How to run the Virtual Machine Image on KVM/QEMU

The Virtual Machine image ships in a VMWare "VMDK" style image. This image can be run directly by KVM/QEMU, or run under libvert and vert-manager tools by converting the image to a qcow2 disk.

Running directly under KVM/QEMU.

User mode networking

KVM/QEMU will directly support a VMWare VMDK image. Unzip the Foswiki VMWare image to a local directory. The following shell script will launch the image with a user mode networking interface. It will be reachable from your local system, but is not usable across a network.

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64  -smp 2 -soundhw ac97 -enable-kvm -m 1536 \
 -hda "/path/to/Foswiki.vmwarevm/Foswiki.vmdk" \
 -boot once=c,menu=off \
 -net nic,vlan=0,macaddr=e2:ed:c2:ea:a1:13 \
 -net user \
 -name "foswiki.vmware" $*

Bridged networking

Replace the line -net user \ with the tap connection:

 -net tap,vlan=0,ifname=tap0,script=no \

Running under libvert using virt-manager

The setup of this configuration is generally much simpler than the direct QEMU method, however libvert is currently unable to directly boot a vmdk vmware disk. The vmdk must be converted to a qcow2 image:

qemu-img convert -O qcow2 Foswiki.vmdk Foswiki.qcow2

Once the vmdk has been converted to qcow2 you can use virt-manager to boot your virtual machine.

Using the virt-manager create a new VM

Set the path to the qcow2 image, and the system architecture

Set memory and CPU

Alternative 1: Configure "user mode" network

Alternative 2: Configure bridged networking