[Qemu-devel] Re: Creating a (resizable) image which will hold Windows XP

[Charles Duffy <Charles_Duffy@messageone.com>]

Allen Meyers wrote:
> allen@debian:~$ qemu-img create -f qcow /path/to/xp.cow 1300M
> bash: qemu-img: command not found

First, your qemu isn't installed correctly -- modern versions of the 
package will also include a "qemu-img" utility, which the command line 
you gave relies on.

Second -- don't use qcow for anything, as it's long-undeveloped and 
generally not well supported; use qcow2 in its place if you must -- or, 
if the only feature you care about is that the file grows only as you 
add contents to the VM, consider a sparse raw file, which will have 
better reliability and performance; these can be created by standard 
UNIX tools such as dd.

>     HOWTO: Install Windows XP in Debian using QEMU

I'm unfamiliar with this HOWTO you're following. Did you include a link 
to it anywhere in your email? Is it maintained by any qemu developer, or 
someone else (such as Debian's documentation team)? If the latter, bugs 
in such documentation should be brought up with whoever maintains it.