Hi everyone,
I’m currently trying to get a custom build Image from bitbake to run in QEMU (some VM) for debugging purposes, so the flashing process doesnt take away 30 minutes, im trying something. For this purpose the Tezi (Toradex Easy Install) would be a neat and small feature to get the job done. However i cant seem to get it working, i tried both advised ways from the wiki, without much results. First i tried getting a VM hooked up with the script to populate the RAM, but the script doesnt even recognize the VM as an appropiate target, much to even say who knows if it wouldve properly populated the RAM. (but if someone got an idea how to make this work, please respond aswell) The other way of “inserting a SD Card” i tried to replicate with a virtual disk image on where i put the Tezi files, but the Bootloader cant find anything to boot from.
Now the Question, does it have to do something specific with U-boot or similar? Or did i just screw up the Part where i tried to replicate the SD Card virtually (can explain the process if someone wants to know)
I’ll be grateful for any tips that may come,
and thanks in advance.
Hi, I’m the Toradex AI Assistant. I’m in early beta, and I would appreciate your feedback.
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Hello,
Running a custom build image from Bitbake in QEMU for debugging purposes is a practical approach to save time on flashing. However, using the Toradex Easy Installer (Tezi) in a virtualized environment like QEMU presents unique challenges, as Tezi and its scripts are primarily designed for direct interaction with Toradex hardware.
The issue with the script not recognizing the VM as an appropriate target is likely due to how the script identifies compatible devices. It’s tailored to detect Toradex hardware through specific interfaces, such as USB OTG, which wouldn’t be present or emulated accurately by a standard VM setup.
Regarding the attempt to replicate the SD Card with a virtual disk image, this approach’s success heavily depends on how the virtual environment emulates hardware and presents virtual disks to the guest OS. U-Boot, being the bootloader used by Toradex modules, is configured to look for bootable partitions in a manner that’s specific to the hardware it’s running on. When running in a virtualized environment, the U-Boot configuration might not align with how the virtual disk is presented, leading to the issue where nothing is found to boot from.
To debug a Bitbake custom build image in QEMU, consider the following steps:
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Directly Boot the Image in QEMU: Instead of using Tezi, you can directly boot your custom Bitbake-generated image in QEMU. This requires setting up QEMU with the appropriate machine configuration that closely matches the Toradex hardware you’re targeting. You’ll need to specify the kernel, DTB (Device Tree Blob), and root filesystem manually in your QEMU command line.
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Modify U-Boot for Virtual Environments: If you’re keen on using a bootloader, you might need to modify U-Boot’s configuration to ensure it correctly identifies and boots from virtual disks presented by QEMU. This is a more complex route and might not be necessary if you can directly boot the kernel and root filesystem.
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Use a Different Approach for Debugging: If the primary goal is to debug the application layer, consider using other methods that don’t require full system emulation. For example, cross-compiling your application and running it within a Linux environment that simulates your target environment might be more straightforward.
Unfortunately, directly using Tezi in a virtualized environment for the purposes you’ve described is not straightforward due to the hardware-specific nature of Tezi and U-Boot’s configuration. Directly booting the Bitbake-generated image in
Please, also check if these links can help you solve your problem:
Please if anyone would take his time to read and give his thoughts without the AI, would be much appreciated, but for another question, how would someone need to use the Device Tree Blob and root filesystem, to make it bootable?
thanks in advance.
Hello @schnuersenkel,
Thanks for reaching out to the Toradex Community!
We integrated the Toradex AI to the community recently to help customers with a quick support. We think it is beneficial and sometimes even fully helpful since we have customers in all time zones. This does not mean that the Technical Support Team will not look into the support requests. We still monitor the posts here on the community and also through our support email channel and will get back to you as soon as possible!
Regarding your question on running your custom image in QEMU: Personally I have never tried to do this myself. However, from a quick search internally, I find that we do support some features of Torizon OS on QEMU x86-64. Please give it a try and let me know if you have more questions.