semu

A minimalist RISC-V system emulator capable of running Linux the kernel and corresponding userland. semu implements the following:

• RISC-V instruction set architecture: RV32IMA
• Privilege levels: S and U modes
• Control and status registers (CSR)
• Virtual memory system: RV32 MMU
• UART: 8250/16550
• PLIC (platform-level interrupt controller): 32 interrupts, no priority
• Standard SBI, with the timer extension
• Three types of I/O support using VirtIO standard:
  • virtio-blk acquires disk image from the host.
  • virtio-net is mapped as TAP interface.
  • virtio-snd uses PortAudio for sound playback on the host with one limitations:
    • As some unknown issues in guest Linux OS (confirmed in v6.7 and v6.12), you need to adjust the buffer size to more than four times of period size, or the program cannot write the PCM frames into guest OS ALSA stack.
      • For instance, the following buffer/period size settings on aplay has been tested with broken and stutter effects yet complete with no any errors: