Packer: QEMU not found in PATH

[jayunit100]

* BUG *

Build 'qemu' errored: Failed creating Qemu driver: exec: "qemu-system-x86_64": executable file not found in $PATH

^^ The reason this is a bug is because its not documented where or why "qemu-system-86_64" is needed, and also, it appears to be on my path (from any dir, i can auto-complete "qemu-system-x86_64").

** REPRODUCING THE ERROR **

./packer:> $HOME/Development/packer/packer build ex1

* (failed) ATTEMPTS TO FIX *

1) Added the qemu symlink into the $PATH:

/h~/j~/D~./packer:> echo $PATH | grep qem
/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/home/jvyas/bin:/home/jvyas/Development/apache-maven-3.0.4/bin:/home/jvyas/bin:/home/jvyas/Development/apache-maven-3.0.4/bin:/home/jvyas/Development/packer:/usr/libexec/qemu-system-x86:qemu-system-x86_64

2) I've tried adding a symlink in the startup dir:

/h~/j~/D~./packer:> ls | grep qem
packer-builder-qemu
qemu-system-x86

** CONCLUSION **

Thus, I assume packer is looking for the wrong thing somehow, when provisioning QEMU boxes. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[jayunit100]

Looking deeper, the error happens when "exec.LookPath" is called with "qemu-system-x86_64" as the argument.

[jayunit100]

Well, now looking further, the "exec.LookPath" doesnt read symlinks.

/usr/libexec:> mv qemu-kvm qemu-system-x86_64

Is a workaround. (not sure if its the right workaround, but at least it got me past this error message :))

[jayunit100]

CONFIRMED. The fix is to hard copy "qemu-kvm" to "qemu-system-x86_64" , in /usr/libexec, and add /usr/libexec to your PATH. At that point, everything should work normaly (note that i had to run as root also to get it working, and so added to PATH in root's .bash_profile.

Anyways, hope this helps someone out there, and in the future - mabye you folks should look into something a little more forginving than exec.LookPath , which didn't support symlinks.

[jayunit100]

well, that said, the substitution of the file doesnt actually result in a clean "packer build", because "QEMU failed to start". So maybe the dependency on "qemu-system-x86_64" is specific, and packer doesnt work with "qemu-kvm". ?

[jayunit100]

Well, finally i solved the problem by:

0) yum installing SDL*
1) compiling QEMU on RHEL from scratch with --enable-SDL
2) re running the command at the top.

I think running in "headless" mode might also alleviate this problem , (possibly).

[venumurthy]

hello there,

I installed packer using homebrew on Mac and was trying to create a centos qcow image. I encountered the same error that you have
I am not able apply the work around as I do not have the qemu-kvm in the /usr/libexec.

Please advice thank you.

[jfbibeau]

For anyone coming here later, the real solution is simply using the "qemu-binary" argument in your JSON file to point to your system's qemu binary, for example "qemu_binary": "qemu-kvm". This avoids having to copy or symlink anything.

Documented here: https://packer.io/docs/builders/qemu.html#qemu_binary

[shamimgeek]

Hi Developers,

I am also facing the same problem. I am giving some more details of my environment. Please have a look into this.

Build 'qemu' errored: Failed creating Qemu driver: exec: "qemu-system-x86_64": executable file not found in $PATH

below are the details provided you for further investigation why it is failing.

I also tried with following one by one in my json file but it did not help

"qemu_binary": "/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm",
"qemu_binary": "qemu-kvm",
"qemu_binary": "qemu-system-x86_64",
"qemu_binary": "qemu-system-i386",

Host Machine : RHEL 6.7
Packer version : Packer v0.8.6

[[email protected]]$ ls -l /usr/libexec/qemu*
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 4014136 Aug 6 23:26 /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm
[[email protected]]$

below are the some warnaing shown at the end while running below command
/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm -h

[[email protected]]$ /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm -h
QEMU PC emulator version 0.12.1 (qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.479.el6_7.1), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard

WARNING: Direct use of qemu-kvm from the command line is not recommended by Red Hat.
WARNING: Some command line options listed here may not be available in future releases.
WARNING: Red Hat recommends the use of libvirt as the stable management interface.

usage: qemu [options] [disk_image]

[Larrymuers]

Packages.gz

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