Archipelago » qemu

                          QEMU Monitor Protocol

                          =====================

Introduction

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The QEMU Monitor Protocol (QMP) allows applications to communicate with

QEMU's Monitor.

QMP is JSON[1] based and has the following features:

- Lightweight, text-based, easy to parse data format

- Asynchronous events support 

- Stability

For more information, please, refer to the following files:

o qmp-spec.txt    QEMU Monitor Protocol current specification

o qmp-events.txt  List of available asynchronous events

There are also two simple Python scripts available:

o qmp-shell       A shell

o vm-info         Show some information about the Virtual Machine

[1] http://www.json.org

Usage

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To enable QMP, QEMU has to be started in "control mode". There are

two ways of doing this, the simplest one is using the the '-qmp'

command-line option.

For example:

$ qemu [...] -qmp tcp:localhost:4444,server

Will start QEMU in control mode, waiting for a client TCP connection

on localhost port 4444.

It is also possible to use the '-mon' command-line option to have

more complex combinations. Please, refer to the QEMU's manpage for

more information.

Simple Testing

--------------

To manually test QMP one can connect with telnet and issue commands:

$ telnet localhost 4444

Trying 127.0.0.1...

Connected to localhost.

Escape character is '^]'.

{"QMP": {"version": {"qemu": "0.12.50", "package": ""}, "capabilities": []}}

{ "execute": "qmp_capabilities" }

{"return": {}}

{ "execute": "query-version" }

{"return": {"qemu": "0.12.50", "package": ""}}

Contact

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http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/MonitorProtocol

Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino <lcapitulino@redhat.com>