QEMU
Author: r | 2025-04-24
QEMU for Beginner and Advanced tags: `2025/09` `qemu` `qemu-user` `qemu-architecture` `qem QEMU for Beginner and Advanced - HackMD QEMU for Beginner and Advanced tags: `2025/09` `qemu` `qemu-user` `qemu-architecture` `qemu-system-architecture` :::info () QEMU for beginner, starting from few simple examples so
qemus/qemu: QEMU in a Docker container. - GitHub
House: KVM is like the developer who builds the house but doesn’t do the interior design, while QEMU is like the interior design company that may not build the house well but does an excellent job with the décor. Thus, we use KVM to build the house (hardware virtualization, simulating CPU and memory resources) and QEMU for decoration (software emulation, simulating network cards, graphics cards, storage controllers, and hard disks). A QEMU virtual machine is a pure software implementation that can run independently without the KVM module, but its performance is lower. QEMU provides a full set of virtualization features, including processor virtualization, memory virtualization, and I/O device virtualization. QEMU is a user-space process that must call the functionality provided by KVM via a specific interface. From QEMU’s perspective, during the VM's operation, QEMU uses system call interfaces provided by KVM to configure the kernel, and KVM is responsible for running the VM in a special mode on the processor. KVM only simulates CPU and memory, meaning that a guest operating system can run on the host, but you cannot see or interact with it. So, someone modified the QEMU code, replacing its CPU and memory emulation with KVM, while leaving the network card, display, etc., to QEMU. Hence, QEMU + KVM together form a complete virtualization platform. KVM is just a kernel module, and users cannot interact with the kernel module directly. They need to use user-space management tools, and QEMU is one of these tools. KVM and QEMU complement each other; QEMU achieves hardware virtualization speed through KVM, and KVM relies on QEMU to emulate devices. For KVM, other user-space tools exist, such as libvirt, virsh, and virt-manager developed by RedHat, and QEMU is not the only option. So, the simple and direct understanding is: QEMU is a
qemu/docs/tools/qemu-img.rst at master qemu/qemu - GitHub
IntroductionThe aim is to get Kali Linux running on an Apple M1 Macbook Air with QEMU with a reasonable level of performance. The performance part is a work in progress. I'm currently tweaking the QEMU startup command, experimenting with different parameters.StepsInstall QEMUQEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer ( Since VirtualBox doesn't suport Apple M1, QEMU is increasingly becoming a go-to option for running other operating system UIs.Let's install QEMU using Homebrew.brew install qemuDownload Kali Linux 64-bit installation imageGo to the installer that matches your need from the 64-bit section.Why x86 64-bit and not the Apple M1 installer?! Because I was not able to get the Kali Linux Applie M1 installer running using QEMU. That's why! :)Create a directory for your installation and initialise a QEMU virtual vard diskmkdir qemu-m1-kalilinucd qemu-m1-kalilinuqemu-img create -f qcow2 kali.qcow2 30GCopy the Kali Linux 64-bit installation image to the same dorectoryStart QEMU with the Kali installer mounted as a CD ROMqemu-system-x86_64 -hda kali.qcow2 -boot d -cdrom kali-linux-2022.3-installer-amd64.iso -m 2G -usb -machine pcThis will launch a QEMU window to kickoff your Kali Linux installation. Step through the installation wizard. Depending on the installation contents you can expect this to take hours to complete.Once the installation completes the system will reboot. Since you still have the installation cd-rom image mounted, you will come back to the start of the installation wizard after rebooting. Please quit QEMU at this point.Launch your Kali Linux installationqemu-system-x86_64 -hda kali.qcow2 -boot d -m 2G -usb -machine q35 -cpuGitHub - qemu/qemu: Official QEMU mirror. Please
