First the CA needs a private key. This key must be kept VERY secret and secure. If this key is compromised the entire trust chain of the certificates issued with it is lost.

# certtool --generate-privkey > ca-key.pem

To generate a self-signed certificate requires one core piece of information, the name of the organization. A template file ca.info should be populated with the desired data to avoid having to deal with interactive prompts from certtool:

# cat > ca.info <<EOF

cn = Name of your organization

cert_signing_key

EOF

# certtool --generate-self-signed \

--load-privkey ca-key.pem

--template ca.info \

--outfile ca-cert.pem

The ca keyword in the template sets the v3 basic constraints extension to indicate this certificate is for a CA, while cert_signing_key sets the key usage extension to indicate this will be used for signing other keys. The generated ca-cert.pem file should be copied to all servers and clients wishing to utilize TLS support in the VNC server. The ca-key.pem must not be disclosed/copied anywhere except the host responsible for issuing certificates.

2.13.2 Issuing server certificates

Each server (or host) needs to be issued with a key and certificate. When connecting the certificate is sent to the client which validates it against the CA certificate. The core pieces of information for a server certificate are the hostnames and/or IP addresses that will be used by clients when connecting. The hostname / IP address that the client specifies when connecting will be validated against the hostname(s) and IP address(es) recorded in the server certificate, and if no match is found the client will close the connection.

Thus it is recommended that the server certificate include both the fully qualified and unqualified hostnames. If the server will have permanently assigned IP address(es), and clients are likely to use them when connecting, they may also be included in the certificate. Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are supported. Historically certificates only included 1 hostname in the CN field, however, usage of this field for validation is now deprecated. Instead modern TLS clients will validate against the Subject Alt Name extension data, which allows for multiple entries. In the future usage of the CN field may be discontinued entirely, so providing SAN extension data is strongly recommended.

On the host holding the CA, create template files containing the information for each server, and use it to issue server certificates.

# cat > server-hostNNN.info <<EOF

organization = Name of your organization

cn = hostNNN.foo.example.com

dns_name = hostNNN

dns_name = hostNNN.foo.example.com

ip_address = 10.0.1.87

ip_address = 192.8.0.92

ip_address = 2620:0:cafe::87

ip_address = 2001:24::92

tls_www_server

encryption_key

signing_key

EOF

# certtool --generate-privkey > server-hostNNN-key.pem

# certtool --generate-certificate \

--load-ca-certificate ca-cert.pem \

--load-ca-privkey ca-key.pem \

--load-privkey server-hostNNN-key.pem \

--template server-hostNNN.info \

--outfile server-hostNNN-cert.pem

The dns_name and ip_address fields in the template are setting the subject alt name extension data. The tls_www_server keyword is the key purpose extension to indicate this certificate is intended for usage in a web server. Although QEMU network services are not in fact HTTP servers (except for VNC websockets), setting this key purpose is still recommended. The encryption_key and signing_key keyword is the key usage extension to indicate this certificate is intended for usage in the data session.

The server-hostNNN-key.pem and server-hostNNN-cert.pem files should now be securely copied to the server for which they were generated, and renamed to server-key.pem and server-cert.pem when added to the /etc/pki/qemu directory on the target host. The server-key.pem file is security sensitive and should be kept protected with file mode 0600 to prevent disclosure.

2.13.3 Issuing client certificates

The QEMU x509 TLS credential setup defaults to enabling client verification using certificates, providing a simple authentication mechanism. If this default is used, each client also needs to be issued a certificate. The client certificate contains enough metadata to uniquely identify the client with the scope of the certificate authority. The client certificate would typically include fields for organization, state, city, building, etc.

Once again on the host holding the CA, create template files containing the information for each client, and use it to issue client certificates.

# cat > client-hostNNN.info <<EOF

country = GB

state = London

locality = City Of London

organization = Name of your organization

cn = hostNNN.foo.example.com

tls_www_client

encryption_key

signing_key

EOF

# certtool --generate-privkey > client-hostNNN-key.pem

# certtool --generate-certificate \

--load-ca-certificate ca-cert.pem \

--load-ca-privkey ca-key.pem \

--load-privkey client-hostNNN-key.pem \

--template client-hostNNN.info \

--outfile client-hostNNN-cert.pem

The subject alt name extension data is not required for clients, so the the dns_name and ip_address fields are not included. The tls_www_client keyword is the key purpose extension to indicate this certificate is intended for usage in a web client. Although QEMU network clients are not in fact HTTP clients, setting this key purpose is still recommended. The encryption_key and signing_key keyword is the key usage extension to indicate this certificate is intended for usage in the data session.

The client-hostNNN-key.pem and client-hostNNN-cert.pem files should now be securely copied to the client for which they were generated, and renamed to client-key.pem and client-cert.pem when added to the /etc/pki/qemu directory on the target host. The client-key.pem file is security sensitive and should be kept protected with file mode 0600 to prevent disclosure.

If a single host is going to be using TLS in both a client and server role, it is possible to create a single certificate to cover both roles. This would be quite common for the migration and NBD services, where a QEMU process will be started by accepting a TLS protected incoming migration, and later itself be migrated out to another host. To generate a single certificate, simply include the template data from both the client and server instructions in one.

# cat > both-hostNNN.info <<EOF

country = GB

state = London

locality = City Of London

organization = Name of your organization

cn = hostNNN.foo.example.com

dns_name = hostNNN

dns_name = hostNNN.foo.example.com

ip_address = 10.0.1.87

ip_address = 192.8.0.92

ip_address = 2620:0:cafe::87

ip_address = 2001:24::92

tls_www_server

tls_www_client

encryption_key

signing_key

EOF

# certtool --generate-privkey > both-hostNNN-key.pem

# certtool --generate-certificate \

--load-ca-certificate ca-cert.pem \

--load-ca-privkey ca-key.pem \

--load-privkey both-hostNNN-key.pem \

--template both-hostNNN.info \

--outfile both-hostNNN-cert.pem

When copying the PEM files to the target host, save them twice, once as server-cert.pem and server-key.pem, and again as client-cert.pem and client-key.pem.

2.13.4 TLS x509 credential configuration

QEMU has a standard mechanism for loading x509 credentials that will be used for network services and clients. It requires specifying the tls-creds-x509 class name to the --object command line argument for the system emulators. Each set of credentials loaded should be given a unique string identifier via the id parameter. A single set of TLS credentials can be used for multiple network backends, so VNC, migration, NBD, character devices can all share the same credentials. Note, however, that credentials for use in a client endpoint must be loaded separately from those used in a server endpoint.

When specifying the object, the dir parameters specifies which directory contains the credential files. This directory is expected to contain files with the names mentioned previously, ca-cert.pem, server-key.pem, server-cert.pem, client-key.pem and client-cert.pem as appropriate. It is also possible to include a set of pre-generated Diffie-Hellman (DH) parameters in a file dh-params.pem, which can be created using the certtool --generate-dh-params command. If omitted, QEMU will dynamically generate DH parameters when loading the credentials.

The endpoint parameter indicates whether the credentials will be used for a network client or server, and determines which PEM files are loaded.

The verify parameter determines whether x509 certificate validation should be performed. This defaults to enabled, meaning clients will always validate the server hostname against the certificate subject alt name fields and/or CN field. It also means that servers will request that clients provide a certificate and validate them. Verification should never be turned off for client endpoints, however, it may be turned off for server endpoints if an alternative mechanism is used to authenticate clients. For example, the VNC server can use SASL to authenticate clients instead.

To load server credentials with client certificate validation enabled

$QEMU -object tls-creds-x509,id=tls0,dir=/etc/pki/qemu,endpoint=server

while to load client credentials use

$QEMU -object tls-creds-x509,id=tls0,dir=/etc/pki/qemu,endpoint=client

Network services which support TLS will all have a tls-creds parameter which expects the ID of the TLS credentials object. For example with VNC:

$QEMU -vnc 0.0.0.0:0,tls-creds=tls0

2.13.5 TLS Pre-Shared Keys (PSK)

Instead of using certificates, you may also use TLS Pre-Shared Keys (TLS-PSK). This can be simpler to set up than certificates but is less scalable.

Use the GnuTLS psktool program to generate a keys.psk file containing one or more usernames and random keys:

mkdir -m 0700 /tmp/keys

psktool -u rich -p /tmp/keys/keys.psk

TLS-enabled servers such as qemu-nbd can use this directory like so:

qemu-nbd \

-t -x / \

--object tls-creds-psk,id=tls0,endpoint=server,dir=/tmp/keys \

--tls-creds tls0 \

image.qcow2

When connecting from a qemu-based client you must specify the directory containing keys.psk and an optional username (defaults to “qemu”):

qemu-img info \

--object tls-creds-psk,id=tls0,dir=/tmp/keys,username=rich,endpoint=client \

--image-opts \

file.driver=nbd,file.host=localhost,file.port=10809,file.tls-creds=tls0,file.export=/

2.14 GDB usage

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-system-i386 -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:

Use info reg to display all the CPU registers.

