qemu
Generic machine emulator and virtualizer. Supports a large variety of CPU architectures.
- Boot from image emulating i386 architecture:
qemu-system-i386 -hda {{image_name.img}}
- Boot from image emulating x64 architecture:
qemu-system-x86_64 -hda {{image_name.img}}
- Boot QEMU instance with a live ISO image:
qemu-system-i386 -hda {{image_name.img}} -cdrom {{os_image.iso}} -boot d
- Specify amount of RAM for instance:
qemu-system-i386 -m 256 -hda image_name.img -cdrom os-image.iso -boot d
- Boot from physical device (e.g. from USB to test bootable medium):
qemu-system-i386 -hda /dev/{{storage_device}}