[fedora-arm] Trying to run Fedora-ARM as a virtual machine

[Niels de Vos]

Hi Gordan,

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 8:17 PM, Gordan Bobic <gordan at bobich.net> wrote:
> On 29/01/2011 17:05, Niels de Vos wrote:
>> Hi there!
>>
>> I'm looking into getting an ARM system as small home-server. Of course
>> I'd like to run Fedora on it, but unfortunately it seems that current
>> Fedora releases are not completely ready for this yet.
>
> It's probably ready enough. F12 is the stable one, and F13 alpha rootfs
> is available. A few things are missing (a few important KDE parts, but
> they do build OK on F12), and a few things are broken and unstable
> (Firefox of the F12 vintage isn't of generically good enough quality to
> handle bug-free running on ARM), but overall it's more than usable
> enough. I run a F12/F13 hybrid (F12 rootfs yum updated to F13 alpha from
> the koji repository where packages update cleanly) on my Sheevaplug
> (Kirkwood ARMv5) and on my Toshiba AC100 (Tegra 2 ARMv7), and they work
> quite well - certainly well enough for any common server tasks.
>
> You may want to check the archives and sign up to the redhat bugzilla
> where bugs are tracked. I submitted a patch recently to add a feature to
> rc.sysinit that changes the default kernel behaviour about alignment
> errors. I suggest you apply it and set the default to fix+warn and file
> bugzilla reports for all the apps that cause these warnings.
>
> Here's a direct link to the bugzilla report:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673691

Cool! I'm complete unaware what makes ARM a special architecture, so
this is quite interesting. I've added some notes/thoughts to the bug,
maybe it helps to get it included ;)


>> I'd like to help with this, and as a start I am trying to get a fully
>> functioning VM up and running. Obviously there are issues to overcome
>> with this too. Many thanks for documenting the issues in the wiki!
>> Before I decide to buy myself a Pandaboard or similar, I'd like to get
>> some more experience with Fedora on ARM. My first personal project
>> will be getting libvirt work with ARM out of the box. I hope that this
>> attracts some more interested parties and lowers the barrier for
>> contributions.
>
> I'd suggest starting with something self-contained and well supported,
> such as the Sheevaplug. It's quite speedy (not as fast as the
> Pandaboard, but fast enough and better for development because it's
> ARMv5, which means you'll get to see the alignment errors when they
> occur rather than them being silently fixed up. Better for testing, IMO.
> I have a Mk1 Sheevaplug and it's quite well supported by the community.

Good suggestion! And obviously the Sheevaplugs come in a nice box too.
Today I received a Beagleboard on loan, so I think I'll start there
for now. (It doesn't have any network, so I might switch soon...)


>> While I am checking the details of qemu and libvirt, I am wondering if
>> there is a kernel available that has virtio support. If not, I will
>> need to compile my own kernel, which feels a little silly.
>> https://arm.koji.fedoraproject.org does only seem to have one kernel
>> package available, and that is kernel-headers which I hardly can use
>> for booting. I am wondering if there are any scratch-builds available
>> that have a functioning vmlinz.
>
> You will almost certainly need to build your own kernel anyway, because
> kernels on ARM are pretty CPU specific. While it has recently been
> mentioned that there is a project underway to provide a small-ish set of
> kernels to try to cover a majority of popular ARM devices, right now you
> will almost certainly want to build your own kernel.

Hmm, thats good to know. I was just hoping that there is something
like a general basic arm kernel with all the modules, which boots on
most boards, but would run sub-optimal.


> ARM emulation using qemu on x86 is OK for minor things to begin with,
> but performance is quite crippling.
>
> As for development on ARM and virtualization - I suggest you look at
> Linux vserver. I have it pretty much working, but there are a couple of
> bugs in the tools stemming from the fact that dietlibc isn't quite bug
> free on ARM yet, but it's getting close (see this bug:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=667852 )

Well, my laptop runs libvirt and I m quite happy with that. I'll stick
with libvirt/qemu as that does not interfere with my 'production' VMs.

Maybe you understood my question wrong... Gol i to do some
development/tests on my x86_64 laptop, and then run the resulting
packages on the hardware ARM.


> That means that you'll have to create your /etc/vserver entries for the
> VMs manually, but it's not that hard, and I can provide you with some
> working examples if you decide to go that way. libvirt/qemu on ARM may
> be too slow for any sensible work - I am not sure what the status with
> KVM is on ARM, but I wouldn't bet on it working on most (if any) ARM
> hardware. Vserver, OTOH, comes with just about no overhead at all, if
> you want a jail for testing and developing things. Of course, this
> assumes you already have an ARM device already set up and working.
>
>> Furthermore I'd like to know what the best way is to follow the status
>> of the current ARM builds, and where to find out where help is most
>> needed?
>
> This list and the RedHat bugzilla are a good place to start. :)

Great! I'll get all sorted and hope to be able to provide some help soon :)

Cheers,
Niels


> Gordan
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