13.3. Booting the System

QEMU (Short QUick EMulator ) provides way of running software for a number of different hardware platforms. For Linux Operating Systems it is able to boot directly from a kernel and inital ramdisk file. This is the option we will use so as to bypass the additional complication of compiling a boot loader and formating physical media with these files. The following wikepedia entry gives additional information about QEMU: http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMU


  
    qemu-system-i386 -kernel ${CLFS}/boot/clfskernel-3.0.80 \
    -initrd ${CLFS}/build/initramfs  -redir tcp:5555::80 -m 512 -serial stdio -append "rdinit=/sbin/init console=tty1"


When the boot is complete, the embedded CLFS system is ready for use!

-kernel

This option sets the kernel for the emulator to use.

-initrd

This option sets the initial ram disk to use.

-M

This option sets the machine to be emulated.

-redir

This option sets the floating point mode selected earlier.

-m

This option sets the size of the ram memory for emulated machine..

-serial

This option directs the serial output from the emulated machine to the terminal.

-append

This option appends information to the command line used during the bootup of the emulated machine.