[Qemu-devel] Using Qemu to install Linux in a Windows XP disk image

[Brett Bonfield <pacella@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Apologies for making an end-user request rather than posing a
developer question or solution, but I'm not sure where else to ask the
following. I'm trying to use Qemu (the latest Windows installer) to
install and run the latest SimplyMEPIS .iso from a disk image so I can
save changes, install software, etc.

The SimplyMEPIS community has provided excellent guidance

http://www.mepis.org/node/view/4066

but I haven't been able to complete what I think are the last few steps, 
in part because I have a very limited understanding of dd (note: I've
been using dd rather than MakeQemuImage because I'd like an image
larger than 2GB and because dd offers more documentation) and how it
would interact with Qemu under Windows XP.

As near as I can tell, there are three separate branches of dd
available to Windows users (all three are open source: there may be
others, but who cares, right?):

1. http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ 

2. http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite/dd.htm

3. http://users.erols.com/gmgarner/forensics/
( which requires that msvcr70.dll and getopt.dll from the same distro
be in the folder with dd.exe )

I've been creating my disk image with the following command:

dd of=hd.img bs=1024 seek=3000000 count=0

The whole point of this exercise is to install SimplyMEPIS under Qemu
without having to partition my hard drive and without damaging my
existing install of WinXP. Is this what dd allows? Does Qemu support
this goal?

Brett