Project

General

Profile

Support #929

Updated by Daniel Curtis over 6 years ago

This is a guide on virtualizing an ARM based operating system, in this case Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi 3, on an x86_64 Arch Linux system. 

 h2. Prepare the environment 

 * Make sure the system is up to date: 
 <pre> 
 pacman -Syu 
 </pre> 

 * Install a few dependencies: 
 <pre> 
 pacman -S git base-devel 
 </pre> 

 h3. Install ARM toolchain: 

 * Clone the toolchain repo (using @--depth 1@ will decrease the overall download size by 400MB): 
 <pre> 
 mkdir ~/git && cd ~/git 
 git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/raspberrypi/tools.git 
 </pre> 

 * Add the tools to your path: 
 <pre> 
 echo 'export PATH=$PATH:~/git/tools/arm-bcm2708/gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-raspbian/bin' >> ~/.bash_profile 
 </pre> 

 * Source the @.bash_profile@: 
 <pre> 
 source ~/.bash_profile 
 </pre> 

 h2. Install Qemu 

 * Install qemu and the extra architectures: 
 <pre> 
 pacman -S git qemu qemu-arch-extra wget 
 </pre> 

 h3. Compile Latest Kernel 

 * Download the qemu-rpi-kernel repo: 
 <pre> 
 cd ~/git 
 git clone https://github.com/dhruvvyas90/qemu-rpi-kernel.git 
 </pre> 

 h3. Prepare Raspbian 

 * Clone Change into the specific kernel version to use: qemu-rpi-kernel/tools directory: 
 <pre> 
 cd qemu-rpi-kernel/tools ~/git/qemu-rpi-kernel/tools 
 git clone -b raspberrypi-kernel_1.20180313-1 --depth 1 https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux.git 
 </pre> 

 * Modify the kernel compile script to use Arch commands: 
 <pre> 
 sed -i.bak -e's/sudo\ apt-get\ update/sudo\ pacman\ -Syu/g' -e's/sudo\ apt-get\ install\ git\ libncurses5-dev\ gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf/sudo\ pacman\ -S\ git/g' build-kernel-qemu 
 </pre> 

 * Edit the build-kernel-qemu script: 
 <pre> 
 vi build-kernel-qemu 
 </pre> 
 #* And comment out all @COMMIT@ COMMIT versions except for the desired commit, and turn USE_GIT off also comment out remove the @exit@ exit command before the @make@ commands: makes: 
 <pre> 
 #COMMIT=6820d0cbec64cfee481b961833feffec8880111e 
 #COMMIT=raspberrypi-kernel_1.20171029-1 
 #COMMIT="" 
 COMMIT=raspberrypi-kernel_1.20180313-1 
 #USE_GIT=1 

 #exit 
 </pre> 

 * Run the build script: 
 <pre> 
 ./build-kernel-qemu 
 </pre> 

 h2. Prepare Raspbian 

 * Download the latest raspbian image (1.7G): 
 <pre> 
 mkdir ~/raspbian && cd ~/raspbian 
 wget http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/raspbian-2018-03-14/2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch.zip 
 unzip 2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch.zip 
 </pre> 

 * Show the partition layout of 
 <pre> 
 fdisk -l 2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch.img 
 </pre> 
 #* _Example output_: 
 <pre> 
 Disk 2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch.img: 4.6 GiB, 4949278720 bytes, 9666560 sectors 
 Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes 
 Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes 
 I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes 
 Disklabel type: dos 
 Disk identifier: 0x15ca46a5 

 Device                             Boot Start       End Sectors    Size Id Type 
 2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch.img1         8192     93802     85611 41.8M    c W95 FAT32 ( 
 2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch.img2        98304 9666559 9568256    4.6G 83 Linux 
 </pre> 

 * Find the sector where the filesystem, 2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch.img2, starts at (sector 98304). Multiply the sector start value by 512, in this case 98304 * 512 = 50331648 bytes.  

 * Mount the rasbian image at offset 50331648: 
 <pre> 
 mkdir -p /media/raspbian 
 mount -v -o offset=50331648 -t ext4 ~/raspbian/2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch.img /media/raspbian 
 </pre> 

 * Edit the ld.so.preload file and comment out all visible lines 
 <pre> 
 nano /media/raspbian/etc/ld.so.preload 
 </pre> 

 h3. Run Qemu 

 * Run the newly built kernel with the latest raspbian: 
 <pre> 
 qemu-system-arm -kernel ~/git/qemu-rpi-kernel/qemu-kernel-4.9.80 -cpu arm1176 -m 256 -M versatilepb -dtb /git/qemu-rpi-kernel/versatile-pb.dtb -serial stdio -append "root=/dev/sda2 rootfstype=ext4 rw" -hda ~/raspbian/2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch.img -redir tcp:5022::22 -no-reboot 
 </pre> 

 * Log in as the user *pi* with the password *raspberry* 

 * Configure the pi to your use case: 
 <pre> 
 sudo raspi-config 
 </pre> 

 h2. Resources 

 * https://azeria-labs.com/emulate-raspberry-pi-with-qemu/ 
 * http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/raspbian-2018-03-14/ 
 * https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/releases 
 * https://github.com/dhruvvyas90/qemu-rpi-kernel

Back