export COLUMNS=150

I was reading some articles around the web about how building your persistent GNU/Linux system on usb stick, I found many howtos but I had problems with my BIOS.

Create qemu virtual image file:

qemu-img create virt1 1G

On my laptop for some reasons, no cdrom boot was allowed for the virtual installation,
so the loopback device comes useful to do the installation:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=sarge-netinst.iso

Now boot the new OS installation (I use Debian GNU/Linux for both real and virtual systems)

qemu virt1 -boot d -cdrom sarge-netinst.iso


Then boot the new system (root or sudoed, as you need root privileges for routing)

qemu virt1 -boot c -n /etc/qemu-ifup