Re: [Qemu-devel] Qemu the right way.

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

On 2018-12-25 23:46, liebrecht@grossmann-venter.com wrote:
> I have been using Qemu in the past about 8 years ago or so to run legacy
> windows software.
> 
> I installed the latest qemu and noticed a lot changed and cant find
> conclusive answers online.
> 
> I am writing this post to find what is the right way to start to set up
> qemu with a windows 7 pro guest. I want to try and eliminate the
> iterations and find out what is really possible for the guest.
> 
> Hardware used"
> 24 Core AMD rackserver.
> Host OS Debian 9 Stretch
> Guest Windows 7 Pro 32 bit
> 
> Requirements:
> 1) I need to be able to run at least 4 processors in the guest. Is this
> possible with qemu as hosts ?

Try to run QEMU with "-smp 4".

> 2) I need to at least have sound working from applications in the guest
> with pulseaudio on the Debian host. Is it  possible ?

Should be possible. Run the configure script before compiling with

 --audio-drv-list=pa

and then make sure to give a soundcard to the guest (e.g. with the
-soundhw option).

> 3) USB, what is the level of support 2.0 3.0 ?
> ( However windo$ 7 cannot really do USB3. so usb-3 is moot anyway)

QEMU supports both, e.g. with "-device usb-ehci" for a USB 2.0
controller or with "-device nec-usb-xhci" for a USB 3.0 controller.

> 4) What kind of devices can be run through usb ?

Do you mean emulated devices? You can get a list with:

 qemu-system-x86_64 -device help | grep usb

Or do you want to pass-through a real device from the host?

> The answers to 1-4 will be really helpful to decide if I should even be
> using it. The documentation is schetchy about all this.
> I tried Virtualbox, but it is just a nice looking empty promisebox
> yielding nothing. Since Qemu helped me a lot in the past I will have
> better chances here.
> 
> 5) I am currently installing win7pro guest with command
> $] qemu-system-x86_64 -boot c -cdrom /dev/cdrom -m 2048M
> 
> and left out all the network card and sound driver switches as I have no
> clue what I should choose.
> Can they be configured afterwards ?

I don't have much clue about Windows, but I think you can change it
afterwards - it's like you're changing PCI cards of a real system in
that case.

 HTH,
  Thomas