os/linux/ VirtualMachines

Virtualisation

To see if hardware vms are enabled:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

and look for lm (for 64-bit cpu), vmx for intel or svm for amd.

To install kvm on ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install qemu-system

For the virtual machine manager

sudo apt-get install virt-manager

To make a qcow2 hard drive image:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 disk.img 4G

Examples to boot an image using qemu:

# From a floppy img
qemu-system-i386 -fda floppy.img -boot a
# Install to hard drive from cd image
qemu-system-i386 -cdrom cd.iso -hda myhdd.img -boot d -m 256 -localtime

Running Linux Virtualised

Under Windows, most of the time, WSL does what I need, and so I use that due to its far better integration with the host. For other VM duties, under Windows, I use VirtualBox and under Linux I use KVM.