Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
-cpu
The Raspberry Pi contains an ARM1176 core, which you specify here. To see the
complete list of options QEMU offers, use the command
qemu-system-arm -cpu
help
.
If you have an older QEMU installation or acquire it from a package that hasn't been
updated, you might encounter a problem with the
-cpu
option, because older ver-
sions didn't support ARM1176. You might be able to make this work by substituting
arm1136-r2
, but it would be better to update your version of QEMU.
-m
This sets the virtual RAM in megabytes. It is unlikely to work with more than 256.
-M
This sets the emulated machine type. (We're specifying the Versatile PB platform
here.)
-serial
This redirects the virtual serial port. The default is
vc
in graphical mode and
stdio
in non-graphical mode.
-append
This option gives the kernel command-line arguments.
-hda
This is the location of the image of the distro you're emulating.
You can read further documentation of QEMU's options at
http://qemu.org
.
This will take you to the first boot screen, and you can go through that process just
like you would on an actual Pi. It will reboot at the end, but QEMU will close, and you'll
have to start it again. Just press the up arrow once to get to the previous
qemu-system-
arm
command and run it again.
This time you'll boot through to the login screen and can use it as if you were on an
actual Raspberry Pi.
Try Occidentalis: The Raspberry Pi Distro
for (Advanced) Education
HACK 27
If you're interested in using the Pi for hardware-hacking education (or
learning!), Adafruit's Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro (a.k.a. Occi-
dentalis), is a great place to start.
