How To Install And Configure QEMU In Ubuntu

1.Install QEMU in Ubuntu

QEMU is available in the default repositories of Ubuntu. So, we can install it with front-end tool Virt Manager using command:

sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm qemu virt-manager virt-viewer libvirt-bin

After installing the above packages, reboot your system.

2. Create the Virtual hard disk image

First create the Virtual hard disk image for the new VM. For example, let us create 20GB size hard disk image.

qemu-img create aios.img 20G

Or you can create the image with the Qemu’s default disk image format ‘qcow2’ using the following command

qemu-img create -f qcow2 ubuntu.qcow 40G

3. Install

qemu-system-x86_64 -hda ubuntu.qcow -boot d -cdrom  /data/disk1/install/ubuntu-16.04.6-desktop-amd64.iso -m 1024 -machine ubuntu,accel=kvm

For 32bit VM, use:

qemu-system-xi386 -hda ubuntu.img -boot d -cdrom /home/sk/Soft_Backup/OSImages/New/ubuntu-15.04-server-i386.iso -m 1024 -machine ubuntu,accel=kvm

Here, I have allocated 1024MB RAM to my guest OS.

4.start

After the installation is done, the system can be booted with

qemu-system-x86_64  -hda ubuntu.qcow -m 1024 -machine ubuntu,accel=kvm