Reporting functionality

Over network

Testing via Qemu

Overview

The virtual machine needs access to the internet. If you don't have a PXE/tftp server on you network, you can use the one bundled with Qemu. In order for the guest to have access to the built-in PXE server and be on the network as well, you need to create a bridge.

Creating the bridge

To create a bridge, replace the entry in /etc/network/interfaces for your existing network card (e.g. eth0).

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

becomes

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_fd 9
bridge_hello 2
bridge_maxage 12
bridge_stp off

In case you are using a static IP address

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.101
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1

becomes

auto br0
iface br0 inet static
address 192.168.1.101
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_fd 9
bridge_hello 2
bridge_maxage 12
bridge_stp off

Restart your network (/etc/init.d/networking restart). The physical interface (eth0) should be 'UP' but without an IP address assigned to it. br0 should be 'UP' and have an IP address.

Replace now Qemu default networking script /etc/qemu-ifup by

echo "Executing /etc/qemu-ifup"
echo "Bringing up $1 for bridged mode..."
sudo /sbin/ifconfig $1 0.0.0.0 promisc up
echo "Adding $1 to br0..."
sudo /usr/sbin/brctl addif br0 $1

Since this script is run each time Qemu starts, you may want to tweak your sudoers file to avoid running Qemu as root. Use visudo to add

# Cmnd alias specification
Cmnd_Alias      QEMU=/sbin/ifconfig, \
                     /sbin/modprobe, \
                     /usr/sbin/brctl
# User privilege specification
root	ALL=(ALL) ALL
# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
$username$     ALL=NOPASSWD: QEMU

With this bridge, the guest has now access to the network if you boot with the following options

-net tap -net nic

Using Qemu built-in tftp server with the bridge

The following options makes the guest boot from its networking card and fetches pxelinux.0 via tftp (data directory located at ~/pxe)

-tftp /pxelinux.0 -bootp ~/pxe -boot n

The following ones bring up both the bridge and the internal tftp server (-net user)

-net user -net nic -net tap

For example

qemu \
    -net user \
    -net nic -net tap \
    -boot n \
    -bootp /pxelinux.0 -tftp ~/pxe \
    -hda debian_etch_i386_small.qcow \
    -serial stdio