This one's intended for myself actually. I keep forgetting how to use qemu, and pass files to it etc.

First off, here's how you go about setting up a guest. (That page has it all actually!)

This is how you transfer files to your qemu image. There are lots of ways, google will tell you to use samba etc. I came across this and it suits me greatly:

1. Get the offset of the partition using parted:

su -
parted , unit, B, p

The start of the non boot partition is the offset you need.

Then, mount it as a loop device:

su -
mkdir /tmp/qemu-img
mount -o loop,offset= [[qemu-image]] /tmp/qemu-img (or whatever dir you created)

and, once you're done:

umount /tmp/qemu-image

That's all! Ciao!