QEMU / KVM

Purpose

Guide agents through QEMU system emulation and KVM acceleration: key qemu-system-x86_64 flags, virtio devices, VFIO device passthrough, QMP monitor protocol, libvirt/virsh management, and QEMU for kernel development with -kernel -initrd -append.

When to Use

• Running Linux VMs with hardware acceleration
• Testing custom kernels without bare metal
• Passing through GPU or NIC to a VM with VFIO
• Managing VMs with libvirt and virsh
• Creating VM snapshots for reproducible testing
• Developing kernel or bootloader with direct kernel boot

Workflow

1. Basic KVM VM