ark74/qemu-arm-image-builder

Shell scripts to build Linux images for QEMU ARM emulator

Install and use of ARM Linux on amd64 Linux

LXC

LXC is a container running a Linux guest on a Linux host. To install and use an arm64 guest on Debian or its derivative, we can

1. apt-get --install-recommends install busybox-static binfmt-support qemu-user-static lxc
2. lxc-create -n debian-buster-arm64 -t download -- -d debian -r buster -a arm64
3. lxc-execute -n debian-buster-arm64 -- passwd -d root
4. lxc-start -F -n debian-buster-arm64

QEMU

Official installer

We can use an official installer of a distro, e.g. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

An alternative

We can also use qemu-arm-image-builder provided here.

build-gpt-autopkgtest-qemu.sh

• For building autopkgtest qemu testbeds of Debian non-x86 architectures, use the latest autopkgtest-build-qemu at https://salsa.debian.org/ci-team/autopkgtest
• For building qemu testbeds of Devuan, see the instruction at http://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=4320
• build-gpt-autopkgtest-qemu.sh has become less needed now.

Builds a autopkgtest QEMU testbed for amd64, i386, arm64, armhf, and ppc64el architectures. The script also supports sysvinit-core as /sbin/init and btrfs root partition of the QEMU testbed. Devuan testbed can also be made. I see build-gpt-autopkgtest-qemu.sh as a temporary alternative to autopkgtest-build-qemu until it includes support for sysvinit as /sbin/init. Another QEMU bootable image builder for Debian is available as qemu-sbuild-utils. To use an ARM testbed, you need to install qemu-system-arm, qemu-efi-arm, qemu-efi-aarch64, ipxe-qemu. For a PowerPC, you need qemu-system-ppc. MMVARIANT=apt is OK for most packages, but it gives error to autopkgtest of systemd, which is OK with MMVARIANT=important...

qemu-arm-image-builder

Shell scripts to build Linux images for QEMU ARM emulator

The scripts create an image file of Debian or Devuan Linux. Their releases, such as Buster, Bullseye, Beowulf, or Chimaera can be chosen. Target architectures are arm64, armhf, and armel. Host computer should run Debian, Devuan or Ubuntu. Host architecture can be anything. To use the scripts,

1. Download all the shell script.
2. Customize shell variables in build-arm-debian-qemu-image.sh or build-arm-devuan-qemu-image.sh.
3. Run the editted shell script.
4. At the end of shell script, it prints suitable command lines to start the built image by qemu.

To have a reasonable speed of emulation, KVM has to be enabled, if possible. The scripts print suitable command options to enable KVM. Note that Intel and AMD host CPU do not have ARM KVM. Recent ARM CPUs and Linux kernels have KVM capability. I tested the scripts on Debian Bullseye arm64 with Linux kernel 5.9 and qemu 5.1. It may be impossible to build an image of Debian stretch or older, and Devuan ASCII or older.

console-setup may fail only at the first boot. virt-manager is a friendly user interface to qemu-system-aarch64 and qemu-system-arm. After installing it by apt-get --install-recommends install virt-manager, you might need to apply a patch at virt-manager/virt-manager#174

Secure bootable images for i386/amd64

By setting ARCH=amd64 or ARCH=i386 shell variable, the same scripts can produce secure-bootable QEMU images. As Debian lacks i386 OVMF and gives amd64 OVMF inconvenient for autopkgtest-virt-qemu, I also include OVMF from Fedora 33. QEMU can be started as qemu-system-x86_64 -machine q35,smm=on -global driver=cfi.pflash01,property=secure,value=on -drive if=pflash,format=raw,unit=0,file=OVMF_CODE.secboot.fd,readonly=on -drive if=pflash,format=raw,unit=1,file=copy_of_OVMF_VARS.secboot.fd When you want to build secure boot capable OVMF from the source, you can also use https://github.com/emojifreak/qemu-arm-image-builder/blob/main/OVMF-Fedora/my-ovmf-build.sh

ppc64el, ppc64 and powerpc (32-bit big endian) architectures

Experimental support is added. If you find any inconvenience, please report it as a github issue. (PowerPC (32-bit) image doesn't boot)

DQIB

Another project similar in the spirit is Debian Quick Image Baker.

s390x, mips64el, and mipsel

I do not know how to build a bootable image for s390x, mips64el, or mipsel. My impression is that there is no publicly available booting ROM for those architectures, similar to OVMF and AAVMF. If you know how to do it, please tell me as a github issue here.