How to run a FreeBSD Virtual Machine on the RPI4 with QEMU. Part 1: QEMU setup
I got a Raspberry PI 4 a couple of months back and started it use it to run virtual machines.
This works great for GNU/Linux distributions but FreeBSD as a virtual machine didn’t work for me. When I tried to install FreeBSD or import a virtual machine image, FreeBSD wasn’t able to mount the root filesystem and ended with an “error 19”.
On the FreeBSD wiki, there are a few articles on how to use ARM64 FreeBSD with QEMU directly.
You find my journey of getting a FreeBSD Virtual Machine below.
I use Manjaro on my Raspberry PI, but the same setup will work with other GNU/Linux distributions.
Import VM image
Download the VM image
FreeBSD cloud images are available at https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/ for the aarch64 (ARM64) and x86 ( AMD64, i386) architectures.
Download the latest VM image of FreeBSD you’d like to use.
Firmware
To be able to boot the image we need a firmware image (BIOS), there two options EDK (UEFI) or u-boot. The QEMU source comes with UEFI firmware images, for some reason Arch Linux doesn’t include them in the standard QEMU package. The edk2-avmf AUR package provides the required firmware to virtual systems on ARM64.
UEFI
Boot the virtual machine with UEFI
As a test, I booted the release candidate of the upcoming FreeBSD 13 release. This worked fine with a single CPU.
$ qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -m 4096M -cpu host,pmu=off --enable-kvm \
-nographic -bios /usr/share/edk2/aarch64/QEMU_EFI.fd \
-hda /home/staf/Downloads/freebsd/FreeBSD-13.0-RC2-arm64-aarch64.qcow2 \
-boot order=c
SMP
When I tried to enable more than 1 CPU with -smp 2 or -smp cores=2,sockets=1 the system hangs during the startup…
qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -m 4096M -cpu host,pmu=off --enable-kvm -smp cores=2,sockets=1 \
-nographic -bios /usr/share/edk2/aarch64/QEMU_EFI.fd \
-hda /home/staf/Downloads/freebsd/FreeBSD-13.0-RC2-arm64-aarch64.qcow2 \
-boot order=d
I want to use more than 1 CPU core for my FreeBSD virtual system to run FreeBSD jails.
U-boot to the rescue
The other firmware that we can use is U-boot, U-boot is a common used BIOS on ARM64 by a lot of single-board computers…
I didn’t find a U-boot package for Manjaro/ArchLinux for QEMU.
Compile u-boot
Clone the git repo.
$ git clone https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot
Cloning into 'u-boot'...
warning: redirecting to https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot.git/
remote: Enumerating objects: 767065, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (767065/767065), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (117586/117586), done.
remote: Total 767065 (delta 639963), reused 766651 (delta 639562), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (767065/767065), 150.47 MiB | 1.94 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (639963/639963), done.
Updating files: 100% (17747/17747), done.
Goto into the u-boot directory.
$ cd u-boot/
[staf@minerva u-boot]$
Configure u-boot for QEMU on ARM64.
$ make qemu_arm64_defconfig
#
# configuration written to .config
#
[staf@minerva u-boot]$
Compile
$ make
scripts/kconfig/conf --syncconfig Kconfig
UPD include/config.h
CFG u-boot.cfg
GEN include/autoconf.mk
GEN include/autoconf.mk.dep
<snip>
CC examples/standalone/hello_world.o
CC examples/standalone/stubs.o
LD examples/standalone/libstubs.o
LD examples/standalone/hello_world
OBJCOPY examples/standalone/hello_world.srec
OBJCOPY examples/standalone/hello_world.bin
LDS u-boot.lds
LD u-boot
OBJCOPY u-boot.srec
OBJCOPY u-boot-nodtb.bin
RELOC u-boot-nodtb.bin
COPY u-boot.bin
SYM u-boot.sym
CFGCHK u-boot.cfg
Copy the u-boot.bin to /usr/local.
Create /usr/local/u-boot.
$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/u-boot
Copy u-boot.bin to /usr/local/u-boot/.
$ ls -l /usr/local/u-boot/
total 732
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 749072 Mar 14 14:43 u-boot.bin
Boot FreeBSD with U-boot
FreeBSD boot fine now with 2 CPU’s.
qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -m 4096M -cpu host,pmu=off --enable-kvm \
-smp 2 -nographic -bios /usr/local/u-boot/u-boot.bin \
-hda /home/staf/Downloads/freebsd/FreeBSD-13.0-RC2-arm64-aarch64.qcow2
In an upcoming blog post, I’ll go over the network setup and how to install FreeBSD from CDROM image.
Have fun!
Leave a comment