Start-Qemu-FreeBSD

Example script to make it easy to spin up an alternate architecture qemu VM (FreeBSD host + FreeBSD guest) for testing.

This shell script will:

• Download latest FreeBSD (ALPHA/BETA/RC/RELEASE) ISO files and/or VM images required for testing
• Use pkg to install dependancies for qemu and bios/firmware for supported architectures.
• Create qcow2 disk images and launch (default = 45G Disk, 4GB RAM, 4 CPU Cores)
• (Optionally) launch console via tmux
• (Optionally) map specific USB devices into guest from host

Architectures

Architecture	ISO	VM Image
arm64	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
riscv64	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
amd64	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
ppc64	✅ Yes	❌No

Dependancies

• Functional bridge interface (by default named bridge0)
• System with enough ram and proc for qemu to create and execute the VM
• Recent version of FreeBSD for Host (capable of running Qemu 10)

Notes

• VM Images autodetected and downloaded from https://download.freebsd.org/releases/VM-IMAGES/
• ISO Images autodetected and downloaded from https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/

CLI Syntax

% sudo ./start-qemu.sh
Usage:
 ./start-qemu.sh [-a <arm64|riscv64|amd64|ppc64>] (required)
    [-r <ALPHA|BETA|RC|RELEASE>]
    [-t <ISO|VM>]
    [-T] (start tmux on vm launch)
    [-u <USBDevice String>] (host-to-guest mapping)

 -a will select an architecture arm64|riscv64|amd64|ppc64 (required)
 -r will select the latest ALPHA|BETA|RC|RELEASE version available for download
    The latest version (e.g. 15.0 or 14.3) that matches -r will be used.
 -t will select a VM_IMAGE (Default) or ISO (Install from scratch) for download
 -T will optionally enable tmux serial console and qemu-monitor in foreground
 -u will optionally enable passthrough of specific USB device from HOST to GUEST