NAME

qemuaug - Call QEMU in an augmented environment


SYNOPSIS

qemuaug [option]... -- qemu-command -hda hda-argument [qemu-arguments]...

qemuaug -H


DESCRIPTION

Call QEMU with following additional functionality.

  1. Create a lock based on the basename of hda-argument. If the lock can not be obtained qemuaug fails with an error.

    This prevents from calling QEMU on the same image twice.

  2. Transparently use a fast disk for the -hda image such as a RAM based volatile disk. See -f for details.

    This speeds up QEMU disk operations greatly.

Note: -hda may appear at any point in the list of qemu-arguments.


OPTIONS

-f fast-disk

Use fast-disk to store the -hda image.

The copied image is linked symbolically so QEMU should not notice the copy. A backup is created parallel to the original image and removed after the volatile image has been copied back.

Use

  mount -t tmpfs -o mode=0777 tmpfs /media/ram

to create a temporary filesystem in RAM.

-p

Create graphical progress indication for long operations.

-t

Treat hda-argument as a temporary file. I.e. create a backup before running qemu-command and restore this backup afterwards.

This is useful if hda-argument should not be changed permanently by qemu-command.

-v

Operate verbose.

-H

Get help.

If an unknown option such as -. is given, a short usage message is generated.


FILES

/var/lock/qemuaug

A directory for the lock files. The lock files are named after the image they lock.

Please note that this directory is shared by all users. Take care if you have several users on the same machine locking equally named images.

fast-disk/qemuaug

A directory for the fast files. Each image is a copy with the same name.

hda-argument.bak

The backup file in case the fast file is used.


BUGS

There is an extensive test suite so there should be no bugs. If there are bugs the test suite needs expansion to catch them.


SEE ALSO

qemu


AUTHOR

Stefan Merten <smerten@oekonux.de>


LICENSE

This program is licensed under the terms of the GPL. See

        http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt


AVAILABILTY

See

        http://www.merten-home.de/FreeSoftware/qemuaug/