QEMU Emulate Raspberry Pi 3 and 4

September 23, 2024 · 9 min read

Backend & Applied ML Engineer

In this blog, QEMU is employed to emulate Raspberry Pi 3/4 in mac M1 host(it's also supposed to work in Windows/Linux with a little tweak). I will demonstrate two different ways to emulate Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi 4 in respect. These two ways are different by using different QEMU machines as you would like to use:

-machine raspi3b: raspberry pi 3b machine to emulate Raspberry Pi 3.
-machine virt: general arm machine to emulate Raspberry Pi 4.

note

In mac M1 with setting -machine virt, I use the hardware acceleration by -accel hvf. In Windows(x86_64), the hardware acceleration for aarch64 is not available, so removing the hardware acceleration will work as well in Windows.

For both of these two, we still need prepare some common steps before running QEMU:

Extract the appropriate kernel, device tree or root filesystem

This blog will emulate Raspberry Pi using QEMU in mac M1 host using the new image 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img.

The default user:pi and password:raspberry have been removed from this image. In order to log in, we have to write user and password to the image before booting. These steps can be skipped when booting previous images.

Prerequisites

Docker
- be required in macOS
- can be skipped in Linux
- can use wsl as an alternative in Windows
QEMU
- homebrew install in macOS
Raspberry Pi image: 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img

Since I am in mac M1, and the raspberry pi image which contains a fat filesystem as boot and a ext4 filesystem as OS, we need write some configuration into it. So I will use a Docker Ubuntu container to do the operation on the the filesystem. There some other tools to do the like of these operations:

ext4fuse is free and easy to install via homebrew, but it has limit as read-only access.
ExtFS from Paragon supports read-write access while you need pay for it.
virtual machine
- Docker in OSX make use of virtual machine while it is quick and flexible to use.

Raspberry Pi image

cd ~
wget https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_arm64/images/raspios_arm64-2024-05-03/2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img.xz
xz -d 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img.xz

Docker Ubuntu container

Mount the folder including 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img

docker run -it -d --privileged -v $PWD:/qemu --name ubuntu ubuntu
docekr exec -it ubuntu bash

Extracting Kernel and device tree

Operations all in Ubuntu container.

root@f36a3251391d:/qemu# fdisk -l 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img 
Disk 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img: 1.96 GiB, 2101346304 bytes, 4104192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x544c6228

Device                                      Boot  Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img1        8192  532479  524288  256M  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img2      532480 4104191 3571712  1.7G 83 Linux

The first partition is boot filesystem.
The second partition is real root filesystem.

All the data we need is in the first partition, to do the operation is mounting it.

The offset of the first partition: 8192 * 512 = 4194304,

root@f36a3251391d:/qemu# mount -o loop,offset=4194304 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img /mnt/rpi-boot/

root@f36a3251391d:/qemu# ls -ls /mnt/rpi-boot/
total 30244
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   18693 Apr  5 11:32 COPYING.linux
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    1594 Apr  5 11:32 LICENCE.broadcom
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   30390 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2710-rpi-2-b.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   32753 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   32142 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   30285 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2710-rpi-cm3.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   31318 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2710-rpi-zero-2-w.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   31318 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2710-rpi-zero-2.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   52593 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   52682 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2711-rpi-400.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   38182 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2711-rpi-cm4-io.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   53202 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2711-rpi-cm4.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   50504 Apr  5 11:32 bcm2711-rpi-cm4s.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   52476 Apr  5 11:32 bootcode.bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     154 May  3 03:11 cmdline.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    2109 May  3 02:53 config.txt
  ...
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     145 May  3 03:11 issue.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8219600 Apr  5 11:32 kernel8.img
  ...

To run QEMU we will need the kernel and device tree, so let’s copy them out:

root@f36a3251391d:/qemu# cp /mnt/rpi-boot/kernel8.img .
root@f36a3251391d:/qemu# cp /mnt/rpi-boot/bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb .

Setting up default user

Operations all in docker container.

