Buildroot and Qemu

Question

I'm using buildroot to compile a minimalistic linux with a 4.19-rt kernel. It is supposed to run on a raspberry pi 3b (arm processor). Additionally I want to run it on a x86_64 linux computer and found qemu as an emulation solution for that.

Building linux and kernel and running it on the raspi works. It boots, I can login and use it.
To test qemu I followed this instruction [1]. A recent raspbian with 4.19 kernel is booting fine so qemu seems to be installed correctly.

sudo qemu-system-arm -kernel ./qemu-rpi-kernel/kernel-qemu-4.19.50-buster -hda 2019-09-26-raspbian-buster-lite.img -cpu arm1176 -m 256 -M versatilepb -no-reboot -serial stdio -append "root=/dev/sda2 panic=1 rootfstype=ext4 rw" -dtb qemu-rpi-kernel/versatile-pb.dtb

Bringing 1. and 2. together fails. When I try to emulate any self build linux, qemu only shows a black screen and one CPU is using 100%.

I used the same sdcard.img that works on the real hardware. I also tried to recompile the whole system with a normal 4.19 kernel (without real time). And I tried to build a versatile system (make qemu_arm_versatile_defconfig && make). None of it works.

Command to start the emulation:

sudo qemu-system-arm -kernel zImage -drive format=raw,file=sdcard.img -cpu arm1176 -m 256 -M versatilepb -no-reboot -append "root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 panic=1 rootfstype=ext4 rw" -serial stdio

My main problem is, that there is absolutly no useful output. The command outputs the following

ALSA lib pulse.c:242:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused

sdl: SDL_OpenAudio failed
sdl: Reason: ALSA: Couldn't open audio device: Connection refused
ALSA lib pulse.c:242:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused

sdl: SDL_OpenAudio failed
sdl: Reason: ALSA: Couldn't open audio device: Connection refused
audio: Failed to create voice `lm4549.out'

and opens a window for the graphics output (that does not show anything). The message also appears when emulating raspbian so it does not seem to be the reason.

When I run qemu with the prebuild raspbian but without the -dtb argument, I get a message like "Error: invalid dtb and unrecognized/unsupported machine ID". I would at least expect something like this with my self build code. But because there is no output I'm out of ideas what even to google for.

Does someone maybe have an idea what I'm doing wrong or how I get qemu to provide me any useful information on what went wrong?

[1] https://blog.agchapman.com/using-qemu-to-emulate-a-raspberry-pi/

Peter Maydell Peter Maydell · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-10T12:11:03

The problem is that a kernel will only boot on a piece of Arm hardware if it is compiled for that hardware. Otherwise it will generally fail, usually by crashing before it is able to output anything useful.

In particular, the QEMU 'versatilepb' machine is completely different to the Raspberry Pi. Any working set of instructions that use that machine type are really running a kernel built to work with the versatilepb board and a raspi userspace/filesystem on top of that. You're trying to build a kernel that has support for only the raspi on a machine that isn't a raspi, which won't work.

It is possible to build a kernel that works on more than one piece of Arm hardware, if you compile in the support for both board types (all the device drivers for both, etc). If you want to go down that path, I would suggest looking at the differences between the kernel config for the kernel that works and your one, and add plausible looking missing things until you find out what is actually required.

Your attempt to boot on QEMU directly from sdcard.img will not work, because QEMU's versatilepb board model does not support direct boot from sdcard (this would require us to run some kind of BIOS/firmware image in the guest, which we don't have). For versatilepb you need to supply directly to QEMU the kernel, possibly an initrd, and definitely the correct dtb for the versatilepb.

You might instead try looking at QEMU's "raspi2" and "raspi3" board models, which really do model the hardware of Raspberry Pis. The disadvantages however are that these models are missing some features and are not very actively developed, so often newer kernels don't boot on them, and also since there is no USB controller model there is no way to get networking. (This is why most blog posts etc suggest using the 'versatilepb' -- userspace doesn't often really care about exactly what hardware it's running on, so unless you're trying to do kernel development you can just run a versatilepb kernel and take advantage of the features like networking that that QEMU model has.)

Buildroot and Qemu

2 Answers