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I'm currently trying to make some changes to my Raspbmc Raspberry Pi which I'm continually screwing up. For this reason I've invested in a second SD card. This is my 'test' card, with which I make sure changes I've made are working before doing them on my proper SD card (with all the correct XBMC settings etc.). That way I can easily flash the test card back to factory image without having to set up XBMC, locales etc. back to how I like them.

I was wondering if there was a virtual machine that you guys know of that could act effectively as a raspberry pi, so it would boot off the SD card and I would have access to a terminal, and I can make changes as I would if I were SSH-ing in from windows, but the SD card is plugged into the computer. It would be easier than having to switch cards the whole time.

I'm not sure if what I'm suggesting is clear or possible, but I would appreciate any help.

Rob Mackinnon
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2 Answers2

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You could use qemu (http://wiki.qemu.org/Main_Page) to emulate a Raspberry Pi on your computer, and feed your SD card as the boot device in the command line options of qemu.

QEMU can be used on Windows/Linux/Mac.

More resources about this :

Aurora0001
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tchap
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    Looks like the right kind of thing, unfortunately it's all a bit complicated for me. Nothing is explained in noob-enough terms. Thanks for the response anyway though. – Rob Mackinnon Nov 25 '14 at 18:18
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I would suggest just running a VM with xbmc. You can create snapshots, muck about in it and when you are satisfied with the settings, just copy those over/ set those on your raspberry. This saves you some time messing with SD cards and the pi itself.

Havnar
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