How to use qemu to run a non-gui OS on the terminal?

Issue

I want to run some programs on the High Performance Computer (With 8-core processor) in my department. Now I use that machine with ssh using terminal. The machine has Red Hat linux installed on it. But my programs need to run on Solaris. I use Nexenta Solaris for x86.

Can qemu be used to run Nexenta Solaris on that machine through terminal. I need to convince the administrator that it can, otherwise he won't install qemu on that machine and therefore allow me to use Solaris through a virtual machine. Also note that I don't use GUI with the Nexenta Solaris, just command line. In my machine, I use VMware to run it.

Solution

You can compile qemu for youself and install it into your home directory. There will be no kernel-mode qemu accelerator, but the qemu will work and the speed will be rather high.

Qemu has two options for non-gui start: http://wiki.qemu.org/download/qemu-doc.html

2.3.4 Display options:

-nographic

• Normally, QEMU uses SDL to display the VGA output. With this option, you can totally disable graphical output so that QEMU is a simple command line application. The emulated serial port is redirected on the console. Therefore, you can still use QEMU to debug a Linux kernel with a serial console.

-curses

• Normally, QEMU uses SDL to display the VGA output. With this option, QEMU can display the VGA output when in text mode using a curses/ncurses interface. Nothing is displayed in graphical mode.

Also it can send graphic output to another machine via VNC protocol (-vnc option)

Answered By - osgx