OLPC simulator debugging

Chris mentioned…

make sure that when I pointed the simulator to the disk image (the olpc-simulator create command) I had to make sure I used the full path to the disk image, otherwise the olpc-simulator start would just silently exit. Other people I talked to stumbled over these issues as well, so I figured I would pass them along.

If you have such trouble with the machine not starting up, then a quick tip (which will help you narrow down the problem) is to view the runtime logs using the ‘olpc-simulator log [MACHINE]’ command. For example, lets create a machine with a disk image without specifying an absolute path & see what error is produced:

[berrange@localhost ~]$ olpc-simulator create olpc.img demo
[berrange@localhost ~]$ olpc-simulator start demo
[berrange@localhost ~]$ olpc-simulator log demo
Starting qemu at 01:56:06 on 20 February 2006
qemu -monitor pty -hda olpc.img -net nic,vlan=0   -net user,vlan=0 -serial null -parallel null   -M pc -boot c -m 128 -smp 1 -title OLPC demo
With environment variables
DISPLAY -> :0.0

qemu: could not open hard disk image 'olpc.img'
[berrange@localhost ~]$