issues with Qemu output in terminal

[James Miller]

Actually what I'm trying to do is get a guest OS with no graphics 
installed to display it's command line in a terminal I can access in an 
ssh/tmux session.

Nothing I tried, mostly focusing on the -nographic and -display curses 
options was working until I came across 
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-discuss/2016-12/msg00042.html, 
which sort of works. I believe the operative bit from that post is -vga 
virtio. That allows me to get command line access to the guest OS, albeit 
in small window that takes up only about 50% of the terminal window in 
which it displays. So, is this the best I can hope for?

I would think the -nographic switch would be the one to get me 
command-line access to the guest OS, since the man page says "Normally, if 
QEMU is compiled with graphical window support, it displays output such as 
guest graphics, guest console, and the QEMU monitor in a window. With this 
option, you can totally disable graphical output so that QEMU is a simple 
command line application. The emulated serial port is redirected on the 
console and muxed with the monitor (unless redirected elsewhere 
explicitly). Therefore, you can still use QEMU to debug a Linux kernel 
with a serial console. Use C-a h for help on switching between the console 
and monitor." I guess the terminal I start Qemu from is not being detected 
as a console or something?

Any input on getting guest OS command line output something more like the 
actual size of the terminal I'm using will be appreciated.

Thanks