Running qemu remotely (via ssh)

Question

I have a server that I am experimenting with, and sometimes I want to work from home so I installed the 'ssh daemon' (namely, 'sshd') and I can ssh to the server. This works fine. But when I try to run a virtual machine on the server with 'qemu', I get the following error Could not initialize SDL(No available video device) - exiting.

Is it possible to run qemu via ssh connection?

Note, I do not want to see the visual interface to the VM that I'm launching. I just want to to run.

score 63 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 21 '14 at 23:04

63

Try qemu -curses or qemu -nographic to bypass the SDL

answered Aug 21 '14 at 23:04

user3662901

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How do you quit from the curses interface? – k4rtik Feb 22 '16 at 16:49
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@k4rtik In case of `-curses`: Alt-1 opens the qemu monitor, then type "quit" followed by return. In case of `-nographic`: press ctrl-a followed by x to exit (or h for help). – pcworld May 14 '21 at 18:18

score 16 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 23 '16 at 14:49

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Best way to resolve this is to add -X to your ssh parameters.

e.g. ssh -X user@server

This will allow the window created by QEMU to be X-Forwarded through SSH to you. It doesn't matter if you want to view the window or not, if QEMU can't open it, it will consider it a fatal error and you will get the error you described.

edited Nov 23 '16 at 14:49

Devid Farinelli

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answered Apr 16 '15 at 20:57

Brad W.

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This solution is helping me out. I am using ubuntu 16.04 on EC2 of AWS. – Puriney Feb 09 '17 at 04:06

score 9 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 24 '15 at 17:35

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You can disable the video card:

qemu -vga none (...options...)

You could also pipe the screen to VNC instead of SDL - the following will provide a VNC server on port 5901:

qemu -vnc :1 (...options...)

edited Jan 24 '15 at 17:35

Gustav Larsson

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answered Apr 10 '14 at 07:16

6EQUJ5

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`-vnc :1` was the solution for me (no `-curses` nor `-nographic` required). connected later with `vncviewer QEMU_SERVER_IP:5901` (tigervnc) – wencha Apr 27 '21 at 00:41

score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 07 '18 at 13:14

9

qemu-system-i386 -curses works like charm..

And to exit from that, use ESC + 2 then q + ENTER.

answered Jul 07 '18 at 13:14

Pradeep Kumar

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 22 '18 at 21:54

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I had this problem too. I think bitwise can't open a new terminal window like qemu does. You can write make clean qemu-nox in terminal, instead of just make clean qemu and it will launch it in the same window. This worked for me

answered Mar 22 '18 at 21:54

Netta

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Running qemu remotely (via ssh)

5 Answers5