Now in order to set up user and enable ssh in default, we need write files into /userconf and /ssh under the boot filesystem mounted as /mnt/rpi-boot/.

Set up a default user:pi and password:raspberry.

Hash password raspberry using openssl,

root@f36a3251391d:/qemu# openssl passwd
Password: 
Verifying - Password: 
$1$d...AvcL$wqfUqTIauUP1TVJ/uU1td0

root@f36a3251391d:/qemu# echo 'pi:$1$d...AvcL$wqfUqTIauUP1TVJ/uU1td0' | tee /mnt/rpi-boot/userconf

Enable ssh,

root@f36a3251391d:/qemu# touch /mnt/rpi-boot/ssh

root@f36a3251391d:/qemu# umount /mnt/rpi-boot

Running QEMU

Emulate Raspberry Pi 3

Now switch back to the host macOS to run QEMU,

Resize the image to the next power of 2 size,

The original size,

❯ stat -f%z 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img
2101346304

To resize to 4GB,

qemu-img resize ./2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img 4G

qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -machine raspi3b \
    -cpu cortex-a72 \
    -nographic \
    -m 1G \
    -smp 4 \
    -dtb bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb \
    -kernel kernel8.img \
    -append "rw earlyprintk loglevel=8 console=ttyAMA0,115200 dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootdelay=1" \
    -netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \
    -device usb-net,netdev=net0 \
    -sd 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img

Options in detail:

-machine raspi3b: use raspberry pi 3 machine.
-append:
- console=ttyAMA0: output the VM std to QEMU console.
- root=/dev/mmcblk0p2: mount real root filesystem to /dev/mmcblk0p2(the second partition of mmcblk0) as we -sd xx will be mounted to /dev/mmcblk0.
-netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22: network mapping host port 2222 to the VM 22
-device usb-net,netdev=net0: expose netdev=net0 as usb-net in the raspberry pi 3 machine.
-sd 2024-05-03-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img: sd drive is available in the raspberry pi 3 machine.

Emulate Raspberry Pi 4 with `virt`

We will use generic virtual machine virt to act as raspi4, since there is no raspi4 machine defined in QEMU official machines. However you can still use raspi3 to act as raspi4 as they are same!

Hardware Acceleration can be enable in virt machine by using -accel hvf option in my mac M1 host as it's arm-based.

So virt will bring high performance and increase efficiency!

After tuning options and searching from many resources, the operational setting for QEMU to emulate is,

Use ubuntu-22.04.3-preinstalled-server-arm64+raspi.img, of which the default user is ubuntu and password is ubuntu.

kernel="$PWD/ubuntu-22.04.3-preinstalled-server-arm64+raspi-boot/vmlinuz"
initrd="$PWD/ubuntu-22.04.3-preinstalled-server-arm64+raspi-boot/initrd.img"
img="$PWD/ubuntu-22.04.3-preinstalled-server-arm64+raspi.img"

For `SCSI hard disk`

This storage device file will be named /dev/sdX,

qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -machine virt \
    -accel hvf \
    -cpu host \
    -smp 4 \
    -m 4G \
    -nographic \
    -kernel $kernel \
    -initrd $initrd \
    -append "earlyprintk loglevel=8 root=/dev/sda2 rootfstype=ext4 rw console=ttyAMA0" \
    -drive file=$img,format=raw,if=none,id=drive0 \
    -device virtio-scsi-pci,id=scsi \
    -device scsi-hd,drive=drive0,bus=scsi.0 \
    -netdev user,id=mynet,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \
    -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=mynet

Options in detail:

-accel hvf: hardware acceleration in mac M1. Don't use in x86_64 host.
-cpu host: change to -cpu cortex-a72 when no hardware acceleration available such as in x86_64 host.
-append
- root=/dev/sda2: the second partition of the ubuntu-22.04.3-preinstalled-server-arm64+raspi.img disk image hold the real root filesystem.
-initrd $initrd
- the boot loader works using configuration like vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/sda2.

