Run the daemon

After installing you should be able to run qemud from the command line:

$ qemud

By default qemud stays in the foreground and logs to stderr. Check the online help with qemud --help to find out how to run qemud and make it log to a file or syslog.

Create a configuration file

qemud stores its configuration files in /etc/qemud by default. Machine configuration files are stored in the machines subdirectory. They are written in Microsoft Windows INI style and consist of at least three sections. The following file is an example is for a virtual machine named "OpenBSD":

# As of the current version, section ordering does not matter. This may
# change in a future version so it's best to keep the following order.

# the general section
[general]
# the machine's name
name = OpenBSD
# the module to create virtual machine, qemu is the only choice so far
module = qemu

[manage]
# the directory the qemu machine runs in, if this is specified all following
# paths may be given relative to this directory
directory = /var/lib/qemud/machines/OpenBSD
# user and group to run qemu as, these do not write need access on anything other
# than the machine's image files
user = qemu
group = qemu

[machine]
# the memory assigned to the virtual machine (in megabytes)
memory = 256
# number of CPUs, defaults to 1
#smp = 1

# primary master
hda = openbsd.img

# where to boot from, valid choices are floppy, disk (default) and cdrom
#boot = disk

# whether to use kqemu, defaults to on. some systems won't boot with this
kqemu = no

# this is a comma separated list of references to network configuration sections
# if this option is left out, no network interfaces (not even user) are created
net = default

[net:default]
# network interface type, possible values are user and tap
type = tap
# the following settings are only for tap devices, they make no sense
# with user networking
# the mac address of the virtual machine
macaddr = 00:0e:4e:d5:9a:8b
# script to run to configure the interface
# The script is run with the interface name as its first argument. It should
# bring the interface up and assign addresses to it or assign it to a bridge.
script = ifup.sh
# the name of the interface to be created, if unset the host operating system chooses
ifname = obsd0

As you can see, the configuration file syntax is closely related to qemu's command line options. In fact, most options are directly passed to qemu, although some verification is done. The file should be stored in /etc/qemud/machines/OpenBSD.qemu.

Start the virtual machine

If all files are in place the virtual machine can be created with the following command:

$ qm create OpenBSD

If all went well the command should not output anything. Client side error handling is not yet finished, though, and you may sometimes see an error such as:

ERROR:root:Could not create virtual machine OpenBSD: <Fault 8002: 'error'>

In this case you should check qemud's log file for explanations. This will be improved in future versions.

When the machine is up and running you can check its status with the following command:

$ qm info OpenBSD

Attach to the serial console

To attach to the machine's first serial console you can use the following command:

$ qm console OpenBSD

The operating system in the virtual machine must be configured to have a getty listen on the serial port or even log boot messages there in order for this to be useful. To disconnect from the console press Ctrl+]. As of version 0.1.0 it is also possible to attach to qemu's monitor console. This will, however, most likely go away in future versions so don't rely on this feature:

$ qm console OpenBSD.monitor

Stop the virtual machine

The is not yet a way to cleanly shut down a virtual machine using qm. The only secure way is to log into the virtual machine and tell the guest operating system to shut down. If the operating system supports power management qemu will exit after shut down and the virtual machine will automatically stop. Alternatively you can use the following command to forcefully shut down qemu:

$ qm destroy OpenBSD

Beware that this kills the qemu process and is like pulling the power plug from a real machine.