Qemu help

zapper · 2026-02-01 06:12:58

How do I switch to control alt f1-f12 in a vm on qemu?

I keep searching online but the search results are pretty damn useless.

One thing that popups a lot is sendkey, but what is the linux sendkey?

What key on the keyboard is that?

I don't understand

ralph.ronnquist · 2026-02-01 08:33:13

you need to add a parameter to qemu so that it attaches its "monitor" to either a socket that you can connect to, OR as multiplexed with the serial console.

For the first option, you add the qemu command line arguments -monitor unix:QEMU,server,nowait, and thereby get its monitor serving the socket QEMU in the working directory. You then connect to that via socat with a command like the following

socat -,escape=0x1c,rawer unix:QEMU

which sets up a raw termnal connection to that monitor; you break the connection with key ctrl-\ (control-backslash).

For the second option you instead modify (or add) serial line arguments to be -serial mon:stdio, and thereby get multiplexed monitor and serial console on the run terminal. In that case it starts in serial mode so you need to press ctrl-a c to switch to the qemu monitor.

Then, once you have the monitor, you will issue the commands like sendkey ctrl-alt-f2 etc so as to make the monitor send that key.

hth

zapper · 2026-02-02 05:33:45

@ralph

It seems I found a way, I misunderstood what I was seeing on the search engine.

I tried typing in sendkey ctrl alt f1 or something like that in qemu part and it worked.

That was a result I saw, but I misunderstood the sendkey part. where that was.

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#1 2026-02-01 06:12:58

Qemu help

#2 2026-02-01 08:33:13

Re: Qemu help

#3 2026-02-02 05:33:45

Re: Qemu help

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