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.
First, cross-compile user programs with GCC-ARM toolchain. Then install qemu-arm-static
so that you can run ARM executables directly on linux
If there's no qemu-arm-static
in the package list, install qemu-user-static
instead
# armel packages also exist
sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf libc6-dev-armhf-cross qemu-user-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 if you install qemu-user-static
If you want to run an ARM64 binary:
sudo apt-get install libc6-dev-arm64-cross gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu
qemu-aarch64 -L /usr/aarch64-linux-gnu/ [path-to-binary] # or qemu-aarch64-static if you install qemu-user-static
For running the C++ program:
- ARM
sudo apt-get install g++-arm-linux-gnueabihf libstdc++-4.8-dev-armhf-cross
- AArch64
sudo apt-get install g++-aarch64-linux-gnu libstdc++-4.8-dev-arm64-cross
Notice that the version number of the libcstdc++ might change
sudo apt-get install qemu
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
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
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].
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").
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!
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.
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
.
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\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xfe\xff\xff\xff:/usr/bin/qemu-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
[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
On windows wsl it used to work (don't remember which version).
Now qemu-arm gives this error:
qemu-arm: Unable to reserve 0xffff0000 bytes of virtual address space at 0x1000 (Operation not supported) for use as guest address space (check yourvirtual memory ulimit setting, min_mmap_addr or reserve less using -R option)