[Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Daniel Carrera]

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Hello,

I write here because there doesn't seem to be a Bugzilla for qemu and
whoever is responsible for the qemu documentation must be here.

The documentation is quite worthless.

I'm sure you don't like hearing that, but consider that it doesn't
actually show the user how get qemu to do what qemu is supposed to di
(ie. run a host OS). Ok, it tells me how to create a blank disk image,
that's great, but how do I create a disk image with something bootable
on it? Sorry, no information on that. I expect that the most typical use
case for qemu is running Windows under Linux, so you'd expect to see
some documentation for that, right? Nope, none. Sure, there are
trouble-shooting tips, but what use are trouble-shooting tips if you
can't even get started?

I've looked at qemu several times over the past several years. Every
time I get excited at the prospect of migrating people to GNU/Linux by
letting them run the one windows app they need... and every time I hit a
brick wall, as qemu fails to actually do anything useful.

Try to take this approach: You are writing to a technically competent
user (perhaps a sysadmin) who wants to run Windows under Linux with qemu
(perhaps to migrate some of the company computers). He has a Windows
install CD, he has qemu installed, and is ready to go. Please write
something that this person can use to get Windows running under qemu.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Rick Vernam]

On Wednesday 05 July 2006 15:57, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Try to take this approach: You are writing to a technically competent
> user (perhaps a sysadmin) who wants to run Windows under Linux with qemu
> (perhaps to migrate some of the company computers). He has a Windows
> install CD, he has qemu installed, and is ready to go. Please write
> something that this person can use to get Windows running under qemu.

as a person who only recently picked up Qemu, I'd like to share the methods by 
which I figured it out, in the order that I used them:

qemu --help
man qemu
the forums: http://qemu.dad-answers.com/

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Nathaniel McCallum]

A person who is in your position (frustrated for lack of documentation)
is actually the most qualified person to write documentation.  Feel free
to ask any questions you have on this list.

Nathaniel

On Wed, 2006-07-05 at 21:57 +0100, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I write here because there doesn't seem to be a Bugzilla for qemu and
> whoever is responsible for the qemu documentation must be here.
> 
> The documentation is quite worthless.
> 
> I'm sure you don't like hearing that, but consider that it doesn't
> actually show the user how get qemu to do what qemu is supposed to di
> (ie. run a host OS). Ok, it tells me how to create a blank disk image,
> that's great, but how do I create a disk image with something bootable
> on it? Sorry, no information on that. I expect that the most typical use
> case for qemu is running Windows under Linux, so you'd expect to see
> some documentation for that, right? Nope, none. Sure, there are
> trouble-shooting tips, but what use are trouble-shooting tips if you
> can't even get started?
> 
> I've looked at qemu several times over the past several years. Every
> time I get excited at the prospect of migrating people to GNU/Linux by
> letting them run the one windows app they need... and every time I hit a
> brick wall, as qemu fails to actually do anything useful.
> 
> Try to take this approach: You are writing to a technically competent
> user (perhaps a sysadmin) who wants to run Windows under Linux with qemu
> (perhaps to migrate some of the company computers). He has a Windows
> install CD, he has qemu installed, and is ready to go. Please write
> something that this person can use to get Windows running under qemu.
> 
> Cheers,
> Daniel.
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Daniel Carrera]

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On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 17:12 -0400, Nathaniel McCallum wrote:
> A person who is in your position (frustrated for lack of documentation)
> is actually the most qualified person to write documentation.  Feel free
> to ask any questions you have on this list.

I would be happy to contribute a section. First I need to learn how qemu
works though. Just the basics. On another list someone told me that the
way qemu works is by first creating a blank image, then booting a CD
from the virtual machine and installing.

At this point I know how to make a blank image, and I know how to boot a
CD:

qemu -cdrom /dev/cdrom

Now I need to figure out how to put these together so that if this CD
can install an operating system, qemu will know to use the blank image I
made (call it c.img) as a hard drive for its virtual machine.

Could someone tell me how to do that?

I'll be happy to write an intro tutorial for new users with the
knowledge I gain.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Daniel Carrera]

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On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 17:34 -0400, benb@ewess.com wrote:
> Dan - Try reading. -Ben
> 

Thank you, I did think of that, it didn't work. The documentation is not
particularly useful. In particular, it doesn't tell you how to actually
get an OS running under qemu, which, I'm sure, is the most typical use
case for qemu.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Jamie Lokier]

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> I've looked at qemu several times over the past several years. Every
> time I get excited at the prospect of migrating people to GNU/Linux by
> letting them run the one windows app they need... and every time I hit a
> brick wall, as qemu fails to actually do anything useful.
> 
> Try to take this approach: You are writing to a technically competent
> user (perhaps a sysadmin) who wants to run Windows under Linux with qemu
> (perhaps to migrate some of the company computers). He has a Windows
> install CD, he has qemu installed, and is ready to go. Please write
> something that this person can use to get Windows running under qemu.

Personally I found Qemu astonishingly easy to use, and simply not
needing a lot of documentation to get an OS installed from CD into it.

A couple of hours after installing Qemu, having never used it before,
I had a working virtual machine running CentOS, installed from a set
of virtual CDs.  An hour later, kqemu (the accelerator) was installed
and working.

I was most impressed by how easy it was and how little I had to tweak.

But then I wasn't trying to run Windows inside it.

Is Windows harder to install in it than some random Linux distro?

-- Jamie

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Rick Vernam]

qemu -cdrom /dev/cdrom -hda /path/to/your/image -boot d

On Wednesday 05 July 2006 16:19, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 17:12 -0400, Nathaniel McCallum wrote:
> > A person who is in your position (frustrated for lack of documentation)
> > is actually the most qualified person to write documentation.  Feel free
> > to ask any questions you have on this list.
>
> I would be happy to contribute a section. First I need to learn how qemu
> works though. Just the basics. On another list someone told me that the
> way qemu works is by first creating a blank image, then booting a CD
> from the virtual machine and installing.
>
> At this point I know how to make a blank image, and I know how to boot a
> CD:
>
> qemu -cdrom /dev/cdrom
>
> Now I need to figure out how to put these together so that if this CD
> can install an operating system, qemu will know to use the blank image I
> made (call it c.img) as a hard drive for its virtual machine.
>
> Could someone tell me how to do that?
>
> I'll be happy to write an intro tutorial for new users with the
> knowledge I gain.
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel.

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Nathaniel McCallum]

To create an empty Hard Drive image do:
    qemu-img create <filename> <size>
for example:
    qemu-img create windows.img 2G

You can also use the preferred ("qcow") image format by doing:
    qemu-img create -f qcow windows.img 2G

That gives you the ability to save snapshots, encrypt the image, etc.

Now we'll use this image:
    qemu -hda windows.img -cdrom /dev/cdrom -m 256 -boot d

That says:
    "-hda windows.img" == Use the file windows.img for the first disk
    "-cdrom /dev/cdrom" == Use /dev/cdrom for the CDROM
    "-m 256" == Use 256MB of memory
    "-boot d" == "Boot off of drive 'd', aka the cdrom"

Nathaniel


On Wed, 2006-07-05 at 22:19 +0100, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 17:12 -0400, Nathaniel McCallum wrote:
> > A person who is in your position (frustrated for lack of documentation)
> > is actually the most qualified person to write documentation.  Feel free
> > to ask any questions you have on this list.
> 
> I would be happy to contribute a section. First I need to learn how qemu
> works though. Just the basics. On another list someone told me that the
> way qemu works is by first creating a blank image, then booting a CD
> from the virtual machine and installing.
> 
> At this point I know how to make a blank image, and I know how to boot a
> CD:
> 
> qemu -cdrom /dev/cdrom
> 
> Now I need to figure out how to put these together so that if this CD
> can install an operating system, qemu will know to use the blank image I
> made (call it c.img) as a hard drive for its virtual machine.
> 
> Could someone tell me how to do that?
> 
> I'll be happy to write an intro tutorial for new users with the
> knowledge I gain.
> 
> Cheers,
> Daniel.
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Larry Brigman]

On 7/5/06, Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera@zmsl.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 17:12 -0400, Nathaniel McCallum wrote:
> > A person who is in your position (frustrated for lack of documentation)
> > is actually the most qualified person to write documentation.  Feel free
> > to ask any questions you have on this list.
>
> I would be happy to contribute a section. First I need to learn how qemu
> works though. Just the basics. On another list someone told me that the
> way qemu works is by first creating a blank image, then booting a CD
> from the virtual machine and installing.
>
> At this point I know how to make a blank image, and I know how to boot a
> CD:
>
> qemu -cdrom /dev/cdrom
>
> Now I need to figure out how to put these together so that if this CD
> can install an operating system, qemu will know to use the blank image I
> made (call it c.img) as a hard drive for its virtual machine.
>
> Could someone tell me how to do that?

With the blank image file do the following:
qemu -boot d -cdrom /dev/cdrom -hda blank_disk_image_file

the '-cdrom /dev/cdrom' option could also be -cdrom iso_image_file

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[benb]

Dan - Try reading. -Ben



> Hello,
>
> I write here because there doesn't seem to be a Bugzilla for qemu and
> whoever is responsible for the qemu documentation must be here.
>
> The documentation is quite worthless.
>
> I'm sure you don't like hearing that, but consider that it doesn't
> actually show the user how get qemu to do what qemu is supposed to di
> (ie. run a host OS). Ok, it tells me how to create a blank disk image,
> that's great, but how do I create a disk image with something bootable
> on it? Sorry, no information on that. I expect that the most typical use
> case for qemu is running Windows under Linux, so you'd expect to see
> some documentation for that, right? Nope, none. Sure, there are
> trouble-shooting tips, but what use are trouble-shooting tips if you
> can't even get started?
>
> I've looked at qemu several times over the past several years. Every
> time I get excited at the prospect of migrating people to GNU/Linux by
> letting them run the one windows app they need... and every time I hit a
> brick wall, as qemu fails to actually do anything useful.
>
> Try to take this approach: You are writing to a technically competent
> user (perhaps a sysadmin) who wants to run Windows under Linux with qemu
> (perhaps to migrate some of the company computers). He has a Windows
> install CD, he has qemu installed, and is ready to go. Please write
> something that this person can use to get Windows running under qemu.
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel.
> --
> http://opendocumentfellowship.org
>   "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
>   unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
>   Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
>         -- George Bernard Shaw
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
>

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Daniel Carrera]

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On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 22:25 +0100, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> Personally I found Qemu astonishingly easy to use, and simply not
> needing a lot of documentation to get an OS installed from CD into it.

I don't expect it needs a lot of documentation. It is a mistake to think
that "good" documentation equals "a lot" of documentation. Indeed, it's
often the opposite. Often a 1/2-page tutorial is all that's needed. But
if you take that information and scatter it around a 20-page manual, you
actually make it more difficult to figure out.

One of my favourite sayings: "If I had had more time I would have made
it shorter" :)

In any event, since you find it so easy to use, could you please tell me
how to use it?


> Is Windows harder to install in it than some random Linux distro?

I can't imagine why it should be. Not, I don't know how to install a
generic Linux distro either. Or for that matter, *any* OS at all. I have
a program called 'qemu' on my computer and I don't know what to do with
it. After reading the "documentation" I don't feel any closer to knowing
what to do than before reading it.

The only reason why now I have a fair idea of how it works is because
someone told me (on a different list). And it only took them 2
sentences. They said that the way qemu works is, you first create a
blank disk image and then boot the virtual machine from a CD ROM and
install normally.

There, that's just one sentence. That's an example of useful
documentation, and notice that it's not long. Indeed, it's quite short.
To make this complete, all I need now is a command to tell me how to
actually boot qemu and point it to both the CD DROM (e.g. the Ubuntu
install CD, or the Windows install CD) an my newly-created blank disk
image.

I should note another thing: Because the problem I'm pointing to is so
fundamental, you're much less likely to hear about it. You're not going
to hear about it much if the problem is that people can't even get
started. You're only going to hear about problems that occur after
someone gets started. I notice in your question that you assumed that I
knew how to install at least one OS with qemu; I don't. This is an
example of "just because nobody complains it doesn't mean that all
parachutes are perfect".

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Daniel Carrera]

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On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 16:25 -0500, Rick Vernam wrote:
> qemu -cdrom /dev/cdrom -hda /path/to/your/image -boot d

Thank you!!! You're the man!

I'll write a brief tutorial and post it here as promised.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Udo 'Robos' Puetz]

On Wed, 05.07.06, Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera@zmsl.com> wrote:

Hi List and Daniel.
I already answered him off-list to keep this IMHO noise down but now I have
to answer. Normally I only lurk...

> > Dan - Try reading. -Ben
> > 
> 
> Thank you, I did think of that, it didn't work. The documentation is not
> particularly useful. In particular, it doesn't tell you how to actually
> get an OS running under qemu, which, I'm sure, is the most typical use
> case for qemu.

__Straight from the docs__

-hda file
-hdb file 
-hdc file 
-hdd file 
Use file as hard disk 0, 1, 2 or 3 image (see section 3.6 Disk Images). 
-cdrom file 
Use file as CD-ROM image (you cannot use -hdc' and and -cdrom' at the same
time). You can use the host CD-ROM by using /dev/cdrom' as filename. 
-boot [a|c|d] 
Boot on floppy (a), hard disk (c) or CD-ROM (d). Hard disk boot is the
default.

That's in the first quarter of a medium long page and not really much
technical gibberish before that. What more does a thinking man need? 
I *guess* you, daniel, would have liked something where you had it all
pre-chewed so that you don't have to read.
Some other people said it before in other contexts, I repeat it for qemu:
it isn't free, you have to pay by reading stuff (short version)
And thinking. Very little reading and moderate thinking and you could have
refrained from IMO insulting the person (presumably fabrice) who put quite
some time and effort into writing a concise and meaningful documentation for
a really powerful and featureful program.
If you become agitated because some docs are (in your opinion) bad, think
about what you "paid" for it and - in my case - I still see the (bad) docs
but keep myself from insulting people who work for free and in their free time!!
Robos



> Cheers,
> Daniel.
> -- 
> http://opendocumentfellowship.org
>   "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
>   unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
>   Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
>         -- George Bernard Shaw



> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel


-- 
Robos - 
gpg --recv-keys --keyserver blackhole.pca.dfn.de 6EEADA09

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Daniel Carrera]

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On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 23:46 +0200, Udo 'Robos' Puetz wrote:
> __Straight from the docs__
> 
> -hda file
> -hdb file 

Yes, but the doc doesn't, for example, explain how you are supposed to
put a bootable image in "file". This is addressed by the excellent
responses from Nathaniel and Rick, and I included it in my proposed
tutorial.

This is the sort of thing that might be obvious to you in hindsight
(you're very involved in qemu) but won't be to a lot of people who are
technically competent, but don't already know qemu.

> I *guess* you, daniel, would have liked something where you had it all
> pre-chewed so that you don't have to read.

If what you mean is "good documentation", yes, that would be nice. Feel
free to use my proposed tutorial, I would be flattered if you did. And
yes, I do know a couple of things about documentation. Good
documentation gives clear steps and doesn't leave important things
unexplained. Step-by-step procedures, even if they don't exactly match
the reader's use case (but can be generalized), are a good idea.


> Some other people said it before in other contexts, I repeat it for qemu:
> it isn't free, you have to pay by reading stuff (short version)

That's a very sad attitude. That's not the attitude that I took when I
wrote the user guide for OpenOffice.org (http://oooauthors.org). I took
the attitude that documentation is critically important and that to
serve its role well one has to put a strong focus on clarity and
explanation. It is tempting to simply list all the features that a
program has. But a feature-based documentation is mostly useful as a
reference. That is, something you use once you have the mechanism down.
It is critically important to write task-based documentation. In other
words, ask "what does the user want to do?" and write down how to do it.

> If you become agitated because some docs are (in your opinion) bad, think
> about what you "paid" for it and - in my case - I still see the (bad) docs
> but keep myself from insulting people who work for free and in their free time!!

I have spent a lot of time working for free on my free time, so I know
the feeling. I still say that making things difficult and calling it
"payment" is not a good attitude. Other people in this list took the
approach of helping solve a problem and in turn I suggested a tutorial
that would cover this situation.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Jamie Lokier]

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> In any event, since you find it so easy to use, could you please tell me
> how to use it?

I don't use it any more, I only needed it for a couple of days as it
happens.  So I've completely forgotten everything, sorry ;-)

Well, 

> The only reason why now I have a fair idea of how it works is because
> someone told me (on a different list). And it only took them 2
> sentences. They said that the way qemu works is, you first create a
> blank disk image and then boot the virtual machine from a CD ROM and
> install normally.
>
  There, that's just one sentence. That's an example of useful
> documentation, and notice that it's not long. Indeed, it's quite
> short.

I guess that's where I found it clear to me.

You see, I started from the view that Qemu is a PC simulator.

So it must simulate a hard disk, a CD ROM, a network card, etc.
Everything just like a real PC, but in a window.

So the process of installing an OS on it is exactly the same as
installing an OS on an ordinary PC.  Which is usually from CD these
days, but you can use a floppy too.

The only difference really is everything is simulated, so you use a
file containing a CD image instead of a real CD, a file containing a
hard disk image instead of a real hard disk, some options to simulate
a network card instead of a real one, etc., some options to simulate a
mouse and video card, etc.

The actual procedure for installing Windows or whatever is pretty much
identical to doing it on a real PC.

That doesn't mean it's easy, but the hard (or tedious) part is
generally not with using Qemu, but with using a PC to install Windows
or whatever.

That can be quite difficult sometimes, but those wouldn't really be
Qemu questions as long as it's simulating a PC ok - they'd be OS
installation questions for any kind of PC.

> To make this complete, all I need now is a command to tell me how
> to actually boot qemu and point it to both the CD DROM (e.g. the
> Ubuntu install CD, or the Windows install CD) an my newly-created
> blank disk image.

I think Nathaniel just posted a list of command line options.

Though, "qemu --help" and "man qemu" seem to list them too.

> I should note another thing: Because the problem
> I'm pointing to is so fundamental, you're much less likely to hear
> about it. You're not going to hear about it much if the problem is
> that people can't even get started. You're only going to hear about
> problems that occur after someone gets started. I notice in your
> question that you assumed that I knew how to install at least one OS
> with qemu; I don't.

Actually I didn't assume that.

I assumed you knew how to install at least one OS on an ordinary PC.

Installing it in Qemu is pretty much the same, other than using
simulated devices instead of real ones.  And the simulated devices are
really easy to specify.  There's a command line option to say that a
.iso file contains a simulated CD-ROM image (the same .iso file you'd
use for writing a CD-ROM), another option to say what file contains
the simulated hard disk, another option to say that you want to boot
from CD-ROM (simulated) instead of simulated floppy.  I don't have
Qemu installed right now to say what those options are exactly, but I
remember that's not much more than those, if anything, and then you
get a window which looks just like a PC booting off CD-ROM... and you
do the same as you would with a real one from then on.
   
