= AutoQEMU - automate installation and SSH setup of ISO OS images
:updatedat: 2022-03-06
:categories: first

:empty:
:begriffs-tips: https://begriffs.com/posts/2020-08-31-portable-stable-software.html
:public-thread: https://talk.begriffs.com/pipermail/friends/2021-February/001263.html
:archived: https://euandre.org/static/attachments/autoqemu.tar.gz
:expect: https://core.tcl-lang.org/expect/index
:script: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/script.1.html
:klaatu: https://gnuworldorder.info/

video: true

After reading begriffs "{begriffs-tips}[Tips for stable and portable software]",
the "Begriffs Buildfarm?" section caught my attention, as this is something I
would be interested in.

After emailing the author, a {public-thread}[public thread] began on the
subject.

As we discussed how it could be done, I decided to experiment with the idea of
automating the setup of virtual environments with QEMU.

This screencast is a simple demo of automating the installation of Alpine Linux
3.12.3 standard x86_64 with
AutoQEMU{empty}footnote:autoqemu[
  The solution was a little too brittle to scale, and some distributions proved
  to be particularly problematic.  I've {archived}[archived] my progress if
  you're interested in what I've done, and maybe wish to continue.
], which is nothing more than POSIX sh, {expect}[expect] scripts and Makefiles
glued together.

As of this writing, I just worked on it for 2~3 days, so everything is still
pretty ad-hoc.

The commands from the screencast
were{empty}footnote:script-command[
  Only now, writing again what I ran on the screencast I thought that I should
  have tried something like {script}[script].  Maybe next time (thanks
  {klaatu}[klaatu] for the tip!).
]:

[source,sh]
----
pushd `mktemp -d`
git clone https://euandre.org/git/autoqemu .
make
make install PREFIX=$HOME/.local
autoqemu ssh alpine
----

It assumes that `$HOME/.local/bin` is in `$PATH`.