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Liryna / ARMDebianUbuntu.md
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Emulating ARM on Debian/Ubuntu

ARMDebianUbuntu.md

You might want to read this to get an introduction to armel vs armhf.

If the below is too much, you can try Ubuntu-ARMv7-Qemu but note it contains non-free blobs.

Running ARM programs under linux (without starting QEMU VM!)

First, cross-compile user programs with GCC-ARM toolchain. Then install qemu-arm-static so that you can run ARM
executables directly on linux

# armel packages also exist

sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf libc6-dev-armhf-cross qemu-arm-static

Then compile your programs in amd64 directly:

cat > hello.c << EOF

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) { return printf("Hello ARM!\n"); }
EOF
 arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc -static -ohello hello.c

file hello
hello: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked,

./hello
Hello ARM!

If you want a dynamically-linked executable, you've to pass the linker path too:

arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc -ohello hello.c

qemu-arm -L /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/ ./hello # or qemu-arm-static

Debugging using GDB

Install QEMU

sudo apt-get install qemu

Create a hard disk

Create a hard disk for your virtual machine with required capacity.

qemu-img create -f raw armdisk.img 8G

You can then install Debian using an ISO CD or directly from vmlinuz

Netboot from vmlinuz

First, you should decide what CPU and machine type you want to emulate.

You can get a list of all supported CPUs (to be passed with -cpu option, see later below):
 qemu-system-arm -cpu help

You can get a list of all supported machines (to be passed with -M option, see later below):

qemu-system-arm -machine help

In this example, I chose the cortex-a9 CPU and vexpress-a9 machine. This is an ARMv7 CPU which Debian calls as armhf
(ARM hard float). You must download vmlinuz and initrd files for, say Wheezy armhf netboot. Cortex-A8, A9, A15 are all
ARMv7 CPUs.

You can emulate ARMv6 which Debian calls as armel by downloading the corresponding files for Wheezy armel netboot.
Note that you need armel for ARMv5, v6. Raspberry Pi uses ARMv6. In this case, the cpu is arm1176 and machine is
versatilepb .

Create a virtual machine with 1024 MB RAM and a Cortex-A9 CPU. Note that we must -sd instead of -sda because vexpress
kernel doesn't support PCI SCSI hard disks. You'll install Debian on on MMC/SD card, that's all it means.

qemu-system-arm -m 1024M -sd armdisk.img \

-M vexpress-a9 -cpu cortex-a9 \
-kernel vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-vexpress -initrd initrd.gz \
-append "root=/dev/ram" -no-reboot

Specifying -cpu is optional. It defaults to -cpu=any . However, -M is mandatory.

This will start a new QEMU window and the Debian installer will kick-in. Just proceed with the installation (takes maybe 3
hours or so). Make sure you install "ssh-server" in tasksel screen.

NOTE: For creating ARMv6, just pass versatilepb :

qemu-system-arm -m 1024M -M versatilepb \

-kernel vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-versatile -initrd initrd.gz \
-append "root=/dev/ram" -hda armdisk.img -no-reboot
Netboot from ISO
Download netboot ISO for armhf or armel as needed.

WAIT! Apparently, these Debian CD images are not bootable! But Ubuntu's ARM CD image works [2].

First boot from newly installed system

You need to copy vmlinuz from the installed disk image and pass it again to qemu-system-img [Qemu wiki]
(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QEMU/Images#Mounting_an_image_on_the_host").

For armel

sudo modprobe nbd max_part=16

sudo qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 armel.img
mkdir ~/qemu-mounted
sudo mount /dev/nbd0p1 ~/qemu-mounted
mkdir after-copy

cp ~/qemu-mounted/boot/* after-copy/

sudo umount ~/qemu-mounted

sudo qemu-nbd -d /dev/nbd0
sudo killall qemu-nbd

Then pass the copied kernel and initrd to qemu-system-img. Also note that we are now booting from /dev/sda1 because
that is where Linux was installed

qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -m 1024M \

-kernel after-copy/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-versatile \
-initrd after-copy/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-versatile \
-hda armel.img -append "root=/dev/sda1"
And there you go, play with ARM to your heart's extent!

For armhf

Extract & copy the boot files exactly as before (but for armhf.img) and pass while invoking:

qemu-system-arm -m 1024M -M vexpress-a9 \

-kernel armhf-extracted/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-vexpress \
-initrd armhf-extracted/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-vexpress \
-append "root=/dev/mmcblk0p1" -sd armhf.img

Once again, note the device ( mmcblk0p1 ) and partition ( armhf.img ) reflect SD-card usage.

Connecting to the SSH server

Login to the guest OS and create a private/public key pair: ssh-keygen -t rsa .

On the host, just redirect some random port from the host to guest's port 22 (or whichever port the SSH server is running on,
see /etc/ssh/sshd_config)

qemu-system-arm .... -redir tcp:5555::22 &

Then you can connect to SSH just like ssh -p 5555 localhost .

Chroot Voodoo your ARM VM (architectural chroot with QEMU)

After the install of your ARM, you will probably see that it is really slow. To speed up your arm, you can chroot it natively and
let qemu-user-static interpret the ARM instruction. [5]

sudo apt-get install qemu-user-static kpartx

We mount the image using loopback

 sudo kpartx -a -v armdisk.img
sudo mkdir /mnt/arm-vm
sudo mount /dev/mapper/loop0p2 /mnt/arm-vm

Copy the static binary

sudo cp /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static /mnt/arm-vm/usr/bin

sudo mount -o bind /proc /mnt/arm-vm/proc
sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/temp/dev
sudo mount -o bind /sys /mnt/temp/sys

We register qemu-arm-static as ARM interpreter to the kernel linux. [6]

#This can only be run as root (sudo don't work)

sudo su
echo
':arm:M::\x7fELF\x01\x01\x01\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x02\x00\x28\x00:\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\x00\xff
arm-static:' > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
exit

Now we chroot to our VM.

sudo chroot /mnt/arm-vm

Let see if it work:

$ uname -a
Linux cis-linux-arm 2.6.32 #19-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 9 16:20:46 UTC 2013 armv7l GNU/Linux

N.B: After test, qemu 1.1 (Debian wheezy) had some strange behaviour but the 1.5 (Ubuntu saucy) was working perfectly !
When you finished your work you should unmount everything to avert bad behaviour. Do not forget to not start your VM
with Qemu before unmount everything !

sudo umount /mnt/arm-vm/proc

sudo umount /mnt/arm-vm/dev
sudo umount /mnt/arm-vm/sys
sudo umount /mnt/arm-vm
sudo kpartx -d -v armdisk.img

References

[1] http://www.linuxforu.com/2011/05/quick-quide-to-qemu-setup/ [2] http://blog.troyastle.com/2010/07/building-arm-

powered-debian-vm-with.html [3] Differences between ARM926, ARM1136, A8 and A9 [4]
http://www.makestuff.eu/wordpress/running-debian-for-arm-powerpc-on-qemu/ [5] http://www.darrinhodges.com/chroot-
voodoo/ [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binfmt_misc

foudfou commented on Oct 2, 2016

As of qemu 2.7 at least, -redir tcp:5555::22 is deprecated: use -net user,hostfwd=tcp::5555-:22 instead. Thx for this great guide!

singam-sanjay commented on Nov 4, 2016

Hello @Liryna !

I'm looking at emulating CentOS 7 and Debian 8 on aarch64 using a local build of qemu 2.7.0. I'm looking at an non EFI environment, which
necessitates that I specify the kernel and its arguments.

Any ideas on how I could do that ?

Thank You !
eblot commented on Nov 17, 2016 • edited

There is an alternative way to store the installed kernel (vmlinuz*) and initrd to the host
Once the installation is complete, do not (yet) select "Finish installation" but "Start a shell", and:

chroot /target
cd boot/
scp * host:
exit

where host is the IP of the host then resume with "Finish installation"

No need to use qemu-nbd , as long as a scp client is installed in the guest and sshd runs on the host.

eblot commented on Nov 17, 2016

I'm unable to boot a Jessie image, even with QEMU's -dtb vexpress-v2p-ca9.dtb option, with netboot-console images.

Any success with Jessie & an ARMv7 target?

interval1066 commented on Apr 20

Finally, some qemu emulation steps that work. Thanks @lirnya.

jaytho commented on Sep 15

I think you mean

apt-get install qemu-user-static
instead of
apt-get install qemu-arm-static.
first link is dead: is
http://www.xappsoftware.com/wordpress/2013/01/31/armhf-versus-armel/
what you mean?

usbportnoy commented on Sep 16

@jaytho thank you!