[fedora-arm] ARM VM on an x86_64 host

[Jerry James]

Greetings,

I maintain a couple of packages that currently don't build on ARM
(both Lisp implementations, hmmmmm).  I've got candidate fixes for
both, but need to test them.  I don't have ready access to any ARM
hardware, so I thought I would try the qemu images at
http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/arm-nightlies/.  I downloaded
f18arm-latest-armhfp-vexpress-xfce-mmcblk0.img.xz and
http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/arm-nightlies/vault/f18arm-latest-armhfp-vexpress-xfce-mmcblk0-kernel.tar.xz
(judging by the sha256sums, these are actually
http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/arm-nightlies/vault/f18arm-20120918-002131-armhfp-vexpress-xfce-mmcblk0.img.xz
and http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/arm-nightlies/vault/f18arm-20120918-002131-armhfp-vexpress-xfce-mmcblk0-kernel.tar.xz).

I unpacked both downloads, then did this:
$ cd armhfp-vexpress-xfce-mmcblk0/boot
$ ./boot-vexpress+x vmlinuz-3.6.0-0.rc3.git2.1.fc18.armv7hl
initramfs-3.6.0-0.rc3.git2.1.fc18.armv7hl.img
../../f18arm-latest-armhfp-vexpress-xfce-mmcblk0.img

The VM started up and got this far:
[   6.451319] rtc-pl031 mb:rtc: setting system clock to 2012-09-26
15:54:06 UTC (1348674846)
[   6.478256] md: Waiting for all devices to be available before autodetect
[   6.486172] md: If you don't use raid, use raid=noautodetect
[   6.530509] md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
[   6.538233] md: Scanned 0 and added 0 devices.
[   6.545597] md: autorun ...
[   6.552480] md: ... autorun DONE.
[   6.567180] Waiting for root device /dev/mmcblk0p2...

... and there it sits.  Did I start the VM incorrectly?  If not, is
this a known issue and is there a set of images I should download to
make forward progress?  FYI, the host machine is running x86_64 F17.

Thanks for answering my newbie questions.  Regards,
-- 
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/