Add qemu ARM support for raspberry pi virtualization

[jfrancais 4]

Would love to spin up virtual raspberry pi's for development.  Should be relatively straightforward to add with qemu already having ARM support available.  Would love to be able to use the webgui to create virtual pis that mount and boot from standard pi image files.

[Tjlejeune 15]

+1. Would love to be able to run a Android VM, mainly for Tasker 

[Xaero 95]

On 2/29/2020 at 7:54 PM, Tjlejeune said:

+1. Would love to be able to run a Android VM, mainly for Tasker 

Use AndroidX86:
https://www.android-x86.org/releases.html
In a normal x86 vm. Arm is not required for this.

@OP - are there any specific limitations that prevent you from running the native x86 versions of those packages or configurations in say, an ArchLinux or Debian VM? I mean, testing rpi images is a fine use case for it. But crosscompiling for ARM is faster on native x86 if you are planning on using it for any sort of dev purposes.

[Tjlejeune 15]

Yeah, I've tried Android X86. Unfortunately it ran like crap and some apps don't work well on it

[jfrancais 4]

On 3/4/2020 at 5:58 PM, Xaero said:

Use AndroidX86:
https://www.android-x86.org/releases.html
In a normal x86 vm. Arm is not required for this.

@OP - are there any specific limitations that prevent you from running the native x86 versions of those packages or configurations in say, an ArchLinux or Debian VM? I mean, testing rpi images is a fine use case for it. But crosscompiling for ARM is faster on native x86 if you are planning on using it for any sort of dev purposes.

For me specifically, I'm looking to do Raspberry Pi central management, development and testing before I send my images off to SD cards.

[Xaero 95]

On 3/4/2020 at 7:03 PM, Tjlejeune said:

Yeah, I've tried Android X86. Unfortunately it ran like crap and some apps don't work well on it

Android running on Emulated ARM hardware would probably run worse, FWIW.
 

 

4 hours ago, jfrancais said:

For me specifically, I'm looking to do Raspberry Pi central management, development and testing before I send my images off to SD cards.

This would be a use case for it then. You could however, set up a PXE boot SD card and store your development/testing images on a PXE server for the PI. This way you aren't constantly writing an SD card and your changes to the image can happen quickly.

[jfrancais 4]

On 3/15/2020 at 3:36 PM, Xaero said:

Android running on Emulated ARM hardware would probably run worse, FWIW.
 

 

This would be a use case for it then. You could however, set up a PXE boot SD card and store your development/testing images on a PXE server for the PI. This way you aren't constantly writing an SD card and your changes to the image can happen quickly.

I still need to develop the image which currently involved the Pi.  Once setup I pull the image and deploy to other Pis.  I'd like to do all that configuration on the PC and deploy from there.