Qemu example existing windows disk

From wikinotes

This simple example demonstrates:

  • boot existing windows install, off real HDD
  • booting windows using EFI
  • KVM/HyperV enhancements (specific to windows)
  • Spice for RDP

Setup/Dependencies

sudo pacman -S qemu   # qemu itself
sudo pacman -S ovmf   # intel EFI driver
cp /usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_CODE.fd bios.bin   # copy OVMF_CODE.fd to bios.bin somewhere. It MUST be renamed.

NOTE:

windows 10 installs default to using EFI, the params -L and --bios reference the 3rd party intel OVFM software.

As far as I know, you cannot directly reference the windows bootloader like you can the linux kernel

Start Simple

Simple Example to get you up/running, before layering in too many components that may break. 

# run qemu, booting off disk using EFI
qemu-system-x86_64 \
    -enable-kvm                                   `# enable KVM optimiations` \
    -L .                                          `# dir with bios.bin` \
    --bios bios.bin                               `# bios.bin itself` \
    -m 8G                                         `# provide reasonable amount of ram` \
    -cpu host                                     `# match the CPU type exactly` \
    -drive file=/dev/sda,format=raw,media=disk    `# load raw HDD` \

CPU optimizations

# emulate exact host cpu,
# enable hyper-v enlightenments
-enable-kvm
-cpu host,hv_relaxed,hv_spinlocks=0x1fff,hv_vapic,hv_time
-machine type=pc,accel=kvm

# use all available CPU cores
-smp $(nproc)

Spice for RDP

spice is a fast (but not as fast as bare-metal/pci-passthrough) RDP server. Using spice will let you use higher-than 1024x960 resolutions, at a reasonable speed (as long as you do not care heavily about speed of graphics). It also enables bi-directional clipboard access.

install dependencies 

sudo pacman -S qemu spice virt-viewer

qemu flags 

-daemonize   # do not attach monitor, we connect by RDP
-vga qxl
-spice port=5930,disable-ticketing
-device virtio-serial
-device virtserialport,chardev=spicechannel0,name=com.redhat.spice.0
-chardev spicevmc,id=spicechannel0,name=vdagent

connect to spice 

remote-viewer spice://127.0.0.1:5930 & disown remote-viewer

install guest drivers

install windows guest tools in guest OS. Find on https://www.spice-space.org/download.html

Resource-Expensive Programs

program cost how to disable
salt-minion 90% CPU-utilization on idle!! Task-Manager > Services > Open Services > salt-minion (rclick/properties) > StartupType: Manual
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