Use x/10i $eip to display the code at the PC position.

Use set architecture i8086 to dump 16 bit code. Then use x/10i $cs*16+$eip to dump the code at the PC position.

Advanced debugging options:

The default single stepping behavior is step with the IRQs and timer service routines off. It is set this way because when gdb executes a single step it expects to advance beyond the current instruction. With the IRQs and timer service routines on, a single step might jump into the one of the interrupt or exception vectors instead of executing the current instruction. This means you may hit the same breakpoint a number of times before executing the instruction gdb wants to have executed. Because there are rare circumstances where you want to single step into an interrupt vector the behavior can be controlled from GDB. There are three commands you can query and set the single step behavior:

maintenance packet qqemu.sstepbits

This will display the MASK bits used to control the single stepping IE:

(gdb) maintenance packet qqemu.sstepbits

sending: "qqemu.sstepbits"

received: "ENABLE=1,NOIRQ=2,NOTIMER=4"

maintenance packet qqemu.sstep

This will display the current value of the mask used when single stepping IE:

(gdb) maintenance packet qqemu.sstep

sending: "qqemu.sstep"

received: "0x7"

maintenance packet Qqemu.sstep=HEX_VALUE

This will change the single step mask, so if wanted to enable IRQs on the single step, but not timers, you would use:

(gdb) maintenance packet Qqemu.sstep=0x5

sending: "qemu.sstep=0x5"

received: "OK"

2.15 Target OS specific information

2.15.1 Linux

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 incorporate this patch by default. Newer kernels don’t have it.

2.15.2 Windows

If you have a slow host, using Windows 95 is better as it gives the best speed. Windows 2000 is also a good choice.

2.15.2.1 SVGA graphic modes support

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.

If you are using Windows XP as guest OS and if you want to use high resolution modes which the Cirrus Logic BIOS does not support (i.e. >= 1280x1024x16), then you should use the VESA VBE virtual graphic card (option -std-vga).

2.15.2.2 CPU usage reduction

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 https://web.archive.org/web/20060212132151/http://www.user.cityline.ru/~maxamn/amnhltm.zip to solve this problem. Note that no such tool is needed for NT, 2000 or XP.

2.15.2.3 Windows 2000 disk full problem

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).

2.15.2.4 Windows 2000 shutdown

Windows 2000 cannot automatically shutdown in QEMU although Windows 98 can. It comes from the fact that Windows 2000 does not automatically use the APM driver provided by the BIOS.

In order to correct that, do the following (thanks to Struan Bartlett): go to the Control Panel => Add/Remove Hardware & Next => Add/Troubleshoot a device => Add a new device & Next => No, select the hardware from a list & Next => NT Apm/Legacy Support & Next => Next (again) a few times. Now the driver is installed and Windows 2000 now correctly instructs QEMU to shutdown at the appropriate moment.

2.15.2.5 Share a directory between Unix and Windows

See sec_invocation about the help of the option '-netdev user,smb=...'.

2.15.2.6 Windows XP security problem

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 workaround is to install a service pack for XP after a boot in safe mode. Then reboot, and the problem should go away. Since there is no network while in safe mode, its recommended to download the full installation of SP1 or SP2 and transfer that via an ISO or using the vvfat block device ("-hdb fat:directory_which_holds_the_SP").

2.15.3 MS-DOS and FreeDOS

2.15.3.1 CPU usage reduction

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 https://web.archive.org/web/20051222085335/http://www.vmware.com/software/dosidle210.zip to solve this problem.

3 QEMU System emulator for non PC targets

QEMU is a generic emulator and it emulates many non PC machines. Most of the options are similar to the PC emulator. The differences are mentioned in the following sections.

3.1 PowerPC System emulator

Use the executable qemu-system-ppc to simulate a complete PREP or PowerMac PowerPC system.

QEMU emulates the following PowerMac peripherals:

- UniNorth or Grackle PCI Bridge

- PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions

- 2 PMAC IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support

- NE2000 PCI adapters

- Non Volatile RAM

- VIA-CUDA with ADB keyboard and mouse.

QEMU emulates the following PREP peripherals:

- PCI Bridge

- PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions

- 2 IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support

- Floppy disk

- NE2000 network adapters

- Serial port

- PREP Non Volatile RAM

- PC compatible keyboard and mouse.

QEMU uses the Open Hack’Ware Open Firmware Compatible BIOS.

Since version 0.9.1, QEMU uses OpenBIOS https://www.openbios.org/ for the g3beige and mac99 PowerMac machines. OpenBIOS is a free (GPL v2) portable firmware implementation. The goal is to implement a 100% IEEE 1275-1994 (referred to as Open Firmware) compliant firmware.

The following options are specific to the PowerPC emulation:

-g WxH[xDEPTH]

Set the initial VGA graphic mode. The default is 800x600x32.

-prom-env string

Set OpenBIOS variables in NVRAM, for example:

qemu-system-ppc -prom-env 'auto-boot?=false' \

-prom-env 'boot-device=hd:2,\yaboot' \

-prom-env 'boot-args=conf=hd:2,\yaboot.conf'

These variables are not used by Open Hack’Ware.

3.2 Sparc32 System emulator

Use the executable qemu-system-sparc to simulate the following Sun4m architecture machines:

- SPARCstation 4

- SPARCstation 5

- SPARCstation 10

- SPARCstation 20

- SPARCserver 600MP

- SPARCstation LX

- SPARCstation Voyager

- SPARCclassic

- SPARCbook

The emulation is somewhat complete. SMP up to 16 CPUs is supported, but Linux limits the number of usable CPUs to 4.

QEMU emulates the following sun4m peripherals:

- IOMMU

- TCX or cgthree Frame buffer

- Lance (Am7990) Ethernet

- Non Volatile RAM M48T02/M48T08

- Slave I/O: timers, interrupt controllers, Zilog serial ports, keyboard and power/reset logic

- ESP SCSI controller with hard disk and CD-ROM support

- Floppy drive (not on SS-600MP)

- CS4231 sound device (only on SS-5, not working yet)

The number of peripherals is fixed in the architecture. Maximum memory size depends on the machine type, for SS-5 it is 256MB and for others 2047MB.

Since version 0.8.2, QEMU uses OpenBIOS https://www.openbios.org/. OpenBIOS is a free (GPL v2) portable firmware implementation. The goal is to implement a 100% IEEE 1275-1994 (referred to as Open Firmware) compliant firmware.

A sample Linux 2.6 series kernel and ram disk image are available on the QEMU web site. There are still issues with NetBSD and OpenBSD, but most kernel versions work. Please note that currently older Solaris kernels don’t work probably due to interface issues between OpenBIOS and Solaris.

The following options are specific to the Sparc32 emulation:

-g WxHx[xDEPTH]

Set the initial graphics mode. For TCX, the default is 1024x768x8 with the option of 1024x768x24. For cgthree, the default is 1024x768x8 with the option of 1152x900x8 for people who wish to use OBP.

-prom-env string

Set OpenBIOS variables in NVRAM, for example:

qemu-system-sparc -prom-env 'auto-boot?=false' \

-prom-env 'boot-device=sd(0,2,0):d' -prom-env 'boot-args=linux single'

-M [SS-4|SS-5|SS-10|SS-20|SS-600MP|LX|Voyager|SPARCClassic] [|SPARCbook]

Set the emulated machine type. Default is SS-5.

3.3 Sparc64 System emulator

Use the executable qemu-system-sparc64 to simulate a Sun4u (UltraSPARC PC-like machine), Sun4v (T1 PC-like machine), or generic Niagara (T1) machine. The Sun4u emulator is mostly complete, being able to run Linux, NetBSD and OpenBSD in headless (-nographic) mode. The Sun4v emulator is still a work in progress.

The Niagara T1 emulator makes use of firmware and OS binaries supplied in the S10image/ directory of the OpenSPARC T1 project http://download.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/opensparc/OpenSPARCT1_Arch.1.5.tar.bz2 and is able to boot the disk.s10hw2 Solaris image.

qemu-system-sparc64 -M niagara -L /path-to/S10image/ \

-nographic -m 256 \

-drive if=pflash,readonly=on,file=/S10image/disk.s10hw2

QEMU emulates the following peripherals:

- UltraSparc IIi APB PCI Bridge

- PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions

- PS/2 mouse and keyboard

- Non Volatile RAM M48T59

- PC-compatible serial ports

- 2 PCI IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support

- Floppy disk

The following options are specific to the Sparc64 emulation:

-prom-env string

Set OpenBIOS variables in NVRAM, for example:

qemu-system-sparc64 -prom-env 'auto-boot?=false'

-M [sun4u|sun4v|niagara]

Set the emulated machine type. The default is sun4u.

