Sharing a chunk of memory as video memory in QEMU

1. Continuing on from the end of the guide about Setting up Fedora Workstation VM on QEMU using BIOS, start up the same VM by executing the following command.

   $ qemu-system-x86_64 \
       -boot menu=on \
       -m 2048 \
       -cpu max \
       -smp 4 \
       -drive file=datadrct/fedobios.raw,format=raw \
       -accel kvm \
       -vga std \
       -device VGA,vgamem_mb=512
   

2. Execute the following command inside the console of the VM to view the list of the emulated PCI hardware attached.

   $ lspci
   00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma] (rev 02)
   00:01.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II]
   00:01.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
   00:01.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 03)
   00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Device 1234:1111 (rev 02)
   00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 03)
   

3. Probe into the output of 00:02.0 by executing the following command as it seems to be an emulated VGA controller.

   $ lspci -v -s 00:02.0
   00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Device 1234:1111 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
           Subsystem: Red Hat, Inc. Device 1100
           Flags: fast devsel
           Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=512M]
           Memory at febf0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
           Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
           Kernel driver in use: bochs-drm
           Kernel modules: bochs_drm
   

4. There are many providers like qxl, virtio, vmware etc. that can be used in place of std.

Authors: Akashdeep Dhar, Jarek Prokop, Nick Dirschel