How to run OVMF - tianocorecn/tianocorecn.github.io GitHub Wiki

How to run OVMF with QEMU or KVM

Pre-requisites

In order to run OVMF with QEMU, you must have QEMU version 0.9.1 or newer installed on your system.

Get a build of OVMF.fd

The latest pre-built binaries of OVMF are available from the main OVMF page, or from OVMF downloads area. You can also build OVMF if you are interested.

Choose the correct processor architecture

Be sure to align the processor architecture for OVMF with the proper processor archtecture of QEMU.

For the IA32 build of OVMF, there is a little more choice, since the X64 processor is also compatible with IA32. Therefore, with the IA32 build of OVMF, you can use the following commands: qemu, qemu-system-i386 or qemu-system-x86_64.

For the X64 build of OVMF, however, you can only use the qemu-system-x86_64 command.

Setup a BIOS directory for OVMF QEMU

To use OVMF with QEMU, we utilize the -L QEMU command line parameter. This paramter takes a directory path, and QEMU will load the bios.bin from this directory.

Create a directory, and cd to the directory

For example:

bash$ mkdir ~/run-ovmf
bash$ cd ~/run-ovmf

Next, copy the OVMF.fd file into this directory, but rename OVMF.fd to bios.bin:

bash$ cp /path/to/ovmf/OVMF.fd bios.bin

Next, create a directory to use as a hard disk image for QEMU

(QEMU can turn the contents of a directory into a disk image 'on-the-fly'):

bash$ mkdir hda-contents

Run OVMF with QEMU

Run QEMU using OVMF

Here is a sample command:

bash$ qemu-system-x86_64 -L . -hda fat:hda-contents

If everything goes well, you should see a graphic logo, and then the UEFI shell should start.

Potential issues

KVM

Although the latest versions of OVMF should now support the latest versions of KVM, there is still a chance that you might encounter issues when using KVM. If OVMF fails to boot on QEMU (with KVM), try disabling KVM.