Run Nixos rpi4 image (ARM SD image) by QEMU emulation

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1

Hi Folks,

I want to test Raspberry Pi builds on my laptop by emulating Raspberry Pi.

I know that this is possible by running QEMU with official Raspberry Pi image and with Ubuntu Raspberry Pi images as described for example here.

I tried to do the same with NixOS Raspberry Pi image (which is generic SD image).

I downloaded https://hydra.nixos.org/build/237120771/download/1/nixos-sd-image-23.11pre531102.fdd898f8f79e-aarch64-linux.img.zst and:

I prepared disk image:

cat ....img.zst | unzstd -o disk.img
qemu-img resize disk.img 8G

I temporarily mounted each partitions and copied:

cp mounted/bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb treeblob.dtb # from first partition
cp mounted/boot/nixos/vgr4bvi1msxfjhkr6sijqj07slchvbf4-linux-6.1.55-Image kernel.img # from second partition

and then I run

qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -machine raspi3b \
    -cpu cortex-a72 \
    -smp 4 -m 1G \
    -dtb treeblob.dtb \
    -drive "file=disk.img,format=raw,index=0,if=sd" \
    -device usb-net,netdev=net0 -netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=tcp::50022-:22 \
    -monitor tcp:127.0.0.1:50021,server,nowait \
    -nographic

And nothing. I tried with -nographic which should give me serial port output and I also tried without -nographic which should give me VGA output. But I didn’t get any serial / VGA output.

I assume there is something wrong with QEMU configuration and what works for Raspbian, doesn’t work for NixOS.

Could you please help? Do you know how to run it?

Thank you.

2

Maybe try -cpu arm1176

3

Thank you, but that doesn’t work.

I tried another 10 configurations with -kernel linux-6.1.55-Image and -kernel u-boot-rpi3.bin and -kernel u-boot-rpi4.bin but nothing is giving me any serial / VGA output.

4

Maybe instead of -kernel get BIOS file and run it like:

qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -cpu cortex-a72 \
  -m 256M -smp 2 -nographic \
  -bios QEMU_EFI.fd \
  -drive if=none,file=disk.img,id=hd0,format=raw -device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \
  -device virtio-net-device,netdev=vmnic -netdev user,id=vmnic
5

I found QEMU_EFI.fd in qemu-efi-aarch64_2022.11-6_all.deb but I’m getting

BdsDxe: failed to load Boot0001 "UEFI Misc Device" from VenHw(837DCA9E-E874-4D82-B29A-23FE0E23D1E2,003E000A00000000): Not Found

>>Start PXE over IPv4.

I don’t get it - why NixOS SD image that works on rpi doesn’t run under QEMU…

6

It would be super useful to figure out how to run Raspberry Pi image to test ARM config before build.

Any QEMU experts?

Thank you.

7

The following works with Raspbian:

qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -machine raspi3b \
    -cpu cortex-a72 \
    -smp 4 -m 1G \
    -kernel kernel.img \
    -dtb treeblob.dtb \
    -drive "file=2023-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64.img disk.img,format=raw,index=0,if=sd" \
    -append "rw earlyprintk loglevel=8 console=ttyAMA0,115200 dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootdelay=1" \
    -device usb-net,netdev=net0 -netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=tcp::1234-:22 \
    -nographic

Does it not work with NixOS image?

8

Unfortunately it doesn’t

9

This thread is related but we never were able to get SSH running.

1 Like
10

Thank you.

For some reason my Google foo didn’t find the post.

I’ve just run

qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -M raspi3b \
    -dtb ./bcm2837-rpi-3-b.dtb \
    -m 1G \
    -smp 4 \
    -drive "format=raw,file=disk.img" \
    -kernel ./u-boot-rpi3.bin \
    -device usb-net,netdev=net0 \
    -netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \
    -append "console=ttyAMA0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootwait" \
    -nographic

and it gives me some output. As you mentioned I can’t SSH-in but it’s a progress :wink: .