Starting VMs

When you start a VM, you can either enter all the configuration information in the command line, or point the qvm process at a configuration file.

Starting a qvm instance with a configuration file

The recommended method for starting a VM is to point the qvm process at a qvm configuration file, as follows:

qvm @config

where config is the path to the configuration file. For example, assuming that we are in the directory on the target with the configuration file:

qvm @qnx66.qvmconf

The qvm process opens the file and parses its contents, which define the VM (see “Assembling and configuring VMs”).

Note: The at sign (“@”) in front of the filename in the qvm command line instruction designates a file as a qvm configuration file.

Starting a qvm instance without a configuration file

A qvm configuration file is not required; these files are a convenience, and recommended, especially for complex VMs. However, you can start a qvm process instance without a configuration file. Just enter the configuration information in the command line. For example, the following starts and configures a Linux guest with a PL1011 vdev on an ARM platform:

qvm cpu sched 8 ram 0x80000000,128m load /vm/images/linux.img \
cmdline "console=ttyAMA0 earlycon=pl011,0x1c090000 debug user_debug=31 loglevel=9" \
initrd load /vm/images/ramdisk.img \
vdev pl011 loc 0x1c090000 intr gic:37 hostdev /dev/ser2

Configuration information for a qvm process entered through the command line uses the same syntax as qvm configuration files.

Note: The system option isn't specified in the command line configuration shown above because this configuration is used for testing a temporary configuration.