Installing debian stretch mipsel on qemu

debian-mipsel-on-qemu.md

Installing debian "stretch" mipsel on qemu

Download debian iso

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/mipsel/iso-cd/debian-9.1.0-mipsel-netinst.iso

Download initrd & vmlinux

http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/installer-mipsel/current/images/malta/netboot/initrd.gz

http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/installer-mipsel/current/images/malta/netboot/vmlinux-4.9.0-3-4kc-malta

Create a new hard disk

$ qemu-img create -f qcow2 hda.qcow 10G

Install debian

$ qemu-system-mipsel -cdrom debian-9.1.0-mipsel-netinst.iso \
-hda hda.qcow \
-M malta \
-kernel vmlinux-4.9.0-3-4kc-malta \
-boot d \
-initrd initrd.gz \
-m 512 \
-nographic \
-append "root=/dev/sda1 nokaslr" 

Allow for the installation to complete. When done copy over the vmlinux-4.9.0-3-4kc-malta file from the Debian VM to the host machine.

Boot from hda

$ qemu-system-mipsel -hda hda.qcow \
-M malta \
-kernel vmlinux-4.9.0-3-4kc-malta \
-initrd initrd.gz \
-m 512 \
-nographic \
-append "root=/dev/sda1 nokaslr" 

Note: vmlinux-4.9.0-3-4kc-malta is the file copied from the VM in the previous step and NOT the original one downloaded from ftp.debian.org.

References

• https://github.com/kholia/mips-hacking
• https://linux-tips.com/t/booting-from-an-iso-image-using-qemu/136
• https://wiki.debian.org/QEMU