For `virtual disk` storage device

This storage device file will be named /dev/vdX,

qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -machine virt \
    -accel hvf \
    -cpu host \
    -smp 4 \
    -m 4G \
    -nographic \
    -kernel $kernel \
    -initrd $initrd \
    -append "earlyprintk loglevel=8 root=/dev/vda2 rootfstype=ext4 rw console=ttyAMA0" \
    -drive file=$img,format=raw,if=none,id=drive0 \
    -device virtio-blk-pci,drive=drive0 \
    -netdev user,id=mynet,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \
    -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=mynet

For `NVMe` storage device

This storage device file will be named /dev/nvmeX,

qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -machine virt \
    -accel hvf \
    -cpu host \
    -smp 4 \
    -m 4G \
    -nographic \
    -kernel $kernel \
    -append "earlyprintk loglevel=8 root=/dev/nvme0n1p2 rootfstype=ext4 rw console=ttyAMA0" \
    -drive file=$img,format=raw,if=none,id=drive0 \
    -device nvme,drive=drive0,serial=deadbeaf1 \
    -netdev user,id=mynet,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \
    -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=mynet

Options in detail:

no -initrd $initrd
- the boot loader works using configuration like vmlinuz root=/dev/nvme0n1p2.
- we directly mount the real filesystem /dev/nvme0n1p2, skipping to mount the initial RAM disk.
- I test other type storage device must binding -initrd $initrd while there is no need for NVME. In my assumption, those storage devices need to be configured in the initramfs.

For `usb storage`

This storage device file will be named /dev/sdX,

qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -machine virt \
    -cpu cortex-a57 \
    -smp 4 \
    -m 4G \
    -no-reboot \
    -nographic \
    -kernel $kernel \
    -initrd $initrd \
    -append "earlyprintk loglevel=8 root=/dev/sda2 rootfstype=ext4 console=ttyAMA0 raid=noautodetect" \
    -device usb-ehci \
    -device usb-storage,drive=disk0 \
    -drive file=$img,format=raw,if=none,id=disk0 \
    -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=mynet \
    -netdev user,id=mynet,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22

Options in detail:

-device usb-ehci: usb bus -> PCI bus
-device usb-storage: usb storage device -> usb bus

Test Raspberry Pi VM

Log into the Raspberry Pi via ssh from the macOS host,

❯ ssh -p 2222 pi@localhost
The authenticity of host '[localhost]:2222 ([127.0.0.1]:2222)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:6igL6iaigBCszv8m6nyNl+tsB2siV/tL+TRQANC6nBw.
This key is not known by any other names
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added '[localhost]:2222' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
pi@localhost's password: 
Linux raspberrypi 6.1.21-v8+ #1642 SMP PREEMPT Mon Apr  3 17:24:16 BST 2023 aarch64

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Fri Sep 22 16:30:58 2023

SSH is enabled and the default password for the 'pi' user has not been changed.
This is a security risk - please login as the 'pi' user and type 'passwd' to set a new password.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ 

Resources

Emulating a Raspberry Pi in QEMU | InterruptEmulating a Raspberry Pi in QEMU

How to emulate block devices with QEMU

Emulation of block devices — Das U-Boot unknown version documentation

Prerequisites​

Raspberry Pi image​

Docker Ubuntu container​

Extracting Kernel and device tree​

Setting up default user​

Running QEMU​

Emulate Raspberry Pi 3​

Emulate Raspberry Pi 4 with virt​

For SCSI hard disk​

For virtual disk storage device​

For NVMe storage device​

For usb storage​

Test Raspberry Pi VM​

Resources​

Prerequisites

Raspberry Pi image

Docker Ubuntu container

Extracting Kernel and device tree

Setting up default user

Running QEMU

Emulate Raspberry Pi 3

Emulate Raspberry Pi 4 with `virt`

For `SCSI hard disk`

For `virtual disk` storage device

For `NVMe` storage device

For `usb storage`

Test Raspberry Pi VM

Resources