Well hello, I'd like to share a useful tool that I use almost every day now. It's called qemu and it's a processor emulator. It's free and open source.

 

 

 

So, why use qemu? What the heck can a processor emulator do for you?

 

 

 

Well, I've found that running operating systems through the processor emulator brings a pretty good way to fully run an operating system without really 'installing it.'

 

 

 

It's also pretty obvious that emulating a processor for an operating system native to your processor is tolling and slow. There is an acceleration module (kqemu) that allows full support of running a PC-operating system on a PC-processor with no processor emulation (Freeware software, doubtfully becoming open-source).

 

 

 

This also allows you to emulate operating systems that your processor does not support. Such as x86_64 Windows/UNIX, PowerPC Mac, MIPS x, etc. It may even allow Linux users to run this applications without running the operating system.

 

 

 

I will tell you how to do some basic things. This is coming from a UNIX system but it should be very easy to append to Windows or Mac.

 

 

 

qemu-img create disk.img

 

kyle@sourcemage:~$ qemu-img create disk.img 5G

Formating 'disk.img', fmt=raw, size=5242880 kB

 

 

 

 

 

This will create disk.img, or the file that your operating system will be installed on. If your looking to emulate a 'live disk' there's no real need to worry about this.

 

 

 

qemu -hda disk.img -cdrom operatingsystemImage.iso -boot d

 

This will specify it's harddrive as disk.img, the cdrom (What to boot) as operatingsystemImage.iso and to boot from disk.

 

 

 

Of course, you change operatingsystemImage.iso to the location of your operating system's image file. Or you can specify the location to your cdrom drive if you have the operating system's cdrom.

 

 

 

qemu -hda disk.img -cdrom /dev/hda -boot d

 

This will boot off of your /dev/hda (The disk drive on my computer.) You will most likely have to change it for yours. /dev/hdb is the primary device's slave and /dev/hdc is the secondary device, and so on (In UNIX).

 

 

 

Now follow the regular procedures to installing your operating system. It should recognize your harddrive as 5gb (Because we specified '5G' in your qemu-img command).

 

 

 

Now, once you have your operating system installed, we must boot off of it.

 

 

 

qemu -hda disk.img -cdrom /dev/hda -smb share -boot c

 

 

 

This will boot off of disk.img (Your -hda), specifying /dev/hda as the cdrom (So it can access cdroms), and enabling file sharing in different operating systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoy. qemu is a GREAT tool and here are some screenshots from using it. I use it for many other operating system but no screenshot

 

:(

Yeah, Qemu is great. I used to use it to create a Virtual Drive for use with VMWare Player (the only free VMWare product). They have since released VMWare server as a free product and it makes drives for you, so I no longer need Qemu.

wow this seems intresting, ill have to try it eventually. Funny name though