GNet Solutions » Hardware Hacking » Raspberry Pi

This is a guide on virtualizing an ARM based operating system, in this case Arch Linux ARM, on an x86_64 Arch Linux system.

Prepare the environment¶

• Make sure the system is up to date:
  

  pacman -Syu
  

• Install a few dependencies:
  

  pacman -S git base-devel
  

Install Arch Linux ARM¶

• Create a 4GB image and mount it to ~/alarm/root:
  

  mkdir -p ~/alarm/root && cd ~/alarm
  dd if=/dev/zero of=./alarm.img bs=8M count=512
  mkfs.ext4 alarm.img
  sudo mount alarm.img root
  

• Download and install alarm into the image:
  

  wget http://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-armv7-latest.tar.gz
  sudo bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-armv7-latest.tar.gz -C ./root
  sync
  

• Remove the getty systemd unit link to prevent the console from locking up:
  

  sudo rm root/etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty1.service
  

• Copy the kernel and device tree blob out of the image:
  

  cp ./root/boot/zImage ./zImage_alarm
  cp ./root/boot/dtbs/vexpress-v2p-ca9.dtb ./
  

• Unmount the image so it can be booted from:
  

  sudo umount root
  

• With the kernel and rootfs ready, start the VM:
  

  qemu-system-arm \
  -M vexpress-a9 \
  -smp 2 \
  -m 1G \
  -dtb vexpress-v2p-ca9.dtb \
  -kernel zImage_alarm \
  -append "root=/dev/mmcblk0 rw roottype=ext4 console=ttyAMA0" \
  -drive if=sd,driver=raw,cache=writeback,file=./alarm.img \
  -redir tcp:2222::22 \
  --nographic
  

• Now log in as root with the password root.

• The host system also redirects ssh requests on 2222 to the virtualized arch linux arm install.

Resources¶

• https://medicineyeh.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/buildup-your-arm-image-for-qemu/
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/QEMU
• https://qemu.weilnetz.de/doc/qemu-doc.html