What Do You Use as Qemu Host?

[JusGellin]

I was curious for those using Qemu, what host do you use?
Do any of you use Puppy Linux of some kind or do you use a standard Linux?

For the host, I'm using Pop!_OS Linux for one of my pc's and Alpine Linux for another.
I like the Alpine Linux for how small it is but it takes some building and research to make it work.
I like being able to open several virtual machines at the same time and sharing their data with each other. It seems very powerful.
I still wish that guest Puppy Linux could run the spice-vdagent so I could use bidirectional copy between them like I can for standard linux installs.

With Puppy Linux I get around this by using virt-manager's internal file sharing called virtiofs. Then I set the sharing up between the host and the virtual machines.
I then can share images and documents that way instead of the bidirectional paste/copy.

Thanks

[rockedge]

Most of the time I use F96-CE_4 as the virtual machine host. I use SAMBA or FTP to transfer files if needed between the VM and host.

I have set up several different methods of file transfer connections between host and VM's but tend to return to SAMBA or FTP because it's really quick and most of the time I am using QEMU to test brand new ISO's of a just built distro of one type or another that will only be running for minutes and then modified or re-assembled and tested again.

I have run ZoneMinder network camera security system/network video recorder in a VirtualBox machine because it's much easier to setup a bridged network and not use a NAT, giving the VM it's own sub-net IP inline with the other systems on the LAN. In this case it's important to be able to store recorded alarm events outside of the limited storage of the virtual HDD's or connected USB drives and store directly on a external partition.

[Geek3579]

I was curious for those using Qemu, what host do you use?
Do any of you use Puppy Linux of some kind or do you use a standard Linux?

For the host, I'm using Pop!_OS Linux for one of my pc's and Alpine Linux for another.
I like the Alpine Linux for how small it is but it takes some building and research to make it work.
I like being able to open several virtual machines at the same time and sharing their data with each other. It seems very powerful.
I still wish that guest Puppy Linux could run the spice-vdagent so I could use bidirectional copy between them like I can for standard linux installs.

With Puppy Linux I get around this by using virt-manager's internal file sharing called virtiofs. Then I set the sharing up between the host and the virtual machines.
I then can share images and documents that way instead of the bidirectional paste/copy.

Thanks

I am not familiar with virtiofs. @JusGellin , can you PLS provide more details??

I run QEMU very successfully on Bookwormpup64, and have used FTP for file transfer. I have recently tried the 9p method outlined below and that works brilliantly.
viewtopic.php?t=12226

[dimkr]

I use Puppy as the host (currently daily driving my 11.0.x development builds) and use qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm. For file transfer, I just run nc on both sides.

[Clarity]

QEMU on forum distros
I've tested and used most of the current forum distros as both host running VMs as well as within QEMU VMs for many years.

Information between Host and VM(s)
Running Host QEMU means I INSTALL NOTHING to move information/date to/from the VMs

• HOST: I always use SAMBA as the server portion is built into almost ALL of the forum's distro using the built-in "Simple SAMBA Management" to create what folder(s) the host shares. SAMBA is built-in to forum distros. Almost everyone on the forum knows how to share stuff using the subsystem utility,

• VMs: Since ALL of the forum distros I test have smbclients built-in, it is TOO simple to see the shares that the host provides allowing ROX (or other filemanagers) to read/write/edit files passes between the host and the VMs. The user merely mounts the host's resource(s) and uses it exactly like other local resources. This includes printers via the host.

There is NO installation requirements in the Puppy World distros for this fast and simple manner of file exchanges that are needed from time to time.

Incidentally, the info shared by the distro's SAMBA is seen and used by any LAN client I have...many without adding anything to do so. Thus, the LAN's PCs (Wins/MACs/Unix/Linux/Chromebooks), Tablets, TVs and modern phones interact, each. with what is shared with the same knowledge to do so ... everywhere.

EnjoyQEMU on forum distros

[JusGellin]

I am not familiar with virtiofs. @JusGellin , can you PLS provide more details??

I run QEMU very successfully on Bookwormpup64, and have used FTP for file transfer. I have recently tried the 9p method outlined below and that works brilliantly.
viewtopic.php?t=12226

virtiofs is a newer version of Qemu direct file sharing of the host file system from the guest. It is supposed to have improvements in speed compared to virtio-9p.

Virt-manager allows selecting either virtio-9p or virtiofs for the Filesystem Passthrough.
I've used both and now just stick with the virtiofs driver. Both seem to work really well for accessing host files and are easy to set up.
The guest just needs to mount the set up host folder.

[JusGellin]

@Clarity
As I watch somewhat what is going on in the forums, I see your amazing work using Qemu for testing.
I'm so new to all of this that I don't understand a lot of it, but am fascinated to learn a few things here and there.

This is true of all the forums. Hopefully I'll pick up more to try out myself.

Thanks to all of you for sharing and giving advice for all of this.
Your expertise is very much appreciated.

[JusGellin]

I use Puppy as the host (currently daily driving my 11.0.x development builds) and use qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm. For file transfer, I just run nc on both sides.

What is nc?

Thanks

[dimkr]

What is nc?

netcat