[Qemu-discuss] Can't boot Debian netinst ISO

[Richard Lewis]

Hi there,

I'm very new to QEMU. I have verion 1.1.2 from Debian stable
installed. I'm logged into the guest system via SSH.

I'm trying to create a VM on which to install Debian. This is what
I've done:

$ qemu-img create -f qcow2 debian-image.qcow 2G
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -hda debian-image.qcow -cdrom 
debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso -boot d -m 512 -curses

When I do this I see a screen showing me:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    640 x 480 Graphic mode

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can't do any of the keybindings here; C-a x doesn't do anything,
C-M-1 makes the screen flash and C-M-2 doesn't do anything. The only
way I can stop QEMU is by killing it from another console.

I then tried booting like this:

$ qemu-system-x86_64 -hda debian-image.qcow -cdrom 
debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso -boot menu=on -m 512 -curses

(i.e. requesting the boot menu). And I get these options:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  SeaBIOS (version 1.7.0-20120603_194846-gandalf)



  iPXE (http://ipxe.org) 00:03.0 C900 PCI2.10 PnP PMM+1FFC86A0+1FF886A0 C900

  Press F12 for boot menu.

  Select boot device:

  1. ata0-0: QEMU HARDDISK ATA-7 Hard-Disk (2048 MiBytes)
  2. Legacy option rom
  3. Floppy [drive A]
  4. DVD/CD [ata1-0: QEMU DVD-ROM ATAPI-4 DVD/CD]
  5. iPXE (PCI 00:03.0)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selecting 4. (or any other option) gets me to the same position as
before. I'm wondering whether the description of the DVD/CD device
might be a clue here: should it have a label from the ISO image?

Anyway, I also tried booting like this:

$ qemu-system-x86_64 -hda debian-image.qcow -cdrom 
debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso -boot d -m 512 -nographic

(i.e. specifying no graphic output). I then see the monitor but it's completely 
unresponsive:

QEMU 1.1.2 monitor - type 'help' for more information
(qemu) QEMU 1.1.2 monitor - type 'help' for more information
(qemu) 

My cursor is position at the beginning of the line below the prompt. I
can type any commands or control keys. Again, I can only stop it by
killing it from another console.

In addition, I also tried the debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso image
using qemu-system-i386 and the debian-7.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso
(i.e. current stable) image and got the same results.

The last thing I tested was booting some other Linux image that I
found on the internet. That booted fine.

I can't see that QEMU has any verbose output options. And I can't find
any other ways of debugging it.

Please could someone give me a hint as to how to get this to work?

Thanks,
Richard