Starting VMs

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

Starting a VM with a configuration file

The recommended method for starting a VM is to point the qvm process at a qvm configuration file. You must first navigate to the directory containing the configuration file that you want to use, before launching the qvm process, as follows: 
% cd /guests/qnx-guest-1/

% qvm @config
where config is the name of the configuration file within the current directory (e.g., qnx80.qvmconf).

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

Note:

You must launch the qvm process from within the directory containing the configuration file, or you'll get an error that the IFS can't be found. The reasons behind this requirement are that you can move the guest around and still launch it with the same command, and use a relative path for load in the *.qvmconf file, which reduces maintenance of this file.

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

Starting a VM 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 command 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.

Initializing a VM without launching the guest

You can instruct a VM to initialize the guest's environment, which entails validating all the VM's configuration settings, and then exit before launching the guest. For information on doing so, see the dryrun option in the VM Configuration Reference chapter.

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