Re: [PATCH] KVM: Add wrapper script around Qemu to test kernels

Pekka Enberg
2011-08-24T05:19:09Z

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 1:16 AM, Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de> wrote:
> On LinuxCon I had a nice chat with Linus on what he thinks kvm-tool
> would be doing and what he expects from it. Basically he wants a
> small and simple tool he and other developers can run to try out and
> see if the kernel they just built actually works.
>
> Fortunately, Qemu can do that today already! The only piece that was
> missing was the "simple" piece of the equation, so here is a script
> that wraps around Qemu and executes a kernel you just built.
>
> If you do have KVM around and are not cross-compiling, it will use
> KVM. But if you don't, you can still fall back to emulation mode and
> at least check if your kernel still does what you expect. I only
> implemented support for s390x and ppc there, but it's easily extensible
> to more platforms, as Qemu can emulate (and virtualize) pretty much
> any platform out there.
>
> If you don't have qemu installed, please do so before using this script. Your
> distro should provide a package for it (might even call it "kvm"). If not,
> just compile it from source - it's not hard!
>
> To quickly get going, just execute the following as user:
>
>    $ ./Documentation/run-qemu.sh -r / -a init=/bin/bash
>
> This will drop you into a shell on your rootfs.
>
> Happy hacking!

It's nice to see such an honest attempt at improving QEMU usability, Alexander!

One comment: in my experience, having shell scripts under
Documentation reduces the likelihood that people actually discover
them so you might want to consider putting it under scripts or tools.

Pekka