Re: [Qemu-devel] Hardware Detection in Qemu

["Christian MICHON" <christian.michon@gmail.com>]

On 7/8/07, Michael Fisher <desnotes@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have run various live Linux CD distributions (Knoppix, DSL, Ubuntu, etc.)
> under QEMU and was wondering if there is really a need to run the various
> hardware detection scripts in the live CDs? Obviously, a script for getting
> an IP address is needed but if I know I am running the distro under QEMU, do
> I need to check for USB, SCSI, AGP, PCI and the other detection scripts?
>

in short: no, you don't need so much hardware detection.

> If QEMU is already doing that, can't I just tweak the live distro to match
> QEMU and then let QEMU do the work when it is placed on various host
> computers?

if you're targetting a specific version of qemu, on which hardware's list
is specified/frozen, then yes, it's best to custom each of your linux
guest to speed up the boot sequence.

I see 3 ways:

1) by command line: you can add parameters like noacpi, tweak the
ide probes, etc... slax and dsl give you quite a good list to start with...

2) by customizing the /etc/init.d/* scripts, and re-authorizing the iso
If you do this, you've to keep in mind the new iso is for your guests
only...

3) use DetaolB. It's one of the many reasons why I created it. :)
Seriously, you create your own distro. The trick is in getting the
init scripts to as little as possible, and putting all needed hardware
modules *only* in your vmlinux, thus removing modprobing, which
actually takes quite a lot of time when inside qemu.

> Currently, most of my testing is done using Win XP as the host but in the
> future I will be looking at Linux and Macs as hosts also.

I'm in the same situation.

-- 
Christian
--
http://detaolb.sourceforge.net/, a linux distribution for Qemu