3.4 MIPS System emulator

Four executables cover simulation of 32 and 64-bit MIPS systems in both endian options, qemu-system-mips, qemu-system-mipsel qemu-system-mips64 and qemu-system-mips64el. Five different machine types are emulated:

- A generic ISA PC-like machine "mips"

- The MIPS Malta prototype board "malta"

- An ACER Pica "pica61". This machine needs the 64-bit emulator.

- MIPS emulator pseudo board "mipssim"

- A MIPS Magnum R4000 machine "magnum". This machine needs the 64-bit emulator.

The generic emulation is supported by Debian ’Etch’ and is able to install Debian into a virtual disk image. The following devices are emulated:

- A range of MIPS CPUs, default is the 24Kf

- PC style serial port

- PC style IDE disk

- NE2000 network card

The Malta emulation supports the following devices:

- Core board with MIPS 24Kf CPU and Galileo system controller

- PIIX4 PCI/USB/SMbus controller

- The Multi-I/O chip’s serial device

- PCI network cards (PCnet32 and others)

- Malta FPGA serial device

- Cirrus (default) or any other PCI VGA graphics card

The ACER Pica emulation supports:

- MIPS R4000 CPU

- PC-style IRQ and DMA controllers

- PC Keyboard

- IDE controller

The mipssim pseudo board emulation provides an environment similar to what the proprietary MIPS emulator uses for running Linux. It supports:

- A range of MIPS CPUs, default is the 24Kf

- PC style serial port

- MIPSnet network emulation

The MIPS Magnum R4000 emulation supports:

- MIPS R4000 CPU

- PC-style IRQ controller

- PC Keyboard

- SCSI controller

- G364 framebuffer

3.5 ARM System emulator

Use the executable qemu-system-arm to simulate a ARM machine. The ARM Integrator/CP board is emulated with the following devices:

- ARM926E, ARM1026E, ARM946E, ARM1136 or Cortex-A8 CPU

- Two PL011 UARTs

- SMC 91c111 Ethernet adapter

- PL110 LCD controller

- PL050 KMI with PS/2 keyboard and mouse.

- PL181 MultiMedia Card Interface with SD card.

The ARM Versatile baseboard is emulated with the following devices:

- ARM926E, ARM1136 or Cortex-A8 CPU

- PL190 Vectored Interrupt Controller

- Four PL011 UARTs

- SMC 91c111 Ethernet adapter

- PL110 LCD controller

- PL050 KMI with PS/2 keyboard and mouse.

- PCI host bridge. Note the emulated PCI bridge only provides access to PCI memory space. It does not provide access to PCI IO space. This means some devices (eg. ne2k_pci NIC) are not usable, and others (eg. rtl8139 NIC) are only usable when the guest drivers use the memory mapped control registers.

- PCI OHCI USB controller.

- LSI53C895A PCI SCSI Host Bus Adapter with hard disk and CD-ROM devices.

- PL181 MultiMedia Card Interface with SD card.

Several variants of the ARM RealView baseboard are emulated, including the EB, PB-A8 and PBX-A9. Due to interactions with the bootloader, only certain Linux kernel configurations work out of the box on these boards.

Kernels for the PB-A8 board should have CONFIG_REALVIEW_HIGH_PHYS_OFFSET enabled in the kernel, and expect 512M RAM. Kernels for The PBX-A9 board should have CONFIG_SPARSEMEM enabled, CONFIG_REALVIEW_HIGH_PHYS_OFFSET disabled and expect 1024M RAM.

The following devices are emulated:

- ARM926E, ARM1136, ARM11MPCore, Cortex-A8 or Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU

- ARM AMBA Generic/Distributed Interrupt Controller

- Four PL011 UARTs

- SMC 91c111 or SMSC LAN9118 Ethernet adapter

- PL110 LCD controller

- PL050 KMI with PS/2 keyboard and mouse

- PCI host bridge

- PCI OHCI USB controller

- LSI53C895A PCI SCSI Host Bus Adapter with hard disk and CD-ROM devices

- PL181 MultiMedia Card Interface with SD card.

The XScale-based clamshell PDA models ("Spitz", "Akita", "Borzoi" and "Terrier") emulation includes the following peripherals:

- Intel PXA270 System-on-chip (ARM V5TE core)

- NAND Flash memory

- IBM/Hitachi DSCM microdrive in a PXA PCMCIA slot - not in "Akita"

- On-chip OHCI USB controller

- On-chip LCD controller

- On-chip Real Time Clock

- TI ADS7846 touchscreen controller on SSP bus

- Maxim MAX1111 analog-digital converter on I^2C bus

- GPIO-connected keyboard controller and LEDs

- Secure Digital card connected to PXA MMC/SD host

- Three on-chip UARTs

- WM8750 audio CODEC on I^2C and I^2S busses

The Palm Tungsten|E PDA (codename "Cheetah") emulation includes the following elements:

- Texas Instruments OMAP310 System-on-chip (ARM 925T core)

- ROM and RAM memories (ROM firmware image can be loaded with -option-rom)

- On-chip LCD controller

- On-chip Real Time Clock

- TI TSC2102i touchscreen controller / analog-digital converter / Audio CODEC, connected through MicroWire and I^2S busses

- GPIO-connected matrix keypad

- Secure Digital card connected to OMAP MMC/SD host

- Three on-chip UARTs

Nokia N800 and N810 internet tablets (known also as RX-34 and RX-44 / 48) emulation supports the following elements:

- Texas Instruments OMAP2420 System-on-chip (ARM 1136 core)

- RAM and non-volatile OneNAND Flash memories

- Display connected to EPSON remote framebuffer chip and OMAP on-chip display controller and a LS041y3 MIPI DBI-C controller

- TI TSC2301 (in N800) and TI TSC2005 (in N810) touchscreen controllers driven through SPI bus

- National Semiconductor LM8323-controlled qwerty keyboard driven through I^2C bus

- Secure Digital card connected to OMAP MMC/SD host

- Three OMAP on-chip UARTs and on-chip STI debugging console

- A Bluetooth(R) transceiver and HCI connected to an UART

- Mentor Graphics "Inventra" dual-role USB controller embedded in a TI TUSB6010 chip - only USB host mode is supported

- TI TMP105 temperature sensor driven through I^2C bus

- TI TWL92230C power management companion with an RTC on I^2C bus

- Nokia RETU and TAHVO multi-purpose chips with an RTC, connected through CBUS

The Luminary Micro Stellaris LM3S811EVB emulation includes the following devices:

- Cortex-M3 CPU core.

- 64k Flash and 8k SRAM.

- Timers, UARTs, ADC and I^2C interface.

- OSRAM Pictiva 96x16 OLED with SSD0303 controller on I^2C bus.

The Luminary Micro Stellaris LM3S6965EVB emulation includes the following devices:

- Cortex-M3 CPU core.

- 256k Flash and 64k SRAM.

- Timers, UARTs, ADC, I^2C and SSI interfaces.

- OSRAM Pictiva 128x64 OLED with SSD0323 controller connected via SSI.

The Freecom MusicPal internet radio emulation includes the following elements:

- Marvell MV88W8618 ARM core.

- 32 MB RAM, 256 KB SRAM, 8 MB flash.

- Up to 2 16550 UARTs

- MV88W8xx8 Ethernet controller

- MV88W8618 audio controller, WM8750 CODEC and mixer

- 128×64 display with brightness control

- 2 buttons, 2 navigation wheels with button function

The Siemens SX1 models v1 and v2 (default) basic emulation. The emulation includes the following elements:

- Texas Instruments OMAP310 System-on-chip (ARM 925T core)

- ROM and RAM memories (ROM firmware image can be loaded with -pflash) V1 1 Flash of 16MB and 1 Flash of 8MB V2 1 Flash of 32MB

- On-chip LCD controller

- On-chip Real Time Clock

- Secure Digital card connected to OMAP MMC/SD host

- Three on-chip UARTs

A Linux 2.6 test image is available on the QEMU web site. More information is available in the QEMU mailing-list archive.

The following options are specific to the ARM emulation:

-semihosting

Enable semihosting syscall emulation.

On ARM this implements the "Angel" interface.

Note that this allows guest direct access to the host filesystem, so should only be used with trusted guest OS.

3.6 ColdFire System emulator

Use the executable qemu-system-m68k to simulate a ColdFire machine. The emulator is able to boot a uClinux kernel.

The M5208EVB emulation includes the following devices:

- MCF5208 ColdFire V2 Microprocessor (ISA A+ with EMAC).

- Three Two on-chip UARTs.

- Fast Ethernet Controller (FEC)

The AN5206 emulation includes the following devices:

- MCF5206 ColdFire V2 Microprocessor.

- Two on-chip UARTs.

The following options are specific to the ColdFire emulation:

-semihosting

Enable semihosting syscall emulation.

On M68K this implements the "ColdFire GDB" interface used by libgloss.

Note that this allows guest direct access to the host filesystem, so should only be used with trusted guest OS.

