====== How to use qemu with pxe? ======

you can refer the wiki page [[http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/qemu|official wiki]] for more details.
This page contains my experiences.

===== qemu with tftp =====

**boot qemu PXE with tftp protocol**:\\
To make my life simple, I downloaded following files into directory ///home/myname/pxe///
  - [[http://etherboot.org/gtest/gtest.gpxe]]
  - [[http://etherboot.org/gtest/bz2bzImage]]
  - [[http://etherboot.org/gtest/initrd.bz2]]

Then I modified the //gtest.gpxe// to use //tftp// instead of //http//.\\
Edited contents of my //gtest.gpxe// are as follows
<code>
#!gpxe
kernel tftp://10.0.0.88//bz2bzImage root=100
initrd tftp://10.0.0.88//initrd.bz2
boot
</code>

Then I used qemu with bootp to boot with tftp in following way.
<code>
qemu -bootp tftp://10.0.0.88//gtest.gpxe -tftp /home/myname/pxe/ -fda gpxe.dsk
</code>

The IP address used here //10.0.0.88// can be anything, It's not the IP address of my machine.
As long as you use the same IP address in qemu command and in //gtest.gpxe// file, it should work.

==== How it works? ====
Here I am not running any //tftp// server on my machine. qemu will do most of the work for us.
  - Firstly, it will simulate the //dhcpd// server and return the 10.0.0.88 IP address to the booting pxe.
  - Next, It will simulate //tftp// server, with root directory at ///home/myname/pxe/// and provides files from that location to the pxe.
  - pxe assumes that it is talking to //tftp// server and its request for file <code>tftp://10.0.0.88//gtest.gpxe</code> will be mapped to ///home/myname/pxe/gtest.gpxe// file.

===== qemu with HTTP =====
For this test, all that you need to have is gpxe.dsk and following command should work without any problems.
<code>
qemu -fda gpxe.dsk -net nic -net user -bootp http://etherboot.org/gtest/gtest.gpxe
</code>

I also created the copy of gtest on my own web server for testing purpose, and it worked with following command.
<code>
$ qemu -fda gpxe.dsk -net nic -net user -bootp http://10.0.0.2/gpxe/gtest.gpxe
</code>