LiveCD qemu autoplay?

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 04:17:28PM -0700, Andrew Jorgensen wrote:
> On 2/9/06, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > I like this idea.  We could include a Windows qemu executable on the live CD
> > and allow it to be easily launched.  However, if qemu doesn't yet provide a
> > way to access data on the host CD-ROM drive, I don't see how we can make it
> > work.
> 
> Since I asked I've been trying to make it work.  I'm having some
> trouble getting the kernel commandline working correctly but qemu has
> -kernel -initrd and -append parameters for loading linux kernels.  I
> can load the kernel in the install directory of the CD and I can use
> the cloop image as my HDD but I don't understand casper well enough to
> pass the right -append options to make it boot.

Oh, I see.  qemu on windows still supports access to files as virtual
devices, just not real devices.  That should work, then.

You can see the command line to use in /isolinux/isolinux.cfg on the CD.
It'll vary depending on whether you're using Breezy or Dapper.

> Even better than booting the image, though, might be having a saved vm
> state (qemu -loadvm) so that it comes right up into an already booted
> system.  That would be almost instant and there would be no need to
> configure the hardware because qemu always has the same hardware. 
> There might be a reason to configure the language...

If you can find a way to create the image non-interactively, this might be
possible.  I think the saved state is likely to be too large, though.

-- 
 - mdz