3.7 Cris System emulator

TODO

3.8 Microblaze System emulator

TODO

3.9 SH4 System emulator

TODO

3.10 Xtensa System emulator

Two executables cover simulation of both Xtensa endian options, qemu-system-xtensa and qemu-system-xtensaeb. Two different machine types are emulated:

- Xtensa emulator pseudo board "sim"

- Avnet LX60/LX110/LX200 board

The sim pseudo board emulation provides an environment similar to one provided by the proprietary Tensilica ISS. It supports:

- A range of Xtensa CPUs, default is the DC232B

- Console and filesystem access via semihosting calls

The Avnet LX60/LX110/LX200 emulation supports:

- A range of Xtensa CPUs, default is the DC232B

- 16550 UART

- OpenCores 10/100 Mbps Ethernet MAC

The following options are specific to the Xtensa emulation:

-semihosting

Enable semihosting syscall emulation.

Xtensa semihosting provides basic file IO calls, such as open/read/write/seek/select. Tensilica baremetal libc for ISS and linux platform "sim" use this interface.

Note that this allows guest direct access to the host filesystem, so should only be used with trusted guest OS.

4 QEMU Guest Agent invocation

qemu-ga [OPTIONS]

The QEMU Guest Agent is a daemon intended to be run within virtual machines. It allows the hypervisor host to perform various operations in the guest, such as:

get information from the guest

set the guest’s system time

read/write a file

sync and freeze the filesystems

suspend the guest

reconfigure guest local processors

set user’s password

...

qemu-ga will read a system configuration file on startup (located at /etc/qemu/qemu-ga.conf by default), then parse remaining configuration options on the command line. For the same key, the last option wins, but the lists accumulate (see below for configuration file format).

-m, --method=method

Transport method: one of ‘unix-listen’, ‘virtio-serial’, or ‘isa-serial’ (‘virtio-serial’ is the default).

-p, --path=path

Device/socket path (the default for virtio-serial is ‘/dev/virtio-ports/org.qemu.guest_agent.0’, the default for isa-serial is ‘/dev/ttyS0’)

-l, --logfile=path

Set log file path (default is stderr).

-f, --pidfile=path

Specify pid file (default is ‘/var/run/qemu-ga.pid’).

-F, --fsfreeze-hook=path

Enable fsfreeze hook. Accepts an optional argument that specifies script to run on freeze/thaw. Script will be called with ’freeze’/’thaw’ arguments accordingly (default is ‘/etc/qemu/fsfreeze-hook’). If using -F with an argument, do not follow -F with a space (for example: ‘-F/var/run/fsfreezehook.sh’).

-t, --statedir=path

Specify the directory to store state information (absolute paths only, default is ‘/var/run’).

-v, --verbose

Log extra debugging information.

-V, --version

Print version information and exit.

-d, --daemon

Daemonize after startup (detach from terminal).

-b, --blacklist=list

Comma-separated list of RPCs to disable (no spaces, ‘?’ to list available RPCs).

-D, --dump-conf

Dump the configuration in a format compatible with qemu-ga.conf and exit.

-h, --help

Display this help and exit.

The syntax of the qemu-ga.conf configuration file follows the Desktop Entry Specification, here is a quick summary: it consists of groups of key-value pairs, interspersed with comments.

# qemu-ga configuration sample

[general]

daemonize = 0

pidfile = /var/run/qemu-ga.pid

verbose = 0

method = virtio-serial

path = /dev/virtio-ports/org.qemu.guest_agent.0

statedir = /var/run

The list of keys follows the command line options:

daemon= boolean

method= string

path= string

logfile= string

pidfile= string

fsfreeze-hook= string

statedir= string

verbose= boolean

blacklist= string list

5 QEMU User space emulator

5.1 Supported Operating Systems

The following OS are supported in user space emulation:

- Linux (referred as qemu-linux-user)

- BSD (referred as qemu-bsd-user)

5.2 Features

QEMU user space emulation has the following notable features:

System call translation:

QEMU includes a generic system call translator. This means that the parameters of the system calls can be converted to fix endianness and 32/64-bit mismatches between hosts and targets. IOCTLs can be converted too.

POSIX signal handling:

QEMU can redirect to the running program all signals coming from the host (such as SIGALRM), as well as synthesize signals from virtual CPU exceptions (for example SIGFPE when the program executes a division by zero).

QEMU relies on the host kernel to emulate most signal system calls, for example to emulate the signal mask. On Linux, QEMU supports both normal and real-time signals.

Threading:

On Linux, QEMU can emulate the clone syscall and create a real host thread (with a separate virtual CPU) for each emulated thread. Note that not all targets currently emulate atomic operations correctly. x86 and ARM use a global lock in order to preserve their semantics.

QEMU was conceived so that ultimately it can emulate itself. Although it is not very useful, it is an important test to show the power of the emulator.

5.3 Linux User space emulator

5.3.1 Quick Start

In order to launch a Linux process, QEMU needs the process executable itself and all the target (x86) dynamic libraries used by it.

On x86, you can just try to launch any process by using the native libraries:

qemu-i386 -L / /bin/ls

-L / tells that the x86 dynamic linker must be searched with a / prefix.

Since QEMU is also a linux process, you can launch QEMU with QEMU (NOTE: you can only do that if you compiled QEMU from the sources):

qemu-i386 -L / qemu-i386 -L / /bin/ls

On non x86 CPUs, you need first to download at least an x86 glibc (qemu-runtime-i386-XXX-.tar.gz on the QEMU web page). Ensure that LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not set:

unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Then you can launch the precompiled ls x86 executable:

qemu-i386 tests/i386/ls

You can look at scripts/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.

The x86 version of QEMU is also included. You can try weird things such as:

qemu-i386 /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/qemu-i386 \

/usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386

5.3.2 Wine launch

Ensure that you have a working QEMU with the x86 glibc distribution (see previous section). In order to verify it, you must be able to do:

qemu-i386 /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386

Download the binary x86 Wine install (qemu-XXX-i386-wine.tar.gz on the QEMU web page).

Configure Wine on your account. Look at the provided script /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/wine-conf.sh. Your previous ${HOME}/.wine directory is saved to ${HOME}/.wine.org.

Then you can try the example putty.exe:

qemu-i386 /usr/local/qemu-i386/wine/bin/wine \

/usr/local/qemu-i386/wine/c/Program\ Files/putty.exe

5.3.3 Command line options

qemu-i386 [-h] [-d] [-L path] [-s size] [-cpu model] [-g port] [-B offset] [-R size] program [arguments...]

-h

Print the help

-L path

Set the x86 elf interpreter prefix (default=/usr/local/qemu-i386)

-s size

Set the x86 stack size in bytes (default=524288)

-cpu model

Select CPU model (-cpu help for list and additional feature selection)

-E var=value

Set environment var to value.

-U var

Remove var from the environment.

-B offset

Offset guest address by the specified number of bytes. This is useful when the address region required by guest applications is reserved on the host. This option is currently only supported on some hosts.

-R size

Pre-allocate a guest virtual address space of the given size (in bytes). "G", "M", and "k" suffixes may be used when specifying the size.

Debug options:

-d item1,...

Activate logging of the specified items (use ’-d help’ for a list of log items)

-p pagesize

Act as if the host page size was ’pagesize’ bytes

-g port

Wait gdb connection to port

-singlestep

Run the emulation in single step mode.

Environment variables:

QEMU_STRACE

Print system calls and arguments similar to the ’strace’ program (NOTE: the actual ’strace’ program will not work because the user space emulator hasn’t implemented ptrace). At the moment this is incomplete. All system calls that don’t have a specific argument format are printed with information for six arguments. Many flag-style arguments don’t have decoders and will show up as numbers.

5.3.4 Other binaries

qemu-alpha TODO.

qemu-armeb TODO.

qemu-arm is also capable of running ARM "Angel" semihosted ELF binaries (as implemented by the arm-elf and arm-eabi Newlib/GDB configurations), and arm-uclinux bFLT format binaries.

qemu-m68k is capable of running semihosted binaries using the BDM (m5xxx-ram-hosted.ld) or m68k-sim (sim.ld) syscall interfaces, and coldfire uClinux bFLT format binaries.

The binary format is detected automatically.

qemu-cris TODO.

qemu-i386 TODO. qemu-x86_64 TODO.

qemu-microblaze TODO.

qemu-mips TODO. qemu-mipsel TODO.

qemu-nios2 TODO.

qemu-ppc64abi32 TODO. qemu-ppc64 TODO. qemu-ppc TODO.

qemu-sh4eb TODO. qemu-sh4 TODO.

qemu-sparc can execute Sparc32 binaries (Sparc32 CPU, 32 bit ABI).

qemu-sparc32plus can execute Sparc32 and SPARC32PLUS binaries (Sparc64 CPU, 32 bit ABI).

qemu-sparc64 can execute some Sparc64 (Sparc64 CPU, 64 bit ABI) and SPARC32PLUS binaries (Sparc64 CPU, 32 bit ABI).

