OpenWrt in QEMU
This document descripes howto run the OpenWrt x86 port in QEMU.
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qemu an example setup
It is mixed descriptions from windows and linux, so please read through all of it before starting.
Ubuntu Linux version
Confirmed to work on Ubuntu 10.10 both x86_64 and x86
* Install qemu-kvm and kvm-pxe
sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm kvm-pxe |
* Download an openwrt image of your choise.
sudo su - mkdir -p /var/lib/libvirt/images cd /var/lib/libvirt/images http://downloads.openwrt.org/backfire/10.03/x86/openwrt-x86-ext2.image.gz gunzip openwrt-x86-ext2.image.gz |
Before starting it under qemu/kvm. I had to set a network driver model to make a network interface appear in OpenWrt.
model=ne2k_pci |
Start the image:
sudo su - cd /var/lib/libvirt/images qemu -net nic,model=ne2k_pci -hda openwrt-x86-ext2.image |
You should now get a "terminal like" (vnc) window popup which shows the boot of OpenWrt.
Good luck!
Windows version
QEMU is an an open source processor emulator (and virtualizer). Start at QEMU download page which should have a link where QEMU prebuild binaries for Windows. You can also find other (newer) builds of QEMU for Windows by googlling. In this example download the qemu-0.9.0-windows.zip and unzip to a directory.
Download OpenWrt raw image (ex. kamikaze/8.09.1/x86/) and copy the raw image into the qemu directory.
Run QEMU by using following command:
C:\qemu-0.9.0-windows>qemu.exe -L . -hda openwrt-x86-ext2.image |
Which shall result in a command window as shown below:
QEMU may issue warning message as following:
Could not open '\\.\kqemu' - QEMU acceleration layer not activated |
You may correct this warning by installing KQEMU driver which provides better performance for the VM, but this is not as relevant to OpenWrt.
Upon execution of the above command new window shall appear with booting OpenWrt:
And in several seconds OpenWrt VM shall be up and running: