Eric,

I got this to install flawlessly via your slack-build scripts for my custom kernel. Very nice job.

I'm stuck tho when it comes to flipping cd's on slackware, and/or changing iso's. I can't get a full install of slackware yet.

I'm gonna keep going on it, but been at it a while and no luck

I have iso's too for slackware in same directory as the iso I launch off of an no good when I try installing by iso method.

Maybe because my DVDrom in my pc is my /dev/hdd and is symlinked to both /dev/cdrom AND /dev/dvd ?

Also:

my fstab before running this is slightly different, I have my fstab setup the way ATI wants it

that is:

tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

maybe qemu wants me to leave out the left-hand side most 'tmpfs' and leave it as blanK?

@ eric

"I tried (and succeeded) in running Slackware inside QEMU running on Slackware inside QEMU running on my Slackware desktop machine. Never tried that with Xen or VMware though..."

LOL that's some funny stuff. No wonder you had a bad memory stick not too long ago.

What is unclear in the text at http://www.slackware.com/~alien/doku...e_qemu_monitor and the section after that?

As long as there is a mounted tmpfs it's OK for the kqemu kernel module and it will use it. When such is unavailable and you do start QEMU with the kqemu kernel module loaded, you will receive a warning about kqemu not being able to use a memory filesystem and reverting to the MUCH slower /tmp directory to create it's virtual machine's RAM image.

Eric

i tried qemu too and then after i see nykey post about vmware i tried that too and got network unlike in qemu. my only problem is the sound. i don't have /dev/dsp . why is that ? i have latest kernel 2.6.17.6 compiled by hand using the config from Pat's 2.6.17.6 + some modifications. i have latest alsa-1.0.11. how can i activate /dev/dsp ? after i add Sound Device at the drop-down list i only have Autodetect, no /dev/dsp and when i start virtual server i get error that no sound device exists. sound is working on the host (slackware). any ideeas please ?

@alien bob "What is unclear in the text at..."

that's what killed me you know.

however your wiki fails to mention that I'm supposed to not be an IDIOT....and have the images owned by root.....omg I'm so dumb..I got it now.

I run qemu under my own account, and yes, all image files are owned by myself :-) Hard to let the Guest OS write to the virtual disk otherwise he he

Eric

LOL, yeah it was dumb of me.

I'd just like to give you some feedback from someone who never did this before, and new to linux Eric.

There just things that went thru my head, questions concerns that you may ( or may not) want to touch on in the wiki.

Nothing is major here as I got thru it in notime, except for my stupidity on the root account owning my isos...omg.

As if you did not have enough to do right, lol.

1. I get this echo'd in console loading up qemu:

So I guess I'll write a sudo script to let me do this in your launch script.

2. Maybe telling people, (as stupid as this sounds) how to properly close the guest host. for instance, I wasn't sure if it were ok to just "x" out of slackware as guest, or tell the guest/slackware to shutdown.

3. My first time running qemu it went full screen, for whatever reason I dont know. So i just went into qmenu and hit help and was fine, but may be worth mentioning.

4. How to verify kqemu is doing something? Is the fact that it is modprobed mean it's working for me? Anything like "kqemu --status" kind of like what we have in "wpa_cli --status" , etc?

5. When I first made my slackware guest, I realized I wanted the image to sit on a different partition as it's permanent home. I was not sure if I could move it about on the hard drive, or to a separate physical drive. simple copy/paste worked for me.

6. maybe mention about my question above about changing size of the guest if need be down the road.

7. this may be more confusing, but i was not sure if I started by using cd1 of slackware to start the installer, and then later use an "iso" for cd2 on the install. the fact that you can mix/match. for me I had disc one of slackware, but no iso for it. trial and error prevailed, but was a question.

8. Maybe tell people that they can use a program like alcohol to make an iso of slackware cd's if they are in windows, or can use k3b in slackware and that k3b is in /extra.

I didnt know how to make an iso in linux to be honest. I tried my nero in windows that came with my burner...but was then stuck with an 'nrg' file, which that didnt work either. I tried nrg2iso but get segmenation faults. Probably this is beyond the scope but thought I'd mention it.

9 the ctrl+alt work for me only with the ctrl+alt keys on the left side of my keyboard. the ctrl+alt keys on the right side of my keyboard don't do anything. maybe worth mentioning. I'm lefty so I went to the ctrl+alt on my right side of my keyboard to get to qmenu and was confused at first.

10. it appears the qemu is kernel independant, and kqemu is kernel dependent so upgrades to kernel will require rebuild of the kqemu. something like dont forget to remake a new kqemu if you upgrade your kernel.

11. you mention using a group for qemu. personally, I dont know how to do that. so i'm gonna go read my slackware book and find out how to.

hope this helps, and again thank you for the build script and wiki.

A truckload of notes there! I think I can try and address some in the Wiki page. I'm glad you solved most of those for yourself though (you're not the newbie you like to pose as you know :-) )

You can have a look at the rc script I wrote for the case you want to have a better networking experience than the default usermode networking (which is fine, too, if you have no intention of connecting TO the guest inside the Virtual Machine, and instead are satisfied with just connecting out FROM the guest OS): http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slac.../rc.vdenetwork
It is part of the Slackware package for VDE which I also mention in my Wiki page. Maybe you can still pick out a couple of worthwhile morsels there even if you don't want to use VDE to provide the networking glue for QEMU.

Eric

OK I'll check into that for sure.

Presently I dont get any network on the slackware guest, but, that's no big deal as I plan to do the same thing that you do, make packages, kernels, etc in the virtual slackware. Actually, that's probably better that I dont have networking on the slackware now that I think of it.

one last thing regaring the wiki: when i was putting slackware in, I made a guess, to add a swap partition and another partition for the slackware's "/" and when it came to the lilo, telling slackware to use the master boot record option too. I was not sure what to do but it worked out well.

Bye for now.

Ok, so I've tested VMware, it is quite impressive. I actually managed to get my Video Card up to 64MB (maximum supported is 128MB but I tought not to push the note for now, but will try that too). Alien, I would like still to get the hold of QEMU too, mostly to compare these two, but first I want to know, is it possible with QEMU to enlarge the Video Card memory ? Cause in QEMU the default memory for the Video Card is 4MB. With 64/128 in VMware I'm actually able to play games, and performance is quite acceptable.

nykey, QEMU is not really meant to play games. Your Guest OS will definitely not have graphics hardware acceleration, so that rules out modern games anyway.

Eric

The Guest OS inside QEMU runs in an emulated hardware environment. That includes emulated disks. The MBR to the Guest is just another sector in the virtual disk image file that you prepared for QEMU. Your Guest OS will not be able to address any physical hardware components directly (apart from USB devices for which such a translation from guest to host is made). You will not be able to harm your host computer (nor it's host OS) by doing weird things in the Guest, unless of course you hit a bug in QEMU :-)

Eric

yeah, I know it's not meant for games, and thats not my intention of using it, but still, at 4MB I have such a lousy resolution and it moves like crap because of the Video Card. I actually keep VMware at 32MB and it's working just fine (btw I tried 128MB, and it worked too)... and in VMware Direct3D is available too when adding video ram. But, still no answer... can I do the same in QEMU ? "Add" more RAM to the video card ?

No, you can not.
With the "-std-vga" option, you can use VESA resolutions up to 1600x1200x32 depending on your physical video card's capabilities.

Eric

Hey just an update on this.

I was able to get the guest OS to see my scanner. Tho I crashed, only to see in console that I ran qemu from, that it said I was denied access to the usb port.

I went to your site Eric and did the fix for scanner there. My scanner is not recognized (no drivers) by gnu/linux, so I was sure that slackware was not taking control of my scanner.

I get half way thru a scan, but then the guest/os reboots. Even as root.

I suspect, it's becuase my scanner is a usb 2.0 scanner. Or, maybe I'll try a few of the other versions of the scanner drivers. I'm plugged straight into the usb port on the mother board.

I found some interesting points of mention on this thread here:
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:...s&ct=clnk&cd=3

If all this fails, I have another scanner, that is USB 1.0 I may try that.

Oh, after I did your fix in your 'annoyances' section I did not get the permissions error ever again.

I went to the qemu site, and it says USB is experimental, so mileage may vary I guess.

We'll see, who knows slack 11 out soon, could change everything for all I know.