5.4 BSD User space emulator

5.4.1 BSD Status

- target Sparc64 on Sparc64: Some trivial programs work.

5.4.2 Quick Start

In order to launch a BSD process, QEMU needs the process executable itself and all the target dynamic libraries used by it.

On Sparc64, you can just try to launch any process by using the native libraries:

qemu-sparc64 /bin/ls

5.4.3 Command line options

qemu-sparc64 [-h] [-d] [-L path] [-s size] [-bsd type] program [arguments...]

-h

Print the help

-L path

Set the library root path (default=/)

-s size

Set the stack size in bytes (default=524288)

-ignore-environment

Start with an empty environment. Without this option, the initial environment is a copy of the caller’s environment.

-E var=value

Set environment var to value.

-U var

Remove var from the environment.

-bsd type

Set the type of the emulated BSD Operating system. Valid values are FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD (default).

Debug options:

-d item1,...

Activate logging of the specified items (use ’-d help’ for a list of log items)

-p pagesize

Act as if the host page size was ’pagesize’ bytes

-singlestep

Run the emulation in single step mode.

Appendix A Implementation notes

A.1 CPU emulation

A.1.1 x86 and x86-64 emulation

QEMU x86 target features:

The virtual x86 CPU supports 16 bit and 32 bit addressing with segmentation. LDT/GDT and IDT are emulated. VM86 mode is also supported to run DOSEMU. There is some support for MMX/3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, and SSE4 as well as x86-64 SVM.

Support of host page sizes bigger than 4KB in user mode emulation.

QEMU can emulate itself on x86.

An extensive Linux x86 CPU test program is included tests/test-i386. It can be used to test other x86 virtual CPUs.

Current QEMU limitations:

Limited x86-64 support.

IPC syscalls are missing.

The x86 segment limits and access rights are not tested at every memory access (yet). Hopefully, very few OSes seem to rely on that for normal use.

A.1.2 ARM emulation

Full ARM 7 user emulation.

NWFPE FPU support included in user Linux emulation.

Can run most ARM Linux binaries.

A.1.3 MIPS emulation

The system emulation allows full MIPS32/MIPS64 Release 2 emulation, including privileged instructions, FPU and MMU, in both little and big endian modes.

The Linux userland emulation can run many 32 bit MIPS Linux binaries.

Current QEMU limitations:

Self-modifying code is not always handled correctly.

64 bit userland emulation is not implemented.

The system emulation is not complete enough to run real firmware.

The watchpoint debug facility is not implemented.

A.1.4 PowerPC emulation

Full PowerPC 32 bit emulation, including privileged instructions, FPU and MMU.

Can run most PowerPC Linux binaries.

A.1.5 Sparc32 and Sparc64 emulation

Full SPARC V8 emulation, including privileged instructions, FPU and MMU. SPARC V9 emulation includes most privileged and VIS instructions, FPU and I/D MMU. Alignment is fully enforced.

Can run most 32-bit SPARC Linux binaries, SPARC32PLUS Linux binaries and some 64-bit SPARC Linux binaries.

Current QEMU limitations:

IPC syscalls are missing.

Floating point exception support is buggy.

Atomic instructions are not correctly implemented.

There are still some problems with Sparc64 emulators.

A.1.6 Xtensa emulation

Core Xtensa ISA emulation, including most options: code density, loop, extended L32R, 16- and 32-bit multiplication, 32-bit division, MAC16, miscellaneous operations, boolean, FP coprocessor, coprocessor context, debug, multiprocessor synchronization, conditional store, exceptions, relocatable vectors, unaligned exception, interrupts (including high priority and timer), hardware alignment, region protection, region translation, MMU, windowed registers, thread pointer, processor ID.

Not implemented options: data/instruction cache (including cache prefetch and locking), XLMI, processor interface. Also options not covered by the core ISA (e.g. FLIX, wide branches) are not implemented.

Can run most Xtensa Linux binaries.

New core configuration that requires no additional instructions may be created from overlay with minimal amount of hand-written code.

A.2 Translator Internals

QEMU is a dynamic translator. When it first encounters a piece of code, it converts it to the host instruction set. Usually dynamic translators are very complicated and highly CPU dependent. QEMU uses some tricks which make it relatively easily portable and simple while achieving good performances.

QEMU’s dynamic translation backend is called TCG, for "Tiny Code Generator". For more information, please take a look at tcg/README.

Some notable features of QEMU’s dynamic translator are:

CPU state optimisations:

The target CPUs have many internal states which change the way it evaluates instructions. In order to achieve a good speed, the translation phase considers that some state information of the virtual CPU cannot change in it. The state is recorded in the Translation Block (TB). If the state changes (e.g. privilege level), a new TB will be generated and the previous TB won’t be used anymore until the state matches the state recorded in the previous TB. The same idea can be applied to other aspects of the CPU state. For example, on x86, if the SS, DS and ES segments have a zero base, then the translator does not even generate an addition for the segment base.

Direct block chaining:

After each translated basic block is executed, QEMU uses the simulated Program Counter (PC) and other cpu state information (such as the CS segment base value) to find the next basic block.

In order to accelerate the most common cases where the new simulated PC is known, QEMU can patch a basic block so that it jumps directly to the next one.

The most portable code uses an indirect jump. An indirect jump makes it easier to make the jump target modification atomic. On some host architectures (such as x86 or PowerPC), the JUMP opcode is directly patched so that the block chaining has no overhead.

Self-modifying code and translated code invalidation:

Self-modifying code is a special challenge in x86 emulation because no instruction cache invalidation is signaled by the application when code is modified.

User-mode emulation marks a host page as write-protected (if it is not already read-only) every time translated code is generated for a basic block. Then, if a write access is done to the page, Linux raises a SEGV signal. QEMU then invalidates all the translated code in the page and enables write accesses to the page. For system emulation, write protection is achieved through the software MMU.

Correct translated code invalidation is done efficiently by maintaining a linked list of every translated block contained in a given page. Other linked lists are also maintained to undo direct block chaining.

On RISC targets, correctly written software uses memory barriers and cache flushes, so some of the protection above would not be necessary. However, QEMU still requires that the generated code always matches the target instructions in memory in order to handle exceptions correctly.

Exception support:

longjmp() is used when an exception such as division by zero is encountered.

The host SIGSEGV and SIGBUS signal handlers are used to get invalid memory accesses. QEMU keeps a map from host program counter to target program counter, and looks up where the exception happened based on the host program counter at the exception point.

On some targets, some bits of the virtual CPU’s state are not flushed to the memory until the end of the translation block. This is done for internal emulation state that is rarely accessed directly by the program and/or changes very often throughout the execution of a translation block—this includes condition codes on x86, delay slots on SPARC, conditional execution on ARM, and so on. This state is stored for each target instruction, and looked up on exceptions.

MMU emulation:

For system emulation QEMU uses a software MMU. In that mode, the MMU virtual to physical address translation is done at every memory access.

QEMU uses an address translation cache (TLB) to speed up the translation. In order to avoid flushing the translated code each time the MMU mappings change, all caches in QEMU are physically indexed. This means that each basic block is indexed with its physical address.

In order to avoid invalidating the basic block chain when MMU mappings change, chaining is only performed when the destination of the jump shares a page with the basic block that is performing the jump.

The MMU can also distinguish RAM and ROM memory areas from MMIO memory areas. Access is faster for RAM and ROM because the translation cache also hosts the offset between guest address and host memory. Accessing MMIO memory areas instead calls out to C code for device emulation. Finally, the MMU helps tracking dirty pages and pages pointed to by translation blocks.

A.3 QEMU compared to other emulators

Like bochs [1], QEMU emulates an x86 CPU. But QEMU is much faster than bochs as it uses dynamic compilation. Bochs is closely tied to x86 PC emulation while QEMU can emulate several processors.

Like Valgrind [2], QEMU does user space emulation and dynamic translation. Valgrind is mainly a memory debugger while QEMU has no support for it (QEMU could be used to detect out of bound memory accesses as Valgrind, but it has no support to track uninitialised data as Valgrind does). The Valgrind dynamic translator generates better code than QEMU (in particular it does register allocation) but it is closely tied to an x86 host and target and has no support for precise exceptions and system emulation.

EM86 [3] is the closest project to user space QEMU (and QEMU still uses some of its code, in particular the ELF file loader). EM86 was limited to an alpha host and used a proprietary and slow interpreter (the interpreter part of the FX!32 Digital Win32 code translator [4]).

TWIN from Willows Software was a Windows API emulator like Wine. It is less accurate than Wine but includes a protected mode x86 interpreter to launch x86 Windows executables. Such an approach has greater potential because most of the Windows API is executed natively but it is far more difficult to develop because all the data structures and function parameters exchanged between the API and the x86 code must be converted.

