Qemu in an ssh session or the quest for the nographic option?

Question

I ssh to a machine and I would like to start a qemu session inside this ssh session.

I thought that the nographic option would do the trick.

-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.

Unfortunately, I don't see any output. The command line that I'm using once i've ssh'd to the machine is:

qemu-system-x86_64  -hda debian.img -nographic

Any idea what's happening?

Answer 1

You've essentially unplugged the "virtual monitor". -nographic doesn't make the display go to the terminal, it disables it. The serial port (com port) is what would be echo'd into your terminal.

Answer 2

My bad,

the -curses option seems to do the trick for what i want to do.

Answer 3

As LB suggested, use -curses to have an interactive terminal session. Ideal for ssh.

I also use the following to monitor the boot process (locally or over ssh). Call qemu with "-serial stdio" and append "console=ttyS0" to grub's kernel line. All kernel output will go to the ttyS0 serial console, with will be printed to stdio (your terminal). That way I can easily copy/paste the boot process, something you cannot do with an sdl window.