Guestbay
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Support

Guestbay is in development and there are no installers yet, so most of what follows is about running it from source. Anything not covered here: [email protected].

Do my machines stop when I close Guestbay?

No. QEMU runs as its own process rather than a child of the app, so machines keep going and Guestbay reattaches when it starts again. It matches the recorded process start time as well as the pid, so it will not adopt an unrelated process that happens to have inherited the number.

Where are my machines kept, and can I move them?

Each machine is a folder holding vm.json, its disks, NVRAM and logs:

Set GUESTBAY_HOME before starting to put them on another drive. One Guestbay owns a data directory at a time — the desktop app and a headless guestbay-server cannot share one, and the second to start says so rather than both fighting over the same machines.

Everything is very slow

QEMU has almost certainly fallen back to software emulation instead of KVM, HVF or WHPX, which it does quietly. Guestbay shows which accelerator a machine actually got. On Windows, turn on Windows Hypervisor Platform in Windows Features and reboot; on Linux, add yourself to the kvm group; on macOS, Hypervisor.framework is already there.

A guest rebooted and now it is stuck paused

A known WHPX behaviour on Windows hosts: after a guest reboot QEMU can stay paused for good, and system_reset and cont do not recover it. Only a relaunch does. Guestbay detects that state and offers the relaunch, or takes it automatically if you let it.

Can I run a Windows 11 guest without a TPM?

Yes. QEMU builds its TPM support only on POSIX hosts, so on Linux and macOS each machine that wants one gets its own swtpm, started and stopped with the guest. On a Windows host there is no swtpm, so Guestbay sets up the install-time check bypass for you instead.

My Windows 11 install stops at the language screen

Windows 11 24H2 and later run a new Setup that ignores an answer file on removable media, which is the documented location. Guestbay works around it: the answer CD also carries a small script, and the boot assist presses Shift+F10 for Setup's command prompt and runs it, which starts the classic installer with /unattend: — and that does honour the file. The assist stops as soon as the guest's disk starts growing, so an install that began on its own is never typed into.

A forwarded port will not connect

Use 127.0.0.1 rather than localhost. On Windows localhost resolves to ::1, and QEMU's user-mode networking does not serve IPv6.

Can I reach it from another computer?

Yes — the same interface runs in a browser on your network. Start guestbay-server serve --lan, or turn LAN access on in Settings. It listens over HTTPS, requires a password you set, and prints the addresses and the certificate fingerprint so you can check what you are connecting to. Without --lan it stays on loopback.

Guestbay cannot find my QEMU

It looks on PATH and in the usual install locations. A build that needs extra library folders — a self-compiled one, or the MSYS2 build on Windows — can be added in Settings → QEMU installs; Guestbay probes it before accepting it, so you find out immediately rather than at the first start.

How do I report a problem?

[email protected]. The machine's log and the command line from its details are the two useful things to include.