Eveng Qemu Images Download Better -

EVENG 5.0 (in beta) introduces a built-in Image Hub. Instead of downloading and manually moving files, you can:

Until then, the manual methods above remain essential.

Also, look out for cowbuilder and debootstrap integration—allowing you to build custom Linux QEMU images from scratch inside EVENG, ensuring you never have to download untrusted images again.

Save as get-eve-image.sh (example for Alpine Linux):

#!/bin/bash
NAME="alpine-3.19"
URL="https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.19/releases/cloud/nocloud_alpine-3.19.0-x86_64-bios.qcow2"
cd /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/
mkdir -p $NAME
cd $NAME
wget -O virtioa.qcow2 $URL
/opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a fixpermissions
echo "✅ $NAME ready in EVE‑NG"

EVENG detects images by folder name format: name-version. eveng qemu images download better

Example: Arista_vEOS-4.28.0F

Inside that folder, the disk file must be named exactly:

EVE-NG (Emulated Virtual Environment — Next Generation) is a network emulator that runs virtual network devices inside QEMU/KVM and other hypervisors to build labs and topology simulations. QEMU images are the virtual-disk files used to run vendor IOS/IOS-XE/IOS-XR, NX-OS, PAN-OS, FortiOS, VyOS, Linux appliances, and other OSes inside EVE-NG. This guide exhaustively explains how to find, obtain, prepare, import, and troubleshoot QEMU images for EVE-NG, plus best practices and legal/security considerations.

Note: Licensing: many network OS images (Cisco, Juniper, Palo Alto, Fortinet, etc.) are proprietary; you must have appropriate rights to use vendor images. This guide describes technical steps only and does not provide links to copyrighted images. EVENG 5

A Python script that scrapes the official EVENG database and downloads images via curl with checksum verification.

git clone https://github.com/akira6592/eve-ng-image-tool
cd eve-ng-image-tool
./download.py --list  # Shows all available images
./download.py --get "Cisco vIOS L2"

Don’t wait until lab boot fails. Check images offline first.

Check QEMU compatibility:

qemu-img info image.qcow2
# Look for: virtual size, disk size, file format (qcow2)

Check if EVE-NG recognizes it:

/opt/unetlab/wrappers/qemu_wrapper -t 0 -d 0 -x 0 -F /path/to/image

Common mismatches:

For engineers who manage multiple EVENG servers (e.g., CCIE rack rentals), manual downloads are impossible. Use Ansible:

- name: Ensure QEMU images are present on EVENG
  hosts: eveng_servers
  tasks:
    - name: Download Cisco IOSvL2 image
      get_url:
        url: "https://example.com/iosv-l2.zip"
        dest: "/tmp/iosv-l2.zip"
        checksum: "sha256:abc123..."
    - name: Unzip and move into place
      unarchive:
        src: "/tmp/iosv-l2.zip"
        dest: "/opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/"
        owner: root
        group: root
        mode: '0755'
    - name: Fix permissions
      command: /opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a fixpermissions

Run once to populate all remote servers.