User mode Linux [5] was the only solution before QEMU to launch a Linux kernel as a process while not needing any host kernel patches. However, user mode Linux requires heavy kernel patches while QEMU accepts unpatched Linux kernels. The price to pay is that QEMU is slower.

The Plex86 [6] PC virtualizer is done in the same spirit as the now obsolete qemu-fast system emulator. It requires a patched Linux kernel to work (you cannot launch the same kernel on your PC), but the patches are really small. As it is a PC virtualizer (no emulation is done except for some privileged instructions), it has the potential of being faster than QEMU. The downside is that a complicated (and potentially unsafe) host kernel patch is needed.

The commercial PC Virtualizers (VMWare [7], VirtualPC [8]) are faster than QEMU (without virtualization), but they all need specific, proprietary and potentially unsafe host drivers. Moreover, they are unable to provide cycle exact simulation as an emulator can.

VirtualBox [9], Xen [10] and KVM [11] are based on QEMU. QEMU-SystemC [12] uses QEMU to simulate a system where some hardware devices are developed in SystemC.

A.4 Managed start up options

In system mode emulation, it’s possible to create a VM in a paused state using the -S command line option. In this state the machine is completely initialized according to command line options and ready to execute VM code but VCPU threads are not executing any code. The VM state in this paused state depends on the way QEMU was started. It could be in:

initial state (after reset/power on state)

with direct kernel loading, the initial state could be amended to execute

code loaded by QEMU in the VM’s RAM and with incoming migration

with incoming migration, initial state will by amended with the migrated

machine state after migration completes.

This paused state is typically used by users to query machine state and/or additionally configure the machine (by hotplugging devices) in runtime before allowing VM code to run.

However, at the -S pause point, it’s impossible to configure options that affect initial VM creation (like: -smp/-m/-numa ...) or cold plug devices. The experimental –preconfig command line option allows pausing QEMU before the initial VM creation, in a “preconfig” state, where additional queries and configuration can be performed via QMP before moving on to the resulting configuration startup. In the preconfig state, QEMU only allows a limited set of commands over the QMP monitor, where the commands do not depend on an initialized machine, including but not limited to:

qmp_capabilities

query-qmp-schema

query-commands

query-status

x-exit-preconfig

A.5 Bibliography

[1]

http://bochs.sourceforge.net/, the Bochs IA-32 Emulator Project, by Kevin Lawton et al.

[2]

http://www.valgrind.org/, Valgrind, an open-source memory debugger for GNU/Linux.

[3]

http://ftp.dreamtime.org/pub/linux/Linux-Alpha/em86/v0.2/docs/em86.html, the EM86 x86 emulator on Alpha-Linux.

[4]

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt97/full_papers/chernoff/chernoff.pdf, DIGITAL FX!32: Running 32-Bit x86 Applications on Alpha NT, by Anton Chernoff and Ray Hookway.

[5]

http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/, The User-mode Linux Kernel.

[6]

http://www.plex86.org/, The new Plex86 project.

[7]

http://www.vmware.com/, The VMWare PC virtualizer.

[8]

https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=3702, The VirtualPC PC virtualizer.

[9]

http://virtualbox.org/, The VirtualBox PC virtualizer.

[10]

http://www.xen.org/, The Xen hypervisor.

[11]

http://www.linux-kvm.org/, Kernel Based Virtual Machine (KVM).

[12]

http://www.greensocs.com/projects/QEMUSystemC, QEMU-SystemC, a hardware co-simulator.

Appendix B Deprecated features

In general features are intended to be supported indefinitely once introduced into QEMU. In the event that a feature needs to be removed, it will be listed in this appendix. The feature will remain functional for 2 releases prior to actual removal. Deprecated features may also generate warnings on the console when QEMU starts up, or if activated via a monitor command, however, this is not a mandatory requirement.

Prior to the 2.10.0 release there was no official policy on how long features would be deprecated prior to their removal, nor any documented list of which features were deprecated. Thus any features deprecated prior to 2.10.0 will be treated as if they were first deprecated in the 2.10.0 release.

What follows is a list of all features currently marked as deprecated.

B.1 Build options

B.1.1 GTK 2.x

Previously QEMU has supported building against both GTK 2.x and 3.x series APIs. Support for the GTK 2.x builds will be discontinued, so maintainers should switch to using GTK 3.x, which is the default.

B.1.2 SDL 1.2

Previously QEMU has supported building against both SDL 1.2 and 2.0 series APIs. Support for the SDL 1.2 builds will be discontinued, so maintainers should switch to using SDL 2.0, which is the default.

B.2 System emulator command line arguments

B.2.1 -no-kvm (since 1.3.0)

The “-no-kvm” argument is now a synonym for setting “-machine accel=tcg”.

B.2.2 -vnc tls (since 2.5.0)

The “-vnc tls” argument is now a synonym for setting “-object tls-creds-anon,id=tls0” combined with “-vnc tls-creds=tls0’

B.2.3 -vnc x509 (since 2.5.0)

The “-vnc x509=/path/to/certs” argument is now a synonym for setting “-object tls-creds-x509,dir=/path/to/certs,id=tls0,verify-peer=no” combined with “-vnc tls-creds=tls0’

B.2.4 -vnc x509verify (since 2.5.0)

The “-vnc x509verify=/path/to/certs” argument is now a synonym for setting “-object tls-creds-x509,dir=/path/to/certs,id=tls0,verify-peer=yes” combined with “-vnc tls-creds=tls0’

B.2.5 -tftp (since 2.6.0)

The “-tftp /some/dir” argument is replaced by either “-netdev user,id=x,tftp=/some/dir ” (for pluggable NICs, accompanied with “-device ...,netdev=x”), or “-nic user,tftp=/some/dir” (for embedded NICs). The new syntax allows different settings to be provided per NIC.

B.2.6 -bootp (since 2.6.0)

The “-bootp /some/file” argument is replaced by either “-netdev user,id=x,bootp=/some/file ” (for pluggable NICs, accompanied with “-device ...,netdev=x”), or “-nic user,bootp=/some/file” (for embedded NICs). The new syntax allows different settings to be provided per NIC.

B.2.7 -redir (since 2.6.0)

The “-redir [tcp|udp]:hostport:[guestaddr]:guestport” argument is replaced by either “-netdev user,id=x,hostfwd=[tcp|udp]:[hostaddr]:hostport-[guestaddr]:guestport” (for pluggable NICs, accompanied with “-device ...,netdev=x”) or “-nic user,hostfwd=[tcp|udp]:[hostaddr]:hostport-[guestaddr]:guestport” (for embedded NICs). The new syntax allows different settings to be provided per NIC.

B.2.8 -smb (since 2.6.0)

The “-smb /some/dir” argument is replaced by either “-netdev user,id=x,smb=/some/dir ” (for pluggable NICs, accompanied with “-device ...,netdev=x”), or “-nic user,smb=/some/dir” (for embedded NICs). The new syntax allows different settings to be provided per NIC.

B.2.9 -drive cyls=...,heads=...,secs=...,trans=... (since 2.10.0)

The drive geometry arguments are replaced by the the geometry arguments that can be specified with the “-device” parameter.

B.2.10 -drive serial=... (since 2.10.0)

The drive serial argument is replaced by the the serial argument that can be specified with the “-device” parameter.

B.2.11 -drive addr=... (since 2.10.0)

The drive addr argument is replaced by the the addr argument that can be specified with the “-device” parameter.

B.2.12 -usbdevice (since 2.10.0)

The “-usbdevice DEV” argument is now a synonym for setting the “-device usb-DEV” argument instead. The deprecated syntax would automatically enable USB support on the machine type. If using the new syntax, USB support must be explicitly enabled via the “-machine usb=on” argument.

B.2.13 -nodefconfig (since 2.11.0)

The “-nodefconfig“ argument is a synonym for “-no-user-config“.

B.2.14 -balloon (since 2.12.0)

The --balloon virtio argument has been superseded by --device virtio-balloon.

B.2.15 -machine s390-squash-mcss=on|off (since 2.12.0)

The “s390-squash-mcss=on“ property has been obsoleted by allowing the cssid to be chosen freely. Instead of squashing subchannels into the default channel subsystem image for guests that do not support multiple channel subsystems, all devices can be put into the default channel subsystem image.

B.2.16 -fsdev handle (since 2.12.0)

The “handle” fsdev backend does not support symlinks and causes the 9p filesystem in the guest to fail a fair amount of tests from the PJD POSIX filesystem test suite. Also it requires the CAP_DAC_READ_SEARCH capability, which is not the recommended way to run QEMU. This backend should not be used and it will be removed with no replacement.

B.2.17 -no-frame (since 2.12.0)

The --no-frame argument works with SDL 1.2 only. The other user interfaces never implemented this in the first place. So this will be removed together with SDL 1.2 support.

B.2.18 -rtc-td-hack (since 2.12.0)

The -rtc-td-hack option has been replaced by -rtc driftfix=slew.

