Running the command 'which qemu-i386' and 'which
qemu-system-x86_64' produces two different versions on my
system. I am running Linux kernel 3.14. qemu-i386 resides in
/usr/bin and is version 1.70 Debian, and qemu-system-x86_64 in
/usr/local/bin is version 1.7.50 which I built from sources
about 2 years ago. I've used the same commands for the latest
version as I've used for the 1.7.50 version, except that I've
added --prefix=/usr/local/bin --target-list="i386-linux-user
x86_64-linux-user" and did not test the binary before "make
install". The early Debian repo version was broken and had
broken/unmaintained dependencies.
I have now changed to the options as you've suggested
--target-list="i386-softmmu x86_64-softmmu" and checked for
KVM. It turns out that the KVM was not enabled on my system.
Here's how to check for that.
grep -E 'vmx|svm' /proc/cpuinfo
and
lsmod | grep kvm
you should see kvm_intel or kvm_amd with the last digit "1"
meaning it is enabled, if you see a "0" it is probably not.
modprobe does not work here. You need to enable kvm in the
BIOS, which on most systems is disabled by default. Enter BIOS
setup and check that virtualization is "enabled". After
enabling it on my system using -kvm-enable option allowed me
to boot the latest qemu version in about 1 minute. This is
really great.
Thanks for all your help.