Hardware platform, which is much slower than hardware-assisted virtualization.2. What is the purpose of libvirt in KVM/QEMU?Libvirt is a toolkit and API used to manage virtualization platforms. It abstracts the management of VMs, networks, storage, and other resources. It simplifies managing KVM and QEMU through command-line tools (like virsh) or graphical tools like virt-manager.3. What is the difference between a full virtualization and para-virtualization in KVM/QEMU?Full virtualization: The guest OS is unaware it is running on a virtualized system. KVM provides complete isolation from the host system and simulates the entire hardware environment.Para-virtualization: The guest OS is modified to be aware that it’s running in a virtualized environment. It communicates directly with the hypervisor (KVM) for improved performance.ConclusionBoth QEMU and KVM are powerful virtualization technologies, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. If you need cross-platform support, flexibility, and ease of use, QEMU might be better suited for your virtualization needs. On the other hand, if performance, efficiency, and seamless integration with Linux are your priorities, KVM is a highly suitable choice. Ultimately, the decision between QEMU and KVM depends on your specific requirements, workload characteristics, and familiarity with Linux systems.. QEMU for Beginner and Advanced tags: `2025/09` `qemu` `qemu-user` `qemu-architecture` `qem QEMU for Beginner and Advanced - HackMD QEMU for Beginner and Advanced tags: `2025/09` `qemu` `qemu-user` `qemu-architecture` `qemu-system-architecture` :::info () QEMU for beginner, starting from few simple examples so QEMU for Beginner and Advanced tags: `2025/09` `qemu` `qemu-user` `qemu-architecture` `qem QEMU for Beginner and Advanced - HackMD QEMU for BeginnerGitHub - qemu/qemu: Official QEMU mirror. Please see
Computer emulator, and KVM provides acceleration for the emulation of the computer.QEMU vs. KVM: DifferencesBoth KVM and QEMU are powerful technologies, and you can use them depending on the project size and objectives. To compare QEMU and KVM, let’s analyze these two technologies in terms of performance, device support, management, and usability:1. Performance and Efficiency Due to its full-system emulation approach, QEMU is more resource-intensive than KVM. Since QEMU simulates both hardware and the guest operating system, it incurs higher overhead, which could lead to performance bottlenecks, especially for compute-intensive workloads. Additionally, QEMU relies on software virtualization, which may limit its ability to achieve optimal performance in some scenarios. KVM, as a kernel-based virtualization technology, enjoys the advantages of hardware-assisted virtualization. This allows KVM to directly access the host processor’s virtualization extensions, reducing overhead and improving performance. By leveraging the host kernel for memory management and CPU scheduling, KVM ensures that virtual machines run efficiently at near-native speeds. For resource-intensive workloads and performance-critical applications, KVM usually outperforms QEMU.2. Device and Platform Support QEMU focuses on full-system emulation, offering broad device and platform support. QEMU can simulate many hardware components, making it a versatile option for running virtual machines on different architectures, including x86, ARM, PowerPC, and others. This versatility makes QEMU an excellent choice for developers and testers who need to work across multiple platforms. On the other hand, KVM relies on hardware-assisted virtualization, so its platform support is limited to systems with specific virtualization extensions (such as Intel VT or AMD-V). Thus, KVM is mainly suitable for x86-based systems and is less versatile than QEMU when it comes to cross-platform virtualization.3. Ease of Use and Management QEMU’s full-system emulation approach provides a more intuitive and user-friendly interface. Setting up virtual machines with QEMU is relatively simple, and its compatibilityqemu-nvme_lightnvm/qemu-options.hx at master BaiShuhan/qemu-nvme_lightnvm
