Qemu Boot Tester 4.0 May 2026

To test a new OS, you usually need a custom profile. The most critical step is identifying the Success String.

Step 1: Find the Success String Boot the OS manually with --verbose and watch the serial output. Look for the very last unique line printed before the login prompt appears.

Step 2: Define Hardware If testing a heavy OS (like Windows), increase RAM. qemu boot tester 4.0

hardware:
  ram_mb: 4096
  cpus: 4

Step 3: Define Firmware If testing modern Linux or Windows, use UEFI.

hardware:
  firmware: "uefi"
  secure_boot: false # QBT 4.0 supports Secure Boot emulation testing

Version 4.0 includes an embedded virtual network environment to test netboot workflows without external infrastructure. To test a new OS, you usually need a custom profile

QEMU Boot Tester (qbt) 4.0 is a command-line tool for automated testing of virtual machine boot sequences using QEMU. It’s aimed at OS developers, firmware engineers, and CI pipelines that need to validate bootability, boot speed, kernel/initrd loading, and early runtime messages across architectures (x86_64, aarch64, etc.).

  • Run qemu-boot-tester with the script. It launches QEMU, monitors serial output, enforces timeouts, and exits with a status indicating pass/fail.
  • Collect artifacts: console log, QEMU return code, and optionally a snapshot image for debugging.

    • Flash different firmware versions, boot, reboot, and verify that persistent variables survive reset. Step 2: Define Hardware If testing a heavy

    Let’s run through a typical scenario: You have just patched the virtio-blk driver, and you need to ensure the kernel still boots on an ARM64 VM.

    QEMU Boot Tester (QBT) 4.0 is a robust, modular framework designed to automate the testing of operating system boot processes, installation media, and kernel parameters. Unlike simple scripts, version 4.0 introduces a modular configuration engine, structured logging (JSON), and automated artifact cleanup, making it suitable for CI/CD pipelines and QA labs.

    This guide covers the architecture, installation, configuration, and usage of the 4.0 release.

    [PASS] Boot reached 'buildroot login:' in 12.34s [INFO] Console log saved to results/console.log [INFO] Boot time metrics saved to results/metrics.json