New QEMU platform for -current - please test
 

Hello

I've replaced the old 'VersatilePB' emulation with support for the 'ARM Versatile Express'. There's no graphics support yet (although I saw a thread on a mailing list about someone writing a driver for the graphics chip), but the device emulates 1GB of RAM so it should be far more useful than its predecessor which only supported 256MB. Plus, the Versatile Express actually works in Linux 3.12, where as the VersatilePB has become broken again - so there's another good reason to use it ;-)

If anybody fancies giving it a try, please read the updated docs:
http://ftp.arm.slackware.com/slackwa...STALL_QEMU.TXT

If you already had QEMU installed, you will most likely need to rebuild it because QEMU needs to have the 'Flattened Device Tree' support, which means you also need the 'device-tree-compiler' package. Suitable versions are now available for Slackware 14.1 on slackbuilds.org (thanks to Robby Workman) - links are provided in the install docs.

If you were previously using the ARM Versatile PB (Slackware ARM 14.1 and prior), you'll also need to update your QEMU/ARM linux boot scripts as a few things have changed.
You can find new versions of the 'helper scripts' at a URL also in the installation doc.

Please let me know how it works out for you.

Thanks Stuart for this easy setup: I've tried and was able to run my own emulated slackwarearm-current installation (it's just a little slow but it works :) ).
(I found just a very small typo at point 4.1 of the guide: the argument of the first cp, unitrd*, should be uinitrd*)

I've not yet tried the bridged configuration (I've used it with NAT on two different boxes ATM), but what I've seem to have noticed is that after a random time the network of the emulated hardware and of the machine hosting it gets cut off and seems to come back if I turn off the emulated host, but I'll try to do more tests for this and report back.

Fixed


I did not get time to test the bridged config (although I cannot think of any reason why it wouldn't work) yet - let me know how it works out and if I need to update any of the supplied scripts. I also might get chance to test it myself in a week or so.