Screencasts https://euandre.org/en/screencast/feed.first.xml 2026-09-05T20:22:11+00:00 EuAndreh eu@euandre.org 2021-02-07T00:00:00+00:00 2022-03-06T00:00:00+00:00 https://euandre.org/en/screencast/2021/02/07/autoqemu.html EuAndreh eu@euandre.org

<div class="paragraph"> <p>After reading begriffs "<a href="https://begriffs.com/posts/2020-08-31-portable-stable-software.html">Tips for stable and portable software</a>", the "Begriffs Buildfarm?" section caught my attention, as this is something I would be interested in.</p> </div>

<div class="paragraph"> <p>After reading begriffs "<a href="https://begriffs.com/posts/2020-08-31-portable-stable-software.html">Tips for stable and portable software</a>", the "Begriffs Buildfarm?" section caught my attention, as this is something I would be interested in.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>After emailing the author, a <a href= "https://talk.begriffs.com/pipermail/friends/2021-February/001263.html">public thread</a> began on the subject.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>As we discussed how it could be done, I decided to experiment with the idea of automating the setup of virtual environments with QEMU.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>This screencast is a simple demo of automating the installation of Alpine Linux 3.12.3 standard x86_64 with AutoQEMU<sup role="doc-noteref" id="ref:1"><a href="#fn:1" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>, which is nothing more than POSIX sh, <a href= "https://core.tcl-lang.org/expect/index">expect</a> scripts and Makefiles glued together.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>As of this writing, I just worked on it for 2~3 days, so everything is still pretty ad-hoc.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>The commands from the screencast were<sup role="doc-noteref" id="ref:2"><a href="#fn:2" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>:</p> </div> <div class="listingblock"> <div class="content"> <table> <tbody> <tr> <td> <pre class="lineno"><a class="code-line-anchor" id="B1-L1" href="#B1-L1">1</a> <a class="code-line-anchor" id="B1-L2" href="#B1-L2">2</a> <a class="code-line-anchor" id="B1-L3" href="#B1-L3">3</a> <a class="code-line-anchor" id="B1-L4" href="#B1-L4">4</a> <a class="code-line-anchor" id="B1-L5" href="#B1-L5">5</a></pre> </td> <td> <pre>pushd `mktemp -d` git clone https://euandre.org/git/autoqemu . make make install PREFIX=$HOME/.local autoqemu ssh alpine</pre> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </div> <div class="paragraph plaintext"> <p><a href="autoqemu.html.0.txt">plaintext</a></p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>It assumes that <code>$HOME/.local/bin</code> is in <code>$PATH</code>.</p> </div> <div id="footnotes"> <ol> <li role="doc-endnote" id="fn:1"> <p>The solution was a little too brittle to scale, and some distributions proved to be particularly problematic. I’ve <a href="https://euandre.org/static/attachments/autoqemu.tar.gz">archived</a> my progress if you’re interested in what I’ve done, and maybe wish to continue. <a role="doc-backlink" href="#ref:1">↩</a></p> </li> <li role="doc-endnote" id="fn:2"> <p>Only now, writing again what I ran on the screencast I thought that I should have tried something like <a href="https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/script.1.html">script</a>. Maybe next time (thanks <a href="https://gnuworldorder.info/">klaatu</a> for the tip!). <a role="doc-backlink" href="#ref:2">↩</a></p> </li> </ol> </div>