-- Jamie

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Jamie Lokier]

Udo 'Robos' Puetz wrote:
> -hda file
> -hdb file 
> -hdc file 
> -hdd file 
> Use file as hard disk 0, 1, 2 or 3 image (see section 3.6 Disk Images). 
> -cdrom file 
> Use file as CD-ROM image (you cannot use -hdc' and and -cdrom' at the same
> time). You can use the host CD-ROM by using /dev/cdrom' as filename. 
> -boot [a|c|d] 
> Boot on floppy (a), hard disk (c) or CD-ROM (d). Hard disk boot is the
> default.
> 
> That's in the first quarter of a medium long page and not really much
> technical gibberish before that. What more does a thinking man need? 
> I *guess* you, daniel, would have liked something where you had it all
> pre-chewed so that you don't have to read.

No, I'm guessing that concepts like "use file as a hard disk image"
and "use file as CD-ROM image" and "boot on floppy/disk/CD-ROM (does
that mean the _real_ floppy etc.?)" are alien to him, just as much as
they are second nature to us.  He just wants to run Windows apps,
remember; his interest in virtual machines probably isn't even
slightly technical.

> but keep myself from insulting people who work for free and in their
> free time!!

Indeed, the first post started with an insult and ended with a
one-sided demand "write this for me".  That's not on, from someone who
isn't paying, to _tell_ people to give up their personal time for free.

-- Jamie

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Ronnie Misra]

I think it's great that you've offered to write documentation for  
qemu, but perhaps the discussion would have been smoother if you'd  
started with:

On Jul 5, 2006, at 3:01 PM, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> It is tempting to simply list all the features that a
> program has. But a feature-based documentation is mostly useful as a
> reference.

rather than:

On Jul 5, 2006, at 1:57 PM, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> The documentation is quite worthless.

Just my two cents...

Ronnie

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Daniel Carrera]

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On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 15:34 -0700, Ronnie Misra wrote:
> I think it's great that you've offered to write documentation for  
> qemu, but perhaps the discussion would have been smoother if you'd  
> started with:

Point taken. I admit I have little patience for poor documentation.
Especially when it's something fundamental in a way that probably causes
users to give up early, so the writer never finds out that there's a
problem. I'm trying to be polite now.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[NyOS]

Hi!

---------------------------------------
Let's see an example: installation.

Qemu is a virtual machine program. So, that's a machine in the machine.
There is a computer, called "host", which runs an OS, called Host OS, and  
Qemu (besides other programs).
Qemu is a simple program from the host point of view.

To use it, you need at least one disc image. You can create one with the  
qemu-img command:
e.g.:
qemu-img create my_os.img 2G

That will create a simple file (2GiB size), called my_os.img

Suppose you have an install iso image, called my_os_install.iso

The following command:
qemu -cdrom my_os_install.iso -hda my_os.img -boot d

will run a virtual machine. It will have two drives, the primary master is  
that 2GiB image. The secondary master is that cdrom image.
Note that (from the host point of view) those are still two plain files.  
But from the guest OS (running in the VM), those are real drives.

So, the virtual machine is started. It shows in a window what would be  
shown in the monitor if that was a real hardware.

First you probably need to create partitions, format them, run installer  
to copy files, and so on. If it needs to reboot the guest, feel free to do  
that, Qemu will not stop working.

If you don't like windowed mode, press ctrl-alt-f to go fullscreen. When  
you'd like to use your host OS, press ctrl-alt to release mouse grab. You  
can return to the VM any time.

When you stop guest OS, and the virtual machine halts, Qemu exits. But the  
image file is modified (the guest OS remains on that), so, you don't have  
to reinstall it every time.

If you want, you can compress that to backup, or do anything.

Note that closing the VM window is like unplugging the computer. It might  
explain next time.

2nd example: adding sound and user networking, and some more memory.

qemu -m 256 -soundhw sb16 -hda my_os.img -localtime -net nic -net user
-m 256
allocate 256 MiB RAM for the guest (read note)
-soundhw sb16
just like putting a soundblaster card into the slot
-localtime
in case the host OS runs in local time (and not GMT)
-net nic -net user
called "user mode" networking, which is the simplest way to reach internet  
 from inside. It just works (getting IP address from DHCP automatically)

(If you call qemu without parameters, it will show its possibile parameter  
list)

note: on some systems, you need the following commands (as root) to add  
more memory:

umount /dev/shm
mount -t tmpfs -o size=512m none /dev/shm


3rd example: making kqemu working (I'm not sure, please correct it)

(as root) type the following:
mknod /dev/kqemu c 250 0
if it worked, the ls -al /dev/kqemu command would answer like that:
crw-rw-rw- 1 root 250, 0 Mar 31 01:00 /dev/kqemu

call
modprobe kqemu
to load kqemu kernel module (later you might install it somwhere into  
/lib/modules/...)

If you start Qemu now, it will probably run significantly faster.