B.2.19 -localtime (since 2.12.0)

The -localtime option has been replaced by -rtc base=localtime.

B.2.20 -startdate (since 2.12.0)

The -startdate option has been replaced by -rtc base=date.

B.2.21 -virtioconsole (since 3.0.0)

Option -virtioconsole has been replaced by -device virtconsole.

B.2.22 -clock (since 3.0.0)

The -clock option is ignored since QEMU version 1.7.0. There is no replacement since it is not needed anymore.

B.2.23 -enable-hax (since 3.0.0)

The -enable-hax option has been replaced by -accel hax. Both options have been introduced in QEMU version 2.9.0.

B.2.24 -drive file=json:{...{’driver’:’file’}} (since 3.0)

The ’file’ driver for drives is no longer appropriate for character or host devices and will only accept regular files (S_IFREG). The correct driver for these file types is ’host_cdrom’ or ’host_device’ as appropriate.

B.3 QEMU Machine Protocol (QMP) commands

B.3.1 block-dirty-bitmap-add "autoload" parameter (since 2.12.0)

"autoload" parameter is now ignored. All bitmaps are automatically loaded from qcow2 images.

B.3.2 query-cpus (since 2.12.0)

The “query-cpus” command is replaced by the “query-cpus-fast” command.

B.3.3 query-cpus-fast "arch" output member (since 3.0.0)

The “arch” output member of the “query-cpus-fast” command is replaced by the “target” output member.

B.4 System emulator devices

B.4.1 ivshmem (since 2.6.0)

The “ivshmem” device type is replaced by either the “ivshmem-plain” or “ivshmem-doorbell“ device types.

B.4.2 Page size support < 4k for embedded PowerPC CPUs (since 2.12.0)

qemu-system-ppcemb will be removed. qemu-system-ppc (or qemu-system-ppc64) should be used instead. That means that embedded 4xx PowerPC CPUs will not support page sizes < 4096 any longer.

B.5 System emulator machines

B.5.1 pc-0.10 and pc-0.11 (since 3.0)

These machine types are very old and likely can not be used for live migration from old QEMU versions anymore. A newer machine type should be used instead.

B.6 Device options

B.6.1 Block device options

B.6.1.1 "backing": "" (since 2.12.0)

In order to prevent QEMU from automatically opening an image’s backing chain, use “"backing": null” instead.

B.6.2 vio-spapr-device device options

B.6.2.1 "irq": "" (since 3.0.0)

The “irq” property is obsoleted.

Appendix C Supported build platforms

QEMU aims to support building and executing on multiple host OS platforms. This appendix outlines which platforms are the major build targets. These platforms are used as the basis for deciding upon the minimum required versions of 3rd party software QEMU depends on. The supported platforms are the targets for automated testing performed by the project when patches are submitted for review, and tested before and after merge.

If a platform is not listed here, it does not imply that QEMU won’t work. If an unlisted platform has comparable software versions to a listed platform, there is every expectation that it will work. Bug reports are welcome for problems encountered on unlisted platforms unless they are clearly older vintage than what is described here.

Note that when considering software versions shipped in distros as support targets, QEMU considers only the version number, and assumes the features in that distro match the upstream release with the same version. In other words, if a distro backports extra features to the software in their distro, QEMU upstream code will not add explicit support for those backports, unless the feature is auto-detectable in a manner that works for the upstream releases too.

The Repology site https://repology.org is a useful resource to identify currently shipped versions of software in various operating systems, though it does not cover all distros listed below.

C.1 Linux OS

For distributions with frequent, short-lifetime releases, the project will aim to support all versions that are not end of life by their respective vendors. For the purposes of identifying supported software versions, the project will look at Fedora, Ubuntu, and openSUSE distros. Other short- lifetime distros will be assumed to ship similar software versions.

For distributions with long-lifetime releases, the project will aim to support the most recent major version at all times. Support for the previous major version will be dropped 2 years after the new major version is released. For the purposes of identifying supported software versions, the project will look at RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, and SLES distros. Other long-lifetime distros will be assumed to ship similar software versions.

C.2 Windows

The project supports building with current versions of the MinGW toolchain, hosted on Linux.

C.3 macOS

The project supports building with the two most recent versions of macOS, with the current homebrew package set available.

C.4 FreeBSD

The project aims to support the all the versions which are not end of life.

C.5 NetBSD

The project aims to support the most recent major version at all times. Support for the previous major version will be dropped 2 years after the new major version is released.

C.6 OpenBSD

The project aims to support the all the versions which are not end of life.

Appendix D License

QEMU is a trademark of Fabrice Bellard.

QEMU is released under the GNU General Public License, version 2. Parts of QEMU have specific licenses, see file LICENSE.

Appendix E Index

E.1 Concept Index

This is the main index. Should we combine all keywords in one index? TODO

Jump to: O Q S U

Index Entry Section

operating modes: intro_features

QEMU monitor: pcsys_monitor

quick start: pcsys_quickstart

system emulation: intro_features

system emulation (ARM): ARM System emulator

system emulation (ColdFire): ColdFire System emulator

system emulation (Cris): Cris System emulator

system emulation (M68K): ColdFire System emulator

system emulation (Microblaze): Microblaze System emulator

system emulation (MIPS): MIPS System emulator

system emulation (PC): QEMU PC System emulator

system emulation (PowerPC): PowerPC System emulator

system emulation (SH4): SH4 System emulator

system emulation (Sparc32): Sparc32 System emulator

system emulation (Sparc64): Sparc64 System emulator

system emulation (Xtensa): Xtensa System emulator

user mode (Alpha): Other binaries

user mode (ARM): Other binaries

user mode (ColdFire): Other binaries

user mode (Cris): Other binaries

user mode (i386): Other binaries

user mode (M68K): Other binaries

user mode (Microblaze): Other binaries

user mode (MIPS): Other binaries

user mode (NiosII): Other binaries

user mode (PowerPC): Other binaries

user mode (SH4): Other binaries

user mode (SPARC): Other binaries

user mode emulation: intro_features

Jump to: O Q S U

E.2 Function Index

This index could be used for command line options and monitor functions.

