Here is how IanMcDonald is getting qemu running Linux.
Create a disk image like:
qemu-img create file1.img 5G
which creates an image of 5 Gigabyte.
Start qemu as follows:
qemu -boot d -cdrom /dev/cdrom -hda hd.img
Install the operating system. And then start qemu as below:
qemu -hda hd.img -boot c
However this created problems getting files in and out so better to create a loopback file system. For more on this see UserModeLinux.
Qemu can present a network device to the guest operating system via tuntap.
You should boot it like:
qemu -boot c -hda hd.img -net nic,model=ne2k_pci -net tap,ifname=tap0,script=/path/to/tunconfig
the file tunconfig should contain something like:
#!/bin/bash /sbin/ifconfig ${1##/*/} 192.168.1.1
The above command appears to create an NE2K device at address 0xc100, irq 10.
Qemu has a built in console which you can use to get system information.
To access the console, use Ctrl-Alt-2
Some commands that may be useful:
show pci show network