The hosting environment is assumed to be Ubuntu Jaunty, with qemu already installed.

First, get the files you'll need: $ wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-armel/current/images/versatile/netboot/initrd.gz $ wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-armel/current/images/versatile/netboot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-versatile

Create a disk image: $ qemu-img create -f qcow hda.img 10G

Then start qemu: $ qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-versatile \ -hda hda.img -initrd initrd.gz -append "root=/dev/ram" -m 256

Now the Debian installer will start - it looks almost identical to the 'normal' x86 installer - but it is many time slower...