Installing and configuring QEMU

In this recipe, we will look at installing QEMU on a single server with the provided distribution packages. For production environments, we recommend using precompiled, packaged versions of QEMU for easier and more consistent deployments. However, we are going to see an example of how to compile QEMU from source, in case you need a certain version that you might want to package later.

Getting ready

Depending on your Linux distribution, the package name and installation commands will differ. You can use your system's package manager, such as apt, dnf, or yum to search for any packages containing the QEMU string and get familiar with what is available for your particular Linux variant. The source code can be downloaded from the official QEMU project website at http://www.qemu-project.org/download/#source.

How to do it...

Perform the following steps to install QEMU from packages on Ubuntu/Debian and RHEL/CentOS distributions:

1. On Ubuntu/Debian distributions, update your packages index:

root@kvm:~# apt-get update

2. Install the package:

root@kvm:~# apt-get install -y qemu

3. On CentOS/RHEL distributions execute:

root@kvm:~# yum install qemu-kvm

To install from source, execute the following:

1. Download the archive first:

root@kvm:~#cd /usr/src && wget 
http://download.qemu-project.org/qemu-2.8.0.tar.xz

2. Extract the files from the archive:

root@kvm:/usr/src# tar xvJf qemu-2.8.0.tar.xz && cd qemu-        2.8.0

3. Configure and compile the source code:

root@kvm:/usr/src/qemu-2.8.0# ./configure  
root@kvm:/usr/src/qemu-2.8.0# make && make install

How it works...

Installing QEMU is quite trivial, as we just saw. Let's have a look at what the QEMU metapackage installed on Ubuntu looks like:

root@kvm:~# dpkg --list | grep qemu
ii ipxe-qemu 1.0.0+git-20150424.a25a16d-1ubuntu1 all PXE boot firmware - ROM images for qemu
ii qemu 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 fast processor emulator
ii qemu-block-extra:amd64 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 extra block backend modules for qemu-system and qemu-utils
ii qemu-slof 20151103+dfsg-1ubuntu1 all Slimline Open Firmware -- QEMU PowerPC version
ii qemu-system 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries
ii qemu-system-arm 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries (arm)
ii qemu-system-common 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries (common files)
ii qemu-system-mips 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries (mips)
ii qemu-system-misc 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries (miscelaneous)
ii qemu-system-ppc 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries (ppc)
ii qemu-system-sparc 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries (sparc)
ii qemu-system-x86 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries (x86)
ii qemu-user 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU user mode emulation binaries
ii qemu-user-binfmt 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU user mode binfmt registration for qemu-user
ii qemu-utils 1:2.5+dfsg-5ubuntu10.8 amd64 QEMU utilities
root@kvm:~#

From the preceding output, we can see that there are few packages involved. If you are interested, you can read the individual description to get more familiar with what each package provides.

It's worth mentioning that all binaries provided from the earlier-mentioned packages start with the prefix QEMU. You can use tab completion to see the list of available executables:

root@kvm:~# qemu-
qemu-aarch64 qemu-io qemu-mips64el qemu-ppc64 qemu-sparc32plus qemu-system-lm32 qemu-system-mipsel qemu-system-sh4 qemu-system-xtensa
qemu-alpha qemu-m68k qemu-mipsel qemu-ppc64abi32 qemu-sparc64 qemu-system-m68k qemu-system-moxie qemu-system-sh4eb qemu-system-xtensaeb
qemu-arm qemu-make-debian-root qemu-mipsn32 qemu-ppc64le qemu-system-aarch64 qemu-system-microblaze qemu-system-or32 qemu-system-sparc qemu-tilegx
qemu-armeb qemu-microblaze qemu-mipsn32el qemu-s390x qemu-system-alpha qemu-system-microblazeel qemu-system-ppc qemu-system-sparc64 qemu-unicore32
qemu-cris qemu-microblazeel qemu-nbd qemu-sh4 qemu-system-arm qemu-system-mips qemu-system-ppc64 qemu-system-tricore qemu-x86_64
qemu-i386 qemu-mips qemu-or32 qemu-sh4eb qemu-system-cris qemu-system-mips64 qemu-system-ppc64le qemu-system-unicore32
qemu-img qemu-mips64 qemu-ppc qemu-sparc qemu-system-i386 qemu-system-mips64el qemu-system-ppcemb qemu-system-x86_64
root@kvm:~#

We can see that there's a single executable for each CPU architecture type that can be emulated.