Quickemu

Simple shell script to manage Qemu virtual machines.

Made with 💝 for

Introduction

Quickemu is a very simple script to "manage" Qemu virtual machines. Each virtual machine configuration is broadly the same requiring minimal setup. The main objective of the project is to enable quick testing of desktop Linux distributions where the virtual machines can be stored anywhere, such as external USB storage.

See the video where I explain my motivations for creating this script.

Installation

Ubuntu 19.10 or newer

Install qemu

sudo apt install qemu qemu-kvm libvirt-clients libvirt-daemon bridge-utils ovmf
sudo adduser ${SUDO_USER} kvm

Install samba (optional) if you want to share home directories with guest virtual machines

sudo apt install samba

Install the qemu-virgil snap (optional)

snap install qemu-virgil
snap connect qemu-virgil:kvm
snap connect qemu-virgil:removable-media

Usage

Download a .iso image of a Linux distribution
Create a VM configuration file; for example ubuntu.conf

iso="/media/$USER/Quickemu/ubuntu/focal-desktop-amd64.iso"
disk_img="/media/$USER/Quickemu/ubuntu/focal-desktop-amd64.qcow2
disk=128G

Use quickemu.sh to start the virtual machine:

./quickemu --vm ubuntu-focal-desktop.conf

Here are the full usage instructions:

Usage
  quickemu --vm ubuntu.conf

You can also pass optional parameters
  --delete   : Delete the disk image.
  --efi      : Enable EFI BIOS (experimental).
  --restore  : Restore the snapshot.
  --snapshot : Create a disk snapshot.
  --virgil   : Use virgil, if available.
  --ssh      : Enable SSH to the machine (disabled by default).

SSH Access

SSH access to the QEMU virtual machine can be enabled by using the --ssh flag. This will portforward TCP2222 on the host machine to TCP22 on the QEMU guest machine.

This does not install or start an SSH server within the guest itself, so you may need to enable this on a per-guest basis. For Ubuntu guests, you can enable this by installing openssh-server.

If the default port overlaps with another service on your host, you can override this with --ssh $PORT. This will still forward to port TCP22 on the guest machine.

Example of usage: -

$ ./quickemu.sh --vm mate.conf --ssh 1111
Starting mate.conf
 - BIOS:     Legacy
 - Disk:     /home/$USER/Applications/quickemu/ubuntu-mate/focal-desktop-amd64.qcow2
 - Size:     20G
 - ISO:      /home/$USER/Applications/quickemu/ubuntu-mate/focal-desktop-amd64.iso
 - CPU:      2 Core(s)
 - RAM:      2G
 - UI:       sdl
 - GL:       on
 - smbd:     /home/stuh84 will be exported to the guest via smb://10.0.2.4/qemu

$ ssh quickemu@localhost -p 1111
quickemu@localhost's password: 
Welcome to Ubuntu Focal Fossa (development branch) (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-18-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage



The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.

quickemu@ubuntu-mate:~$

TODO

Make display configuration more robust
Improve stdout presentation
Make disk image optionally size configurable
Improve snapshot management