Debian QEMU images updated

Following the release of Debian Wheezy, I have (finally) updated my set of Debian QEMU images for both Squeeze (6.0.8) and Wheezy (7.3). The following images are now available:

Each of these directories contains a GPG signed README.txt file with the md5sums all files, detailed instructions how to run these images and especially the minimum QEMU version to use.

The requirements to run the default desktop environment have increased a lot between Squeeze and Wheezy. An accelerated graphics card is now needed to be able to use Gnome (unless you use the fallback mode), which is not something provided by QEMU (actually there is now a QXL para-virtualized video card, but the driver is only in unstable). In addition GDM now needs more than 128MiB to start, while this is the default amount of memory provided for virtual machines. I have therefore decided to switch the default desktop environment on the Wheezy images to Xfce and the display manager to LightDM. Both Gnome and GDM are still installed on the images, and the original default can easily be restored using the following commands:

  • update-alternatives --auto x-session-manager
  • echo /usr/sbin/gdm3 > /etc/X11/default-display-manager

Beside this the new images only contain minor changes. The filesystems have been tweaked to not run fsck after a certain amount of days, and locales-all and openssh-server are now installed in all images. For MIPS and MIPSEL, 64-bit kernels are now also installed and provided, so that it is possible to choose between a 32-bit or a 64-bit kernel (see the README.txt for more details).

There is no Debian Wheezy SPARC image available, as QEMU does not fully support SPARC64 yet (it is actually possible to run it, but then the VM crashes often), and Debian Wheezy now only supports 64-bit kernels. I will also invest time to build an S390X image, but so far I haven't been successful on that.

The following images are still available at the same location, though they haven't been updated:

  • sparc (Etch)
  • SH4 (Sid from a few years ago)