[[!tag ubuntu kvm]]
The testing of ISO images for the beta version of Ubuntu intrepid ibex is going on right now. For this and the previous release, I've done some testing using KVM, the Linux kernel virtual machine implementation. In case someone else wants to do it, too, here's a quick how-to:
- Install KVM: see the official instructions.
- Download one or more ISO images and set up an account on the ISO tracker. See instructions.
- Create a disk image file (don't worry about the size: the image file will
be only as big as necessary, regardless of the virtual size):
qemu-img create -f qcow2 foo.img 100G - Run KVM:
kvm --name foo -m 1024 -hda foo.img -cdrom whatever.iso -boot d - When the virtual machine boots into the installed system, you will get an error about not being able to boot from missing media, or something like that. Quit KVM: Control-Alt-2 and then quit
- Finally, boot into the installed system (same command as above, but with
drive changed to c):
kvm --name foo -m 1024 -hda foo.img -cdrom whatever.iso -boot c
It would be possible to do all this via, say, virt-manager, but I find it easier to do it via the KVM command line interface directly.
If you have enough CPU and memory, you can do several installations in parallel. To keep track of them which is which, I suggest you use a different --name for each, as well as a different disk image of course.
It also helps to use the same username and password everywhere. I use "tomjon" and "password1"; since these are short-term test systems on which you will do nothing valuable, it doesn't matter what the password is, and using the same one everywhere is the easiest. Just don't use a real password just in case you want to share a disk image for debugging purposes.