Here's the story...

• Computer purchased with w/Windows 7 preinstalled.
• Preferred development environment is linux.
• Sometimes have to do development in windows.

Problem:

To use the license which came with the computer you have to dual boot between linux and windows. Running windows in a virtual machine doesn't work as the computers ACPI tables are not exposed - which from a security pov: is good.

Solution:

Extract the ACPI tables from the computer and embed them into the virtual machine BIOS and don't run more than one VM.

Do the dance:

• Does /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/ exist? YES: Proceed. NO: Go away you dirty pirate.

On Debian and RHEL, you need to install 'iasl' and 'vim-common' packages first. Then download the latest SeaBIOS version and put the archive content into 'seabios.module' catalog.

• ./patch.sh
• cp /usr/share/qemu/bios.bin /usr/share/qemu/bios-orig.bin
• cp seabios.submodule/out/bios.bin /usr/share/qemu/bios.bin