---------------------------------------

Use that 'doc' for whatever purpose you want. I don't need it anymore :).
(but please ask a native speaker to rewrite it :) )

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[benb]

What OS are you using?

in linux: (assumptions: you want to boot from cd and your cdrom is located
at /dev/cdrom)

#cd /home/
#qemu-img create windows.img 500M
#qemu -boot d -cdrom /dev/cdrom -hda windows.img



> Daniel Carrera wrote:
>> In any event, since you find it so easy to use, could you please tell me
>> how to use it?
>
> I don't use it any more, I only needed it for a couple of days as it
> happens.  So I've completely forgotten everything, sorry ;-)
>
> Well,
>
>> The only reason why now I have a fair idea of how it works is because
>> someone told me (on a different list). And it only took them 2
>> sentences. They said that the way qemu works is, you first create a
>> blank disk image and then boot the virtual machine from a CD ROM and
>> install normally.
>>
>   There, that's just one sentence. That's an example of useful
>> documentation, and notice that it's not long. Indeed, it's quite
>> short.
>
> I guess that's where I found it clear to me.
>
> You see, I started from the view that Qemu is a PC simulator.
>
> So it must simulate a hard disk, a CD ROM, a network card, etc.
> Everything just like a real PC, but in a window.
>
> So the process of installing an OS on it is exactly the same as
> installing an OS on an ordinary PC.  Which is usually from CD these
> days, but you can use a floppy too.
>
> The only difference really is everything is simulated, so you use a
> file containing a CD image instead of a real CD, a file containing a
> hard disk image instead of a real hard disk, some options to simulate
> a network card instead of a real one, etc., some options to simulate a
> mouse and video card, etc.
>
> The actual procedure for installing Windows or whatever is pretty much
> identical to doing it on a real PC.
>
> That doesn't mean it's easy, but the hard (or tedious) part is
> generally not with using Qemu, but with using a PC to install Windows
> or whatever.
>
> That can be quite difficult sometimes, but those wouldn't really be
> Qemu questions as long as it's simulating a PC ok - they'd be OS
> installation questions for any kind of PC.
>
>> To make this complete, all I need now is a command to tell me how
>> to actually boot qemu and point it to both the CD DROM (e.g. the
>> Ubuntu install CD, or the Windows install CD) an my newly-created
>> blank disk image.
>
> I think Nathaniel just posted a list of command line options.
>
> Though, "qemu --help" and "man qemu" seem to list them too.
>
>> I should note another thing: Because the problem
>> I'm pointing to is so fundamental, you're much less likely to hear
>> about it. You're not going to hear about it much if the problem is
>> that people can't even get started. You're only going to hear about
>> problems that occur after someone gets started. I notice in your
>> question that you assumed that I knew how to install at least one OS
>> with qemu; I don't.
>
> Actually I didn't assume that.
>
> I assumed you knew how to install at least one OS on an ordinary PC.
>
> Installing it in Qemu is pretty much the same, other than using
> simulated devices instead of real ones.  And the simulated devices are
> really easy to specify.  There's a command line option to say that a
> .iso file contains a simulated CD-ROM image (the same .iso file you'd
> use for writing a CD-ROM), another option to say what file contains
> the simulated hard disk, another option to say that you want to boot
> from CD-ROM (simulated) instead of simulated floppy.  I don't have
> Qemu installed right now to say what those options are exactly, but I
> remember that's not much more than those, if anything, and then you
> get a window which looks just like a PC booting off CD-ROM... and you
> do the same as you would with a real one from then on.
>
> -- Jamie
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
>

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Flavio Visentin]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> I'll write a brief tutorial and post it here as promised.

This is qemu-DEVEL, not qemu-HELP; it's supposed to be a place where to
chat about the development and related issues (although lack of doc is
effectively a development issue). If you need support or doc on using
qemu, you can find a lot of info on:

http://qemu.dad-answers.com/
http://qemu.dad-answers.com/viewforum.php?f=22&sid=7630905349730e8ce3c61126f740c109


- --
Flavio Visentin
GPG Key: http://www.zipman.it/gpgkey.asc

There are only 10 types of people in this world:
those who understand binary, and those who don't.
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=EKpN
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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Daniel Carrera]

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On Thu, 2006-06-07 at 00:48 +0200, Flavio Visentin wrote:
> This is qemu-DEVEL, not qemu-HELP; it's supposed to be a place where to
> chat about the development and related issues (although lack of doc is
> effectively a development issue).

