install qemu with mac

purpose

• start QEMU virtual machine with hvf(Hypervisor Framework) accelerator
  • not yet support for apple m1 chip
  • we can achieve use hvf accelerator with apple m1 chip to start arm64 virtual machine by compile qemu with patches: TODO

pre-requirements

• mac with x86_64 chip(take mac air with macOS 11.4 as an example)
• cpu support virtualization(hvf support)

do it

install qemu binary

brew install qemu

check your cpu

• '1' is expected

  • sysctl kern.hv_support
    

• 'hvf' is expected

  • qemu-system-x86_64 -accel help
    

start qemu

1. create virtual disk

   • qemu-img create -f qcow2 centos.8.qcow2 40G
     

2. download boot image of centos 8

   • curl -LO https://mirrors.aliyun.com/centos/8.4.2105/isos/x86_64/CentOS-8.4.2105-x86_64-boot.iso
     

3. start qemu machine with boot image and the virtual disk created

   • qemu-system-x86_64 \
         -accel hvf \
         -cpu kvm64 -smp cpus=1 \
         -m 1G \
         -drive file=$(pwd)/CentOS-8.4.2105-x86_64-boot.iso,index=1,media=cdrom \
         -drive file=$(pwd)/centos.8.qcow2,if=virtio,index=0,media=disk,format=qcow2 \
         -rtc base=localtime \
         -pidfile $(pwd)/centos.8.qcow2.pid \
         -display none \
         -vnc 0.0.0.0:1 \
         -daemonize
     

   • -accel hvf will use hvf as accelerator
   • -cpu kvm64 specifies the cpu, use qemu-system-x86_64 -cpu help to see more options
   • -drive ... defines drives
     • adding CentOS-8.4.2105-x86_64-boot.iso as a cdrom
     • adding centos.8.qcow2(the virtual disk created) as a hard disk
   • -rtc base=localtime let the RTC start at local time
   • -pidfile specifies the pid file for the QEMU process
   • -display none will not display the video output but the guest will still see an emulated graphics card
   • -vnc 0.0.0.0:1 will open a vnc port and redirect the VGA display over the VNC session
   • -daemonize will daemonize the QEMU process after initialization
4. use novnc to connect

   • docker run --name novnc --rm -p 6080:6080 \
             -e VNC_SERVER=host.docker.internal:5901 \
             --add-host host.docker.internal:host-gateway \
             -d wangz2019/docker-novnc:1.2.0
     

   • open http://localhost:6080/vnc.html with chrome, you will see the vnc client interface
5. install centos 8 system
   • after installation, login the machine with root and shutdown it

     • shutdown -h now
       

6. start qemu machine with the virtual disk

   • qemu-system-x86_64 \
         -accel hvf \
         -cpu kvm64 -smp cpus=1 \
         -m 1G \
         -drive file=$(pwd)/centos.8.qcow2,if=virtio,index=0,media=disk,format=qcow2 \
         -rtc base=localtime \
         -pidfile $(pwd)/centos.8.qcow2.pid \
         -display none \
         -nic user,hostfwd=tcp::1022-:22 \
         -daemonize
     

   • -nic user,hostfwd=tcp::1022-:22 will bind port 1022 in host with port 22 in guest
7. login and play with ssh

   • ssh -o "UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null" -p 1022 root@localhost
     

8. clean
   • stop novnc docker

     • docker kill novnc
       

   • stop virtual machine

   • you can also kill the process to force stop it