README.md

Debian on PPC64le QEMU

Setting up host environment

Disclaimer: following recipe is (semi-regularly) tested on Debian Testing (Bookworm at the time of writing). Debian 11 (Bullseye) If you have some other Debian-based distro, e.g, Ubuntu, this recipe may or may not work!

• Install QEMU, mmdebstrap and PPC64le build toolchain:

  sudo apt-get install mmdebstrap qemu-user-static qemu-system-misc binfmt-support crossbuild-essential-ppc64el guestfish guestfs-tools
  

Checking out source code

git clone https://github.com/janvrany/debian-for-toys
git -C debian-for-toys submodule update --init

!!! BIG FAT WARNING !!!

Scripts below do use sudo quite a lot. IF THERE"S A BUG, IT MAY WIPE OUT YOUR SYSTEM. DO NOT RUN THESE SCRIPTS WITHOUT READING THEM CAREFULLY FIRST.

They're provided for convenience. Use at your own risk.

Creating PPC64le Debian Image

1. Build linux kernel image:

   cd ppc64le/qemu
   ./mk-os.mk
   

2. Create a file containing Debian root filesystem. This is optional, you may use directly a device (say /dev/mmcblk0p2) or ZFS zvolume (/dev/zvol/...). You will need at least 4GB of space but for development, use 8G (or more). C++ object files with full debug info can be pretty big.

   truncate -s 8G debian.img
   /sbin/mkfs.ext4 debian.img
   

   Then install full Debian system into it:

   ./mk-fs.sh debian.img
   

Running

```
./qemu.sh debian.img
```

Creating a libvirt domain (virtual machine)

1. Copy filesystem image and kernel to libvirt host

2. Define the domain using virt-install:

   virt-install \
       --connect qemu:///system --virt-type qemu \
       --name debian-ppc64le \
       --arch ppc64le --memory 1024 \
       --import \
       --disk path=.../jenkins-debian-ppc64le,format=raw \
       --boot kernel=.../jenkins-debian-ppc64le.vmlinuz,kernel_args="root=/dev/vda rw" \
       --console pty,target_type=virtio \
       --graphics none
   

Acknowledgement

Thanks to @shingarov for support and hints.