parabola-vmbootstrap/README

parabola-vmbootstrap
====================

This is a collection of scripts for creating and booting parabola virtual
machine images for use with qemu.

virtual machine image creation
------------------------------

To create a new virtual machine image, run
  $> sudo ./create.sh

The creation is influenced by the following environment variables:

 ARCH - the target architecture of the image. default: armv7h

 SIZE - the size of the root image. default: 64GiB

 MIRROR - the mirror used to pacstrap the image, anything valid in a `Server =`
          line can go here.
          default: https://redirector.parabola.nu/\$repo/os/\$arch}

The created images are stored in the build/ directory.


virtual machine boot
--------------------

To boot a created virtual machine, run:

  $> ./pvmboot.sh [path to image] [additional qemu args...]

the script will attempt to determine the architecture of the provided virtual
machine image, and set the qemu executable and sane default flags for the qemu
invocation automatically, including kvm acceleration, if available for the
target architecture.

additionally, the script will evaluate the DISPLAY environment variable to
determine whether a graphical desktop environment is available, and will start
the image in serial console mode if necessary. This behavior can be forced by
unsetting DISPLAY before executing the script:

  $> DISPLAY= ./pvmboot.sh [...]

The default flags can be overwritten or extended, for example to allocate more
memory to the machine, by specifying additional qemu parameters on the command
line following the virtual machine image name:

  $> DISPLAY= ./pvmboot [path to image] -m 2G