[Freedombox-discuss] Dreamplug emulator or qemu?
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On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:16:54 +0100, Bj?rn P?hlsson wrote:
> On 02/26/2012 06:37 PM, Nick M. Daly wrote:
>
>> If you want to work off of the best approximation we have, try
>> installing the FreedomMaker image to the virtual harddrive.
>
> Thanks, will try. I assume there is no fundamental difference between
> VirtualBox and qemu?
Yes, there is, in your case. VirtualBox doesn't do hardware
virtualization. You'll be running the same processor architecture under
VirtualBox as your host machine. That's probably not armel.
> Alas, the code I want to test is done in C (Mandos client), and as a
> developer I had my share of issues from the differences in what GCC
> flags different architectures support.
QEMU sounds like the better option in your case. Look into
QEmulator/VirtualBricks for a nice frontend.
>> - The really screwy setup and UBoot problems (that should be fixed in
>> someone's FreedomMaker repository, I don't recall which).
>
> This is one of my concerns I wanted to remove by testing. I do not
> know if UBoot boots an initramfs like Debian does on a normal PC. I
> have also some slight worries that bringing up the wireless interface
> in the initramfs environment might bring its own issue that don?t
> exist with wireless cards in a PC/laptop.
The default DreamPlug setup (from GlobalScale, not what will be
distributed as an end-user system) has weird UBoot issues: the version
of UBoot installed cannot read EXT partitions. To work around this,
GlobalScale put the /boot directory on a FAT partition. Any changes to
the initramfs and other boot-related updates need to be reflected in
that separate partition, which Debian doesn't handle automagically. To
work around this, we install a version of UBoot that can read EXT
partitions and just install everything to a single partition, like most
normal systems.
If you want "the Dreamplug, as distributed by GlobalScale", you can
download the "dreamplug_debian" image from their website [0]. If you
want what FreedomBox users will use, you want FreedomMaker or the
FreedomMaker image [1]. It's up to you to decide whether GlobalScale's
bad hacks, that we're working around, are worth your consideration.
0: https://code.google.com/p/dreamplug/downloads/list
1: http://freedomboxfoundation.org/code/
>> In short, aside from having a different number of ethernet
>> interfaces, you aren't missing anything substantial, it's actually
>> easier to use a VM. For compiled code to work on an actual
>> Dreamplug, you'll need to cross-compile it, and you'll need to find
>> somebody else to help you with that.
>
> I should be able to at least do some preliminary testing (check if
> FreedomMaker creates an initramfs). But it sounds as I need an actual
> box to do the testing, since Qemu emulates a PC, not a Dreamplug. Is
> there a group or list on the wiki with people who has a dreamplug and
> are willing to perform tests?
Qemu emulates the processor, not the DreamPlug-specific hardware (AFAIK,
maybe there's a way to do that). VirtualBox gives you a VM (virtualizes
a system) without any emulation at all, so you can't emulate an ARM
processor with it.
But yes, if you could post source somewhere, I'd give it a shot (there
are also other folks on this list who have plugs), if you give me 3 days
to a week of turn-around time. I won't test binary-blobs though.
Nick
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