Running tdx-reference-minimal-image for verdin-imx8mp machine in QEMU

Technical Support
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1

Hello,

I’ve just downloaded the latest BSP and bitbaked the tdx-reference-minimal-image for verdin-imx8mp machine. I want to run generated image in QEMU. But as soon as I run runqemu serial cmd, I got below error. Is this not supported? Any idea what to do to run the image generated under QEMU?

mfid@deb05:~/development/toradex-scarthgap/build$ bitbake tdx-reference-minimal-image

Build Configuration:
BB_VERSION           = "2.8.0"
BUILD_SYS            = "x86_64-linux"
NATIVELSBSTRING      = "ubuntu-24.04"
TARGET_SYS           = "aarch64-tdx-linux"
MACHINE              = "verdin-imx8mp"
DISTRO               = "tdx-xwayland-upstream"
DISTRO_VERSION       = "7.3.0-devel-20250528134332+build.0"
TUNE_FEATURES        = "aarch64 armv8a crypto"
TARGET_FPU           = ""
meta-toradex-nxp     = "HEAD:420fcdb5de836053408a3c87e86556751253cc16"
meta-freescale       = "HEAD:a82f138b140f613a06bf9ac60101e4bb511c309f"
meta-freescale-3rdparty = "HEAD:70c83e96c7f75e73245cb77f1b0cada9ed4bbc6d"
meta-toradex-ti      = "HEAD:bb035ca3ff46ed91c38229a70217f59302c2a9fe"
meta-arm-toolchain
meta-arm             = "HEAD:8e0f8af90fefb03f08cd2228cde7a89902a6b37c"
meta-ti-bsp
meta-ti-extras       = "HEAD:fe69a3232982cf6d3493e5d87d2ee5f441f590a6"
meta-toradex-bsp-common = "HEAD:6282b7500d255e6865fc3ba946b3081e60c65afd"
meta-oe
meta-filesystems
meta-networking
meta-multimedia
meta-python          = "HEAD:e92d0173a80ea7592c866618ef5293203c50544c"
meta-freescale-distro = "HEAD:b9d6a5d9931922558046d230c1f5f4ef6ee72345"
meta-toradex-demos   = "HEAD:7d9d42e024b8bd9048028986c8dfb36a7300ac6a"
meta-qt5             = "HEAD:eb828418264a49b8d00035cb3d7b12fcea3be801"
meta-tpm             = "HEAD:bc865c5276c2ab4031229916e8d7c20148dfbac3"
meta-toradex-distro  = "HEAD:e808259783ae03856eb908fae18bb5279dac78c7"
meta-poky            = "HEAD:7f1be5a930554ea5036d2c806aa752ae0b2de826"
meta                 = "HEAD:b214cc84a922f7a3fb7ebbc501189ce25e8bd2bd"

NOTE: Executing Tasks
NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 7282 tasks of which 0 didn't need to be rerun and all succeeded.
NOTE: Writing buildhistory
NOTE: Writing buildhistory took: 7 seconds



mfid@deb05:~/development/toradex-scarthgap/build$ runqemu serial
runqemu - INFO - Running bitbake -e  ...
ls: cannot access '/home/mfid/development/toradex-scarthgap/build/deploy/images/verdin-imx8mp/*.qemuboot.conf': No such file or directory
runqemu - ERROR - Command 'ls -t /home/mfid/development/toradex-scarthgap/build/deploy/images/verdin-imx8mp/*.qemuboot.conf' returned non-zero exit status 2.
runqemu - INFO - Cleaning up
runqemu - INFO - Host uptime: 625701.81

Thanks.

2

Hi, I’m the Toradex AI Assistant.

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Hello,

Thank you for your detailed message and for sharing your build environment details.

QEMU emulation is not supported for the Verdin iMX8M Plus module. The error you are encountering—specifically the missing *.qemuboot.conf file—is expected since the BSP does not generate QEMU configuration files for this platform.

For development, testing, and debugging on the Verdin iMX8M Plus, the recommended approaches are:

  1. Use actual Verdin iMX8M Plus hardware. If you have a Verdin Development Board, you can flash the built image and perform testing on the real hardware.
  2. Use containers on Torizon OS. This allows for flexible application development and faster iterations without having to fully rebuild or reflash the entire system for every change.
  3. Leverage the Torizon IDE Extension for VSCode. This tool enables remote debugging and application deployment directly to your Verdin iMX8M Plus device from your development workstation, streamlining the development process.

If you would like more information on any of these recommended workflows, please let me know!

You can also explore:

Best regards,
Toradex AI Assistant.

3

We have never tested our images under QEMU and currently have no plans to support or invest development resources in that area. The error you’re encountering is most likely due to missing peripheral emulation or stub drivers that our image expects to be present on actual Toradex hardware. Since QEMU does not emulate the specific SoCs or board-level components we use—such as power management ICs, display controllers, or peripheral buses—the image may fail to boot or function correctly.

If you are exploring QEMU as a development tool, we recommend using a minimal image tailored for a generic QEMU-supported machine (e.g., virt) and gradually adapting it to your needs, but this would fall outside the scope of our official support.

4

I think the latest QEMU (unfortunately scarthgap uses older versions) supports imx8mp directly:
https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/arm/imx8mp-evk.html

This should be easy, I will dig further.
Thank you.