Questions over 9 months old tho… byte0 April 18, 2021, 2:35pm 4 I discovered starwind’s V2V converter and did it that way. I am still interested to know if qemu-img will work though. Thank you for the reply. vhns April 18, 2021, 8:17pm 5 Ok, so the issue seems to be with Hyper-V rather than with VMWare or QEMU. The command you used did end up in an error for me:PS C:\Users\vhns\Downloads\Microsoft Windows 95 [VMware VM]\Windows 95> & 'C:\Program Files\qemu\qemu-img.exe' convert -p -f vmdk -O vhdx -o subformat=dynamic '.\Windows 95.vmdk' '.\Windows 95.vhdx'** (0.00/100%)ERROR:../../../util/oslib-win32.c:61:qemu_try_memalign: assertion failed: (is_power_of_2(alignment))PS C:\Users\vhns\Downloads\Microsoft Windows 95 [VMware VM]\Windows 95>Changing it to:PS C:\Users\vhns\Downloads\Microsoft Windows 95 [VMware VM]\Windows 95> & 'C:\Program Files\qemu\qemu-img.exe' convert -p -f vmdk -O vpc '.\Windows 95.vmdk' '.\Windows 95.vhd' (100.00/100%)PS C:\Users\vhns\Downloads\Microsoft Windows 95 [VMware VM]\Windows 95>did the trick.Now, that image still throws the same error in Hyper-V, both when trying to boot it directly or converting it from VHD to VHDX through Hyper-V’s manager wizard. I was able to boot the image just fine through QEMU (yes, you can boot any of the qemu-img supported image files in QEMU itself). byte0 April 18, 2021, 11:30pm 6 The reason for the conversion was to run in Hyper-V. Thankfully starwind’s tool works. thro April 19, 2021, 1:36am 7 If you’re willing to use windows to do it, star wind v2v converter can do it and is free.edit:ah, beaten. good to see others have discovered it too If you install SCVMM it can control vCenter and do conversions from vSphere to HyperV as well.cqu611/qemu-ufs: Qemu-ufs devel. based on qemu
Welcome to OpenVMS (TM) x86_64 Operating System, Version V9.2-1 Username: VSI OpenVMS V9.2-1 for x86-64 is now available and replaces V9.2 for supporting your efforts to migrate your applications to x86. What is OpenVMS on x86 VMS Software, Inc. has migrated OpenVMS and its layered products to the industry standard x86_64 architecture to help customers protect their investment in OpenVMS infrastructure, especially in virtualized environments and in the cloud. This commercial release of OpenVMS V9.2-1 is available for porting development and production use on x86-64. VMS Software will keep working on future releases that will provide more functionality and feature more layered and open source products.For hypervisors on which OpenVMS has been tested by VSI, please scroll down to the bottom of the page. To determine if the CPU in your system provides the features required to run OpenVMS V9.2 or later, run this Python script. Information on the virtual machine hosts tested by VSI is provided below and in the release notes. Depending on your source language and the availability of native compilers, you can compile your code using OpenVMS I64-hosted cross-compilers or natively on OpenVMS x86.See lists of open source and layered products that work with OpenVMS here (filter by architecture to see those available on x86). Service Platform VSI Service Platform is used to distribute OpenVMS for x86. Watch the below video that explains how to use the VSI Service Platform to download software packages and report bugs (it was made for V9.1, but the same instructions apply for later versions). Documentation CPU Requirements Intel or AMD x86 CPU 64-bit Instruction set NX processor bit (NX) Streaming SIMD Extensions 4.1 (SSE4.1) Virtualization Technology (VT-x/AMD-V) XSAVE instructions Time Stamp Counter (TSC) Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) Memory Type Range Registers (MTRR) Most Intel CPUs from 2016/AMD (Zen) CPUs from 2017 and later support these processor features. Optional Features: Process-Context Identifier feature (PCID) Extended Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (x2APIC) XSAVEOPT instruction FSGSBASE instructions Microarchitectural Data Sampling Mitigation (MD_CLEAR) Tested Platforms For more about compatibility issues, refer to the Release Notes. Virtual Machines Tested: KVM OpenSUSE Leap 15.4; QEMU emulator version 6.2.0 (qemu-6.2.0 (6.2.0-150400.37.8.2)) Rocky Linux 8.6; QEMU emulator version 6.2.0 (qemu-kvm-6.2.0-11.module+el8.6.0+1052+ff61d164.6) Rocky Linux 8.7; QEMU emulator version 6.2.0 (qemu-kvm-6.2.0-21.module+el8.7.0+1125+fc135c6d.2) Rocky Linux 9.0; QEMU emulator version 4.2.0 (qemu-kvm-4.2.0-59.module+el8.5.0+726+ce09ee88.1) Rocky Linux 9.1; QEMU emulator version 7.0.0-13 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS; QEMU emulator version 6.2.0 (Debian 1:6.2+dfsg-2ubuntu6.5) Oracle Linux 8.8; QEMU emulator version. QEMU for Beginner and Advanced tags: `2025/09` `qemu` `qemu-user` `qemu-architecture` `qem QEMU for Beginner and Advanced - HackMD QEMU for Beginner and Advanced tags: `2025/09` `qemu` `qemu-user` `qemu-architecture` `qemu-system-architecture` :::info () QEMU for beginner, starting from few simple examples so QEMU for Beginner and Advanced tags: `2025/09` `qemu` `qemu-user` `qemu-architecture` `qem QEMU for Beginner and Advanced - HackMD QEMU for BeginnerComments
House: KVM is like the developer who builds the house but doesn’t do the interior design, while QEMU is like the interior design company that may not build the house well but does an excellent job with the décor. Thus, we use KVM to build the house (hardware virtualization, simulating CPU and memory resources) and QEMU for decoration (software emulation, simulating network cards, graphics cards, storage controllers, and hard disks). A QEMU virtual machine is a pure software implementation that can run independently without the KVM module, but its performance is lower. QEMU provides a full set of virtualization features, including processor virtualization, memory virtualization, and I/O device virtualization. QEMU is a user-space process that must call the functionality provided by KVM via a specific interface. From QEMU’s perspective, during the VM's operation, QEMU uses system call interfaces provided by KVM to configure the kernel, and KVM is responsible for running the VM in a special mode on the processor. KVM only simulates CPU and memory, meaning that a guest operating system can run on the host, but you cannot see or interact with it. So, someone modified the QEMU code, replacing its CPU and memory emulation with KVM, while leaving the network card, display, etc., to QEMU. Hence, QEMU + KVM together form a complete virtualization platform. KVM is just a kernel module, and users cannot interact with the kernel module directly. They need to use user-space management tools, and QEMU is one of these tools. KVM and QEMU complement each other; QEMU achieves hardware virtualization speed through KVM, and KVM relies on QEMU to emulate devices. For KVM, other user-space tools exist, such as libvirt, virsh, and virt-manager developed by RedHat, and QEMU is not the only option. So, the simple and direct understanding is: QEMU is a
2025-04-17IntroductionThe aim is to get Kali Linux running on an Apple M1 Macbook Air with QEMU with a reasonable level of performance. The performance part is a work in progress. I'm currently tweaking the QEMU startup command, experimenting with different parameters.StepsInstall QEMUQEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer ( Since VirtualBox doesn't suport Apple M1, QEMU is increasingly becoming a go-to option for running other operating system UIs.Let's install QEMU using Homebrew.brew install qemuDownload Kali Linux 64-bit installation imageGo to the installer that matches your need from the 64-bit section.Why x86 64-bit and not the Apple M1 installer?! Because I was not able to get the Kali Linux Applie M1 installer running using QEMU. That's why! :)Create a directory for your installation and initialise a QEMU virtual vard diskmkdir qemu-m1-kalilinucd qemu-m1-kalilinuqemu-img create -f qcow2 kali.qcow2 30GCopy the Kali Linux 64-bit installation image to the same dorectoryStart QEMU with the Kali installer mounted as a CD ROMqemu-system-x86_64 -hda kali.qcow2 -boot d -cdrom kali-linux-2022.3-installer-amd64.iso -m 2G -usb -machine pcThis will launch a QEMU window to kickoff your Kali Linux installation. Step through the installation wizard. Depending on the installation contents you can expect this to take hours to complete.Once the installation completes the system will reboot. Since you still have the installation cd-rom image mounted, you will come back to the start of the installation wizard after rebooting. Please quit QEMU at this point.Launch your Kali Linux installationqemu-system-x86_64 -hda kali.qcow2 -boot d -m 2G -usb -machine q35 -cpu