Jump to: -

A B C D E G H I L M N O P Q R S T W X

Index Entry Section

--preconfig: sec_invocation

--trace: qemu_img_invocation

--trace: qemu_nbd_invocation

-accel: sec_invocation

-acpitable: sec_invocation

-add-fd: sec_invocation

-alt-grab: sec_invocation

-append: sec_invocation

-audio-help: sec_invocation

-balloon: sec_invocation

-bios: sec_invocation

-blockdev: sec_invocation

-boot: sec_invocation

-bt: sec_invocation

-cdrom: sec_invocation

-chardev: sec_invocation

-chroot: sec_invocation

-cpu: sec_invocation

-ctrl-grab: sec_invocation

-curses: sec_invocation

-d: sec_invocation

-D: sec_invocation

-daemonize: sec_invocation

-debugcon: sec_invocation

-device: sec_invocation

-dfilter: sec_invocation

-display: sec_invocation

-drive: sec_invocation

-dtb: sec_invocation

-dump-vmstate: sec_invocation

-echr: sec_invocation

-enable-fips: sec_invocation

-enable-hax: sec_invocation

-enable-kvm: sec_invocation

-fda: sec_invocation

-fdb: sec_invocation

-fsdev: sec_invocation

-full-screen: sec_invocation

-fw_cfg: sec_invocation

-g: sec_invocation

-gdb: sec_invocation

-global: sec_invocation

-h: sec_invocation

-hda: sec_invocation

-hdb: sec_invocation

-hdc: sec_invocation

-hdd: sec_invocation

-icount: sec_invocation

-incoming: sec_invocation

-initrd: sec_invocation

-iscsi: sec_invocation

-k: sec_invocation

-kernel: sec_invocation

-L: sec_invocation

-loadvm: sec_invocation

-m: sec_invocation

-machine: sec_invocation

-mem-path: sec_invocation

-mem-prealloc: sec_invocation

-mon: sec_invocation

-monitor: sec_invocation

-msg: sec_invocation

-mtdblock: sec_invocation

-name: sec_invocation

-net: sec_invocation

-netdev: sec_invocation

-nic: sec_invocation

-no-acpi: sec_invocation

-no-fd-bootchk: sec_invocation

-no-frame: sec_invocation

-no-hpet: sec_invocation

-no-quit: sec_invocation

-no-reboot: sec_invocation

-no-shutdown: sec_invocation

-no-user-config: sec_invocation

-nodefaults: sec_invocation

-nographic: sec_invocation

-numa: sec_invocation

-object: sec_invocation

-old-param (ARM): sec_invocation

-only-migratable: sec_invocation

-option-rom: sec_invocation

-overcommit: sec_invocation

-parallel: sec_invocation

-pflash: sec_invocation

-pidfile: sec_invocation

-portrait: sec_invocation

-prom-env: sec_invocation

-qmp: sec_invocation

-qmp-pretty: sec_invocation

-readconfig: sec_invocation

-realtime: sec_invocation

-rotate: sec_invocation

-rtc: sec_invocation

-runas: sec_invocation

-S: sec_invocation

-s: sec_invocation

-sandbox: sec_invocation

-sd: sec_invocation

-sdl: sec_invocation

-semihosting: sec_invocation

-semihosting-config: sec_invocation

-serial: sec_invocation

-set: sec_invocation

-show-cursor: sec_invocation

-singlestep: sec_invocation

-smbios: sec_invocation

-smp: sec_invocation

-snapshot: sec_invocation

-soundhw: sec_invocation

-spice: sec_invocation

-tb-size: sec_invocation

-tpmdev: sec_invocation

-trace: sec_invocation

-trace-unassigned: sec_invocation

-usb: sec_invocation

-usbdevice: sec_invocation

-uuid: sec_invocation

-version: sec_invocation

-vga: sec_invocation

-virtfs: sec_invocation

-virtfs_synth: sec_invocation

-virtioconsole: sec_invocation

-vnc: sec_invocation

-watchdog: sec_invocation

-watchdog-action: sec_invocation

-win2k-hack: sec_invocation

-writeconfig: sec_invocation

-xen-attach: sec_invocation

-xen-create: sec_invocation

-xen-domid: sec_invocation

-xen-domid-restrict: sec_invocation

acl_add: pcsys_monitor

acl_policy: pcsys_monitor

acl_remove: pcsys_monitor

acl_reset: pcsys_monitor

acl_show: pcsys_monitor

balloon: pcsys_monitor

block_job_cancel: pcsys_monitor

block_job_complete: pcsys_monitor

block_job_pause: pcsys_monitor

block_job_resume: pcsys_monitor

block_job_set_speed: pcsys_monitor

block_passwd: pcsys_monitor

block_resize: pcsys_monitor

block_set_io_throttle: pcsys_monitor

block_stream: pcsys_monitor

boot_set: pcsys_monitor

change: pcsys_monitor

chardev-add: pcsys_monitor

chardev-change: pcsys_monitor

chardev-remove: pcsys_monitor

chardev-send-break: pcsys_monitor

client_migrate_info: pcsys_monitor

closefd: pcsys_monitor

commit: pcsys_monitor

cont: pcsys_monitor

cpu: pcsys_monitor

cpu-add: pcsys_monitor

delvm: pcsys_monitor

device_add: pcsys_monitor

device_del: pcsys_monitor

drive_add: pcsys_monitor

drive_backup: pcsys_monitor

drive_del: pcsys_monitor

drive_mirror: pcsys_monitor

dump-guest-memory: pcsys_monitor

dump-skeys: pcsys_monitor

eject: pcsys_monitor

exit_preconfig: pcsys_monitor

expire_password: pcsys_monitor

gdbserver: pcsys_monitor

getfd: pcsys_monitor

gpa2hpa: pcsys_monitor

gpa2hva: pcsys_monitor

help: pcsys_monitor

hostfwd_add: pcsys_monitor

hostfwd_remove: pcsys_monitor

i: pcsys_monitor

info: pcsys_monitor

info balloon: pcsys_monitor

info block: pcsys_monitor

info block-jobs: pcsys_monitor

info blockstats: pcsys_monitor

info capture: pcsys_monitor

info chardev: pcsys_monitor

info cmma: pcsys_monitor

info cpus: pcsys_monitor

info cpustats: pcsys_monitor

info dump: pcsys_monitor

info history: pcsys_monitor

info hotpluggable-cpus: pcsys_monitor

info ioapic: pcsys_monitor

info iothreads: pcsys_monitor

info irq: pcsys_monitor

info jit: pcsys_monitor

info kvm: pcsys_monitor

info lapic: pcsys_monitor

info mem: pcsys_monitor

info memdev: pcsys_monitor

info memory-devices: pcsys_monitor

info memory_size_summary: pcsys_monitor

info mice: pcsys_monitor

info migrate: pcsys_monitor

info migrate_cache_size: pcsys_monitor

info migrate_capabilities: pcsys_monitor

info migrate_parameters: pcsys_monitor

info mtree: pcsys_monitor

info name: pcsys_monitor

info network: pcsys_monitor

info numa: pcsys_monitor

info opcount: pcsys_monitor

info pci: pcsys_monitor

info pic: pcsys_monitor

info profile: pcsys_monitor

info qdm: pcsys_monitor

info qom-tree: pcsys_monitor

info qtree: pcsys_monitor

info ramblock: pcsys_monitor

info registers: pcsys_monitor

info rocker: pcsys_monitor

info rocker-of-dpa-flows: pcsys_monitor

info rocker-of-dpa-groups: pcsys_monitor

info rocker-ports: pcsys_monitor

info roms: pcsys_monitor

info sev: pcsys_monitor

info skeys: pcsys_monitor

info snapshots: pcsys_monitor

info spice: pcsys_monitor

info status: pcsys_monitor

info tlb: pcsys_monitor

info tpm: pcsys_monitor

info trace-events: pcsys_monitor

info usb: pcsys_monitor

info usbhost: pcsys_monitor

info usernet: pcsys_monitor

info uuid: pcsys_monitor

info version: pcsys_monitor

info vm-generation-id: pcsys_monitor

info vnc: pcsys_monitor

loadvm: pcsys_monitor

log: pcsys_monitor

logfile: pcsys_monitor

mce (x86): pcsys_monitor

memsave: pcsys_monitor

migrate: pcsys_monitor

migrate_cancel: pcsys_monitor

migrate_continue: pcsys_monitor

migrate_incoming: pcsys_monitor

migrate_pause: pcsys_monitor

migrate_recover: pcsys_monitor

migrate_set_cache_size: pcsys_monitor

migrate_set_capability: pcsys_monitor

migrate_set_downtime: pcsys_monitor

migrate_set_parameter: pcsys_monitor

migrate_set_speed: pcsys_monitor

migrate_start_postcopy: pcsys_monitor

migration_mode: pcsys_monitor

mouse_button: pcsys_monitor

mouse_move: pcsys_monitor

mouse_set: pcsys_monitor

nbd_server_add: pcsys_monitor

nbd_server_remove: pcsys_monitor

nbd_server_start: pcsys_monitor

nbd_server_stop: pcsys_monitor

netdev_add: pcsys_monitor

netdev_del: pcsys_monitor

nmi: pcsys_monitor

o: pcsys_monitor

object_add: pcsys_monitor

object_del: pcsys_monitor

pcie_aer_inject_error: pcsys_monitor

pmemsave: pcsys_monitor

print: pcsys_monitor

qemu-io: pcsys_monitor

quit: pcsys_monitor

ringbuf_read: pcsys_monitor

ringbuf_write: pcsys_monitor

savevm: pcsys_monitor

screendump: pcsys_monitor

sendkey: pcsys_monitor

set_link: pcsys_monitor

set_password: pcsys_monitor

singlestep: pcsys_monitor

snapshot_blkdev: pcsys_monitor

snapshot_blkdev_internal: pcsys_monitor

snapshot_delete_blkdev_internal: pcsys_monitor

stop: pcsys_monitor

stopcapture: pcsys_monitor

sum: pcsys_monitor

system_powerdown: pcsys_monitor

system_reset: pcsys_monitor

system_wakeup: pcsys_monitor

trace-event: pcsys_monitor

trace-file: pcsys_monitor

watchdog_action: pcsys_monitor

wavcapture: pcsys_monitor

x: pcsys_monitor

xp: pcsys_monitor

x_colo_lost_heartbeat: pcsys_monitor

Jump to: -

A B C D E G H I L M N O P Q R S T W X

E.3 Keystroke Index

This is a list of all keystrokes which have a special function in system emulation.

Jump to: C

Index Entry Section

Ctrl-a b: mux_keys

Ctrl-a c: mux_keys

Ctrl-a Ctrl-a: mux_keys

Ctrl-a h: mux_keys

Ctrl-a s: mux_keys

Ctrl-a t: mux_keys

Ctrl-a x: mux_keys

Ctrl-Alt: pcsys_keys

Ctrl-Alt-+: pcsys_keys

Ctrl-Alt--: pcsys_keys

Ctrl-Alt-f: pcsys_keys

Ctrl-Alt-n: pcsys_keys

Ctrl-Alt-u: pcsys_keys

Ctrl-Down: pcsys_keys

Ctrl-PageDown: pcsys_keys

Ctrl-PageUp: pcsys_keys

Ctrl-Up: pcsys_keys

Jump to: C

E.4 Program Index

E.5 Data Type Index

This index could be used for qdev device names and options.

E.6 Variable Index

Так же в этом разделе:

QEMU: Run guest OSes on a locked-down Windows machine
Simple Portable Linux QEMU VM on a USB Drive
QEMU version 3.0.0 User Documentation

MyTetra Share v.0.59