[fedora-arm] KVM on Samsung Chromebook A15

Wed Aug 7 16:02:15 UTC 2013

On 7 August 2013 16:51, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Adam Goode <adam at spicenitz.org> wrote:
>> Was there ever a resolution to this? I am happy to file a bug in the
>> chromium tracker to get this looked at, if needed.
>
> None that I'm aware of but if you could file a bug in the chromium
> tracker that would be fab.
>
Well it is possible to get KVM running on the Chromebook, it isn't
perfect but it does work (somethings will be dropped - suspend/resume
to name one).
To give it a whirl you should read
www.virtualopensystems.com/media/chromebook/chromebook.pdf

I've not looked at integrating the changes into a distro, but there's
no reason one couldn't use it as a starter for 10.

Regards,

Andy

>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 12:16 PM, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones at redhat.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jul 05, 2013 at 11:30:01AM -0400, Jon Masters wrote:
>>>> On 07/05/2013 05:07 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>>>> > On Wed, Jul 03, 2013 at 11:59:28AM -0500, Jon wrote:
>>>> >> I'm pleased to announce the availability of Fedora 19 for the 2012 Samsung
>>>> >> Chromebook featuring ARM Exynos dual core A15 processor.
>>>> >
>>>> > Sorry to slightly hijack this thread.  I will try your remix later.
>>>> >
>>>> > Reading the comments on https://lwn.net/Articles/557132/#Comments
>>>> > it seems as if the news on KVM on the Chromebook is not good.  It
>>>> > doesn't boot into HYP mode, and there's no way to make it boot into
>>>> > HYP mode, so KVM won't be supported.  Is that right?
>>>>
>>>> That's roughly what I'd expect to be the case. There might be a signed
>>>> U-Boot someone has hacked that does enable HYP mode, but otherwise I
>>>> suspect you're out of luck. I'll ask around during Linaro Connect.
>>>
>>> I asked about this on #kvm-arm earlier today and got this long reply:
>>>
>>> 11:58 < rwmjones> I'm reading a comment here:
>>> 11:58 < rwmjones> https://lwn.net/Articles/557561/
>>> 11:58 < rwmjones> which suggests that KVM on the Samsung Chromebook 2012 (ARM A15 version) isn't possible because the
>>>                   bootloader doesn't boot into HYP mode
>>> 11:58 < rwmjones> is this true?  if so is there a way around it?
>>> 11:59 < pm215> IIRC the bootloader gets control in secure-SVC
>>> 11:59 < pm215> it is from there possible to get to NS-HYP
>>> 11:59 < pm215> it's just that the stock bootloader doesn't do this before booting the kernel
>>> 11:59 < rwmjones> so what's involved in making it work?
>>> 11:59 < pm215> somebody needs to write some code and get it into the bootloader
>>> 12:00 < rwmjones> ok, and the bootloader can be replaced (next comment down suggests this requires soldering)?
>>> 12:01 < pm215> I believe this to be true, though I don't have a chromebook
>>> 12:01 < pm215> I think you get the google bootloader to chain boot some other bootloader which you do have control of, and then
>>>                that can actually boot your os
>>> 12:02 < suihkulokki> or maybe we could just prepend some code in front of the kernel zimage that switches to HYP mode?
>>> 12:02 < pm215> nope
>>> 12:02 < suihkulokki> damn
>>> 12:02 < pm215> we spent quite a long time being very firm that the ABI here is "bootloader's job to get this right"
>>> 12:03 < pm215> there are some u-boot patches currently going through code review to do the go-to-hyp-mode thing properly for
>>>                arndale
>>> 12:03 < pm215> hopefully if they get upstream it will be more straightforward to say "ok, I have $other-board and it needs to
>>>                do this too"
>>> 12:05 < apritzel> which would require that the Chromebook u-boot support is upstream as well
>>> 12:05 < apritzel> AFAIK this is not the case currently
>>>
>>> [There's more of this, but that seems to cover the main points]
>>>
>>> Reading around this, it does seem as if it's possible to get from
>>> secure SVC to HYP (although not easy).
>>>
>>> Rich.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
>>> virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines.  Tiny program with many
>>> powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc.
>>> http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top
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Andrew Wafaa
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