[Libguestfs] Notes on libguestfs on Fedora/ARM

I've added some commits to ensure libguestfs can compile on Fedora/ARM (with all options and bindings enabled except Haskell). However it doesn't quite run yet: (1) The Fedora qemu package is broken. Don't use it; compile qemu from source instead. (2) You have to configure libguestfs to pass extra qemu options. Currently you should use: PATH=/path/to/your/qemu/arm-softmmu:$PATH \ ./autogen.sh \ --with-qemu=qemu-system-arm \ --with-qemu-options="-M versatilepb -cpu arm926" (3) The versatilepb emulated system only supports memory < 512MB, and will only boot the standard kernel, so when running you need something like this: FEBOOTSTRAP_KERNEL=/boot/vmlinuz-3.3.4-4.fc17.armv7hl \ FEBOOTSTRAP_MODULES=/lib/modules/3.3.4-4.fc17.armv7hl \ LIBGUESTFS_MEMSIZE=256 \ LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG=1 \ make check (4) Currently this will fail because the virtio-pci driver doesn't work on ARM. The characteristic stack trace starts with: [ 4.841052] [<c0230a08>] (vp_reset+0x14/0x64) from [<c022fa48>] (register_virtio_device+0x4c/0x94) [ 4.844047] [<c022fa48>] (register_virtio_device+0x4c/0x94) from [<c04277bc>] (virtio_pci_probe+0x100/0x168) [ 4.846966] [<c04277bc>] (virtio_pci_probe+0x100/0x168) from [<c02138e0>] (pci_device_probe+0x90/0x120) [ 4.850258] [<c02138e0>] (pci_device_probe+0x90/0x120) from [<c025fe98>] (driver_probe_device+0x148/0x2c4) (Note that you cannot work around this by choosing a different block driver, because eventually virtio-serial is required which will fail in the same way). (5) To fix (4), it is planned to move to vexpress emulation. This also lifts the memory limit to <= 2GB. vexpress doesn't have PCI at all, but it has a non-upstream virtio-mmio transport which allegedly works (I've not tried it). This also requires a new kernel for Fedora/ARM build with vexpress support. The configure options mentioned in step (2) will change to: --with-qemu-options="-M vexpress-a9 -cpu cortex-a9" Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com Fedora now supports 80 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#) http://cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_and_fedora