Yes. As I wrote in my initial email, I wrote here because the doc is a
development issue and I couldn't find a Bugzilla. I'm grateful that
several people showed me how to use qemu although that's not what this
list is for. In return, I offered a sample tutorial that I feel
addresses the development issue I pointed out in my first post.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[benb]

What OS are you using?

in linux: (assumptions: you want to boot from cd and your cdrom is located
at /dev/cdrom)

#cd /home/
#qemu-img create windows.img 500M
#qemu -boot d -cdrom /dev/cdrom -hda windows.img






> On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 15:34 -0700, Ronnie Misra wrote:
>> I think it's great that you've offered to write documentation for
>> qemu, but perhaps the discussion would have been smoother if you'd
>> started with:
>
> Point taken. I admit I have little patience for poor documentation.
> Especially when it's something fundamental in a way that probably causes
> users to give up early, so the writer never finds out that there's a
> problem. I'm trying to be polite now.
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel.
> --
> http://opendocumentfellowship.org
>   "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
>   unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
>   Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
>         -- George Bernard Shaw
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
>

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[WaxDragon]

The "unoffical" FAQ has several usage examples.  qemu.org links to the
FAQ on this wiki, but examples are not in the FAQ, so you would have
to look for it.

http://kidsquid.com/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/

WD
-- 
<GedMurphy> why does the size matter?

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[benb]

That being said, help is given to those who ask...not offend




> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Daniel Carrera wrote:
>> I'll write a brief tutorial and post it here as promised.
>
> This is qemu-DEVEL, not qemu-HELP; it's supposed to be a place where to
> chat about the development and related issues (although lack of doc is
> effectively a development issue). If you need support or doc on using
> qemu, you can find a lot of info on:
>
> http://qemu.dad-answers.com/
> http://qemu.dad-answers.com/viewforum.php?f=22&sid=7630905349730e8ce3c61126f740c109
>
>
> - --
> Flavio Visentin
> GPG Key: http://www.zipman.it/gpgkey.asc
>
> There are only 10 types of people in this world:
> those who understand binary, and those who don't.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQFErEHBusUmHkh1cnoRAhl7AJ0TxCHVfmRkRpRerQwEg+LkZ4s54gCfaqnv
> zGsBPODODTGEqp8BA9d6wOk=
> =EKpN
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
>

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[benb]

Were you able to get it going?





> On Thu, 2006-06-07 at 00:48 +0200, Flavio Visentin wrote:
>> This is qemu-DEVEL, not qemu-HELP; it's supposed to be a place where to
>> chat about the development and related issues (although lack of doc is
>> effectively a development issue).
>
> Yes. As I wrote in my initial email, I wrote here because the doc is a
> development issue and I couldn't find a Bugzilla. I'm grateful that
> several people showed me how to use qemu although that's not what this
> list is for. In return, I offered a sample tutorial that I feel
> addresses the development issue I pointed out in my first post.
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel.
> --
> http://opendocumentfellowship.org
>   "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
>   unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
>   Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
>         -- George Bernard Shaw
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
>

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Flavio Visentin]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

benb@ewess.com wrote:
> That being said, help is given to those who ask...not offend

This was not meant to be offensive in any way.

- --
Flavio Visentin
GPG Key: http://www.zipman.it/gpgkey.asc

There are only 10 types of people in this world:
those who understand binary, and those who don't.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Mike Swanson]

On Wednesday 05 July 2006 15:01, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Yes, but the doc doesn't, for example, explain how you are supposed to
> put a bootable image in "file". This is addressed by the excellent
> responses from Nathaniel and Rick, and I included it in my proposed
> tutorial.
>
> This is the sort of thing that might be obvious to you in hindsight
> (you're very involved in qemu) but won't be to a lot of people who are
> technically competent, but don't already know qemu.

It doesn't require any involvement to understand, it's just like a PC. You 
don't buy hard-disks with your operating system and software of choice being 
pre-installed, you must do it yourself. The same applies to QEMU.

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[benb]

haha i did not intend to direct that to you. sorry -Ben


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> benb@ewess.com wrote:
>> That being said, help is given to those who ask...not offend
>
> This was not meant to be offensive in any way.
>
> - --
> Flavio Visentin
> GPG Key: http://www.zipman.it/gpgkey.asc
>
> There are only 10 types of people in this world:
> those who understand binary, and those who don't.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQFErEz3usUmHkh1cnoRApX4AJ0aMKf1nkphpU4xW1zfeQKQZXkCFgCeIyNy
> I7Fvce3ZcWFdmpukkp8HAtg=
> =lI4X
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
>

Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[Daniel Carrera]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1326 bytes --]

On Wed, 2006-05-07 at 17:00 -0700, Mike Swanson wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 July 2006 15:01, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> > Yes, but the doc doesn't, for example, explain how you are supposed to
> > put a bootable image in "file". This is addressed by the excellent
> > responses from Nathaniel and Rick, and I included it in my proposed
> > tutorial.
> >
> > This is the sort of thing that might be obvious to you in hindsight
> > (you're very involved in qemu) but won't be to a lot of people who are
> > technically competent, but don't already know qemu.
> 
> It doesn't require any involvement to understand,

I didn't say it required involvement to understand. I understand it now,
and it only took 1 sentence to explain it. But that sentence really has
to be in the documentation, and where it can be found.

