[Qemu-discuss] qemu-system-aarch64: x86 host with KVM support in guest

[Fernando Endo]

Hello,

I have a question regarding qemu-system-aarch64 running in a x86 host. I'd like to boot an aarch64 Linux kernel (guest) that emulates the kvm support. My command line is:

IMG=trusty-server-cloudimg-arm64-uefi1-gem5.raw.img
~/nosave/software/qemu-2.4.1/output/bin/qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -m 4096 \
    -cpu cortex-a57 \
    -M virt \
    -nographic \
    -pflash flash0.img \
    -pflash flash1.img \
    -drive if=none,file=${IMG},id=hd0 \
    -device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0

I checked that the guest kernel supports kvm, and the bootloader is supposed to enable the "hyp mode" required by the kernel to support kvm.

The bootloader is a pre-built UEFI for QEMU/AArch64 and was taken from https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/UEFIforQEMU

The kernel (3.19.0-33-generic) and disk image were taken from ubuntu cloud images as described in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM64/QEMU

qemu succesfully boots Ubuntu, but I see the following kernel message:
[    2.710572] kvm [1]: HYP mode not available

Does qemu-system-aarch64 currently support a guest kvm-enabled Linux in a x86 system?

As far as I  understood, the flags "-enable-kvm" or "-M accel=kvm" are equivalent and are supposed to allow the guest to use the virtualization hardware in the host. Then, using them would make sense in an aarch64 host booting an aarch64 guest.

Thanks in advance,

--
Fernando A. Endo, Post-doc

INRIA Rennes-Bretagne Atlantique
France