2025-04-09Computer emulator, and KVM provides acceleration for the emulation of the computer.QEMU vs. KVM: DifferencesBoth KVM and QEMU are powerful technologies, and you can use them depending on the project size and objectives. To compare QEMU and KVM, let’s analyze these two technologies in terms of performance, device support, management, and usability:1. Performance and Efficiency Due to its full-system emulation approach, QEMU is more resource-intensive than KVM. Since QEMU simulates both hardware and the guest operating system, it incurs higher overhead, which could lead to performance bottlenecks, especially for compute-intensive workloads. Additionally, QEMU relies on software virtualization, which may limit its ability to achieve optimal performance in some scenarios. KVM, as a kernel-based virtualization technology, enjoys the advantages of hardware-assisted virtualization. This allows KVM to directly access the host processor’s virtualization extensions, reducing overhead and improving performance. By leveraging the host kernel for memory management and CPU scheduling, KVM ensures that virtual machines run efficiently at near-native speeds. For resource-intensive workloads and performance-critical applications, KVM usually outperforms QEMU.2. Device and Platform Support QEMU focuses on full-system emulation, offering broad device and platform support. QEMU can simulate many hardware components, making it a versatile option for running virtual machines on different architectures, including x86, ARM, PowerPC, and others. This versatility makes QEMU an excellent choice for developers and testers who need to work across multiple platforms. On the other hand, KVM relies on hardware-assisted virtualization, so its platform support is limited to systems with specific virtualization extensions (such as Intel VT or AMD-V). Thus, KVM is mainly suitable for x86-based systems and is less versatile than QEMU when it comes to cross-platform virtualization.3. Ease of Use and Management QEMU’s full-system emulation approach provides a more intuitive and user-friendly interface. Setting up virtual machines with QEMU is relatively simple, and its compatibility
2025-04-20Questions over 9 months old tho… byte0 April 18, 2021, 2:35pm 4 I discovered starwind’s V2V converter and did it that way. I am still interested to know if qemu-img will work though. Thank you for the reply. vhns April 18, 2021, 8:17pm 5 Ok, so the issue seems to be with Hyper-V rather than with VMWare or QEMU. The command you used did end up in an error for me:PS C:\Users\vhns\Downloads\Microsoft Windows 95 [VMware VM]\Windows 95> & 'C:\Program Files\qemu\qemu-img.exe' convert -p -f vmdk -O vhdx -o subformat=dynamic '.\Windows 95.vmdk' '.\Windows 95.vhdx'** (0.00/100%)ERROR:../../../util/oslib-win32.c:61:qemu_try_memalign: assertion failed: (is_power_of_2(alignment))PS C:\Users\vhns\Downloads\Microsoft Windows 95 [VMware VM]\Windows 95>Changing it to:PS C:\Users\vhns\Downloads\Microsoft Windows 95 [VMware VM]\Windows 95> & 'C:\Program Files\qemu\qemu-img.exe' convert -p -f vmdk -O vpc '.\Windows 95.vmdk' '.\Windows 95.vhd' (100.00/100%)PS C:\Users\vhns\Downloads\Microsoft Windows 95 [VMware VM]\Windows 95>did the trick.Now, that image still throws the same error in Hyper-V, both when trying to boot it directly or converting it from VHD to VHDX through Hyper-V’s manager wizard. I was able to boot the image just fine through QEMU (yes, you can boot any of the qemu-img supported image files in QEMU itself). byte0 April 18, 2021, 11:30pm 6 The reason for the conversion was to run in Hyper-V. Thankfully starwind’s tool works. thro April 19, 2021, 1:36am 7 If you’re willing to use windows to do it, star wind v2v converter can do it and is free.edit:ah, beaten. good to see others have discovered it too If you install SCVMM it can control vCenter and do conversions from vSphere to HyperV as well.
2025-04-08