You are confusing complexity with poor documentation. Qemu is not hard
to use, it is poorly documented. Big difference. The way qemu works is
not at all obvious, it needs to be explained, even if the explanation
only takes 1 paragraph.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [Qemu-devel] No useful documentation.

[denis.scheidt]

Hi all,

I'm currently writing such a guide, trying to explain step by step the whole
thing, from compilation to guest OS installation.
As I'm a Windows user, this guide will focus on using Qemu on a Windows host.
Maybe someone can extend it to a Linux host.

This guide will be in French... but if anybody wants to translate...

I hope I can put it online in a few weeks.

Long life to Qemu !

[Qemu-devel] Re: No useful documentation.

[Emmanuel Charpentier]

Dear Daniel,

Daniel Carrera a écrit :
> Hello,
> 
> I write here because there doesn't seem to be a Bugzilla for qemu and
> whoever is responsible for the qemu documentation must be here.
> 
> The documentation is quite worthless.

I cannot agree. Qemu doc is (more or less) adequate *for people already 
familiar with coping with bare hardware*. Read along

> I'm sure you don't like hearing that, but consider that it doesn't
> actually show the user how get qemu to do what qemu is supposed to di
> (ie. run a host OS). Ok, it tells me how to create a blank disk image,
> that's great, but how do I create a disk image with something bootable
> on it? Sorry, no information on that. I expect that the most typical use
> case for qemu is running Windows under Linux, so you'd expect to see
> some documentation for that, right? Nope, none. Sure, there are
> trouble-shooting tips, but what use are trouble-shooting tips if you
> can't even get started?

The information you're lacking seems not to be how to use QEMU, but 
rather how to install an OS on a bare ("virgin") system. This is not 
QUEM related. This was universal knowledge back in early PCs day (PC-XT, 
to be precise) ; the quasi-universal dissemination of preinstalled OSes 
(thanks to Microsoft's and Apple's grip on the market), made this 
knowledge unuseful for most of users, therefore more and more a nerd's 
knowledge.

In short : in order to install an OS on bare hardware, you have to boot 
this hardware on something coming in removable media, then use this 
installer to install the OS.

In olden days of yore, you booted on diskettes (or even on a tape (yuck 
!)), ad used the resulting running mini-OS to read another support 
(diskettes or tape(s) again) to install its content on the hardware hard 
disk. Nowadays, the boot medium and the OS distribution medium are 
merged in a common CDROM. So you boot an installer from  the (first) 
installation CDROM and use this installer to install the OS on the disk. 
Since booting and installing come from the same medium, the distinction 
became more and more blurred, thanks to the willingness of distribution 
creators more and more willing to "help" "unskilled" end-users. Hence 
the confusion...

With QEMU, the process is the same in principle, but slightly different 
in realization, due to the difference between real and simulated hardware.

You have to have an installation medium for your target OS, either 
physical (e. g. a cd-rom) or virttual (e. g. a cd-rom ISO image).
You start  by creating a *virgin* hard disk image (with qcow).
You then boot qemy by pointing it to your newly-created hard disk image 
as your first hard disk (e. g. -hda myharddisk.qcow), to your 
distribution medium or medium image as a cdrom (e. g. -cdrom /dev/cdrom, 
or -cdrom mymediumimage.iso), and telling qemu to boot on the 
distribution medium (image) with -boot d.

The installer boots on the emulated system and hand-helds you to install 
the target OS on what it thinks is the primary hard disk. At the end of 
installation, you will be prompted to reboot your system on 
yournewly-installed OS. At this stage, you should terminate QEMU and 
restarting it with the sames options as before, *except for the -boot 
option,*, which you change to "-boot c". This directs QEMU to boot on 
your newly-loaded hard disk.

> I've looked at qemu several times over the past several years. Every
> time I get excited at the prospect of migrating people to GNU/Linux by
> letting them run the one windows app they need...

For many cases (but not all, by a long way !), wine is a better solution 
to run a couple of "irreplacable" (??) Windows apps. Installing a full 
virtual machine and OS to run one app is a bit like using a sledgehammar 
to swat a fly...

>                                                    and every time I hit a
> brick wall, as qemu fails to actually do anything useful.
> 
> Try to take this approach: You are writing to a technically competent
> user (perhaps a sysadmin) who wants to run Windows under Linux with qemu
> (perhaps to migrate some of the company computers). He has a Windows
> install CD, he has qemu installed, and is ready to go. Please write
> something that this person can use to get Windows running under qemu.


I have to point out that any sysadmin worth his salt would have serious 
knowledge of system installation procedures, much more than what I've 
sketched above. This is ultrabasic knowledge to a sysadmin...

					Emmanuel Charpentier
				Remembering way more CP/M, TRSDOS
				VMS, MS-DOS, Unix, Windows and Linux
				installations than he wishes to
				acknowledge... Shit, I even remember
				how to boot a Mini-6 (a nice Bull mini
				from the 70's) !