juser@gator:~/temp$ qemu-system-x86_64 -m 256 -display curses -drive file=disk.cow -drive file=boot.img WARNING: Image format was not specified for 'boot.img' and probing guessed raw. Automatically detecting the format is dangerous for raw images, write operations on block 0 will be restricted. Specify the 'raw' format explicitly to remove the restrictions.
This is OK, as I don't want anything writing to that thing anyway. So to get rid of the waring: juser@gator:~/temp$ qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=boot.img,format=raw,readonly qemu-system-x86_64: Can't use a read-only drive qemu-system-x86_64: Initialization of device ide-hd failed: Device initialization failed. hmm... one more try: juser@gator:~/temp$ qemu-system-x86_64 -m 256 -display curses -drive file=disk.cow,readonly qemu-system-x86_64: Can't use a read-only drive qemu-system-x86_64: Initialization of device ide-hd failed: Device initialization failed. -- Carl K