Same image for QEMU and Raspberry Pi

General Discussions
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1

I am trying to build an image that supports both QEMU (For testing purposes before actual update rollouts) and actual hardware (Raspberry pi 3 or Intel NUC devices). I have tried using yocto project but facing difficulties in running it on QEMU.

Encountered repeated storage issues

  • Boot gets stuck waiting for:
  1. sda1 / vda1
  2. sda4 / vda4
  3. Drops to a shell.
  4. Fails to mount A/B partitions properly.
  • Indicates problems with partition layout or Mender’s expected partition names not matching the actual device.
2

Hi @pratish,

Thanks for reaching out! However that usually is not easily possible. The reasons are - depending on the combination, one or more might apply:

  • storage names do not match. mmcblkX from SD/eMMC on ARM, vda on QEMU using virtio, sda on QEMU using ide/sata/scsi.
  • instruction set architectures do not match: ARM on Raspberry Pi, X86 on NUCs
  • QEMU does not necessarily emulate specific boards like the RPi (to be fair, it almost never does!)
  • different drivers required, different device trees, and so on

So in summary: no, this is not easily possible in the generic way. There might be very specific combinations of virtualized+board platforms which work, but definitely not in a general, freely choosable way.

Greetz,
Josef

3

Hi @TheYoctoJester, thanks for the update. So is it possible that we forget about the Raspberry Pi and have an Intel NUC supported image that can also run on QEMU ? If yes, any insight that in which direction should I look would be very helpful.