I'm running VirtualBox on a puppylinux.vdi disk (a specialized file given in class). I am using a Linux 2.4 32-bit VM with 64GB RAM. Included in this disk is qemu, which is needed to boot a disk.img file. Even after configuring, making. and installing qemu-system-i386, I can't boot. Everything I try tells me that it cannot allocate memory. When I press "qemu" + tab, i see a list of qemu options, but when i press man qemu, it says there is no file, which makes me think that qemu has no been installed correctly? I've been struggling with this for 3 days now and I've scoured the internet and nothing has helped. I have never worked with Linux/QEMU/or virtual disks at all and I am very lost, confused, and stressed out. Please let me know if you have a solution or you think you know what the problem is. I am really desperate and begging for help. No one knows what the problem is.

Note: when I was running this on my previous machine, a PC, I had no problems. But now I must work on a macbook air and I don't know what's wrong. I know this is possible to do on a macbook air because most of the class has them.

Please excuse my english. Thank you.

Hello and welcome to LQ.

Let me understand your configuration. You have an Apple computer running some Linux OS. On that host linux you have virtualbox running puppy linux client. On that client you have qemu that you are wanting to run. Is that correct?

Man qemu doesn't mean much. I think qemu --? or --help or such may provide some help files or just use web. What version and who built the qemu that you have we don't know so we can't say what you downloaded. Generally when you use command line to install some package you don't see the other files as you may when searching a graphical package manager.

So, can't allocate memory would tend to mean one of two things after you look at the qemu logs. One is your qemu client configuration is set too high. You have to have extra for host and guest/client. Two is that your complete system has some issue.

Yes, that is correct!

I am running qemu-1.4.0-rc1. How do I check what my qemu client configuration is and how do I know if it's too high?

How do I look at the qemu logs? I am unable to even boot qemu. When I type in "qemu" + tab, i get a list of what looks like qemu commands. So, I know that qemu is installed properly. Note, qemu-img works and I'm able to create an img.disk, but qemu or qemu-system-i386, which I understand should boot qemu, simply sends to to "VNC server is now running [some numbers]." VNC server is not opening a new window either, it just puts me in an unresponsive shell.

Thank you in advance.

Qemu is available in many versions. Not all versions act the same. Not sure I know what is on your system so I can't really guess. A same version number doesn't mean a person supplying a package for one distro built it the same as another package.

Usually there is some configuration that qemu (or exact program name) to start the client. That configuration may include -m memory and quite a number of other parameters.

As you can see in the Invocation area there are a number of choices that again may not be available in your build. You can automate that information via some various means from a script to a gui. http://qemu.weilnetz.de/qemu-doc.html#install_005flinux