Qemu emulation
Run arm32 UEFI in a virtual machine.
Emulating a arm32 UEFI device is useful for developing Linux and debugging it.
In the GDB Debugging page you can find instructions on how to compile Linux for this virtual machine.
A premade ZIP with all required files can be found at the bottom.
Run the following commands to install the required packages.
sudo apt install python python3 python3-distutils
sudo apt install gcc-arm-none-eabi
sudo apt install uuid-dev
sudo apt install build-essential
sudo apt install bison
sudo apt install flex
You will need other stuff too, but that is probably already installed. (e.g. git)
You need the source code of edk2 and acpica.
# Go to the directory you want to work in
export WORKSPACE=$PWD
# Download edk2 and acpica
git clone https://github.com/acpica/acpica.git
git clone https://github.com/tianocore/edk2.git
# Download submodules
cd edk2
git submodule update --init
cd ..
Go to your source directory and run the following commands.
# Compile acpica tools
make -C $WORKSPACE/acpica -j$(nproc)
# Set environment variables
export GCC5_ARM_PREFIX=arm-none-eabi-
export IASL_PREFIX=$WORKSPACE/acpica/generate/unix/bin/
export PYTHON_COMMAND=/usr/bin/python3
# Configure the edk2 environment
source edk2/edksetup.sh
# Compile edk2 BaseTools
make -C edk2/BaseTools -j$(nproc)
# Compile OVMF
build -a ARM -t GCC5 -p ArmVirtPkg/ArmVirtQemu.dsc -b RELEASE -j$(nproc)
Your output OVMF firmware file for qemu is
$WORKSPACE/Build/ArmVirtQemu-ARM/RELEASEGCC5/FV/QEMU_EFI.fdCreate a directory, where you want your files to be in. Put your
QEMU_EFI.fd firmware file in this directory, compiled in the previous section. Now run the following commands to create some disk images:rm -f flash0.img flash1.img
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=64 of=flash0.img
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=64 of=flash1.img
dd if=QEMU_EFI.fd bs=1M of=flash0.img conv=notrunc
Now create a directory named
boot. This will be your EFI partition. You can now easily place your EFI files in there.To start your virtual machine run the following command, and make sure
qemu-system-arm is installed.qemu-system-arm \
-m 1024 \
-cpu cortex-a15 \
-M virt \
-pflash flash0.img \
-pflash flash1.img \
-nographic \
-drive \
file=fat:rw:boot/ \
-smp '4'
This will run qemu with 4 virtual CPU cores. They are Coretx-A15 cores. Used because it works.
The following ZIP includes all files setup in their proper location. In addition its EFI partition folder has a UEFI shell in it. To run it either execute the
run.sh file or enter the command described in Run qemu.arm32-uefi-qemu-setup.zip
2MB
Binary
Premade qemu setup
Links where the above compiling information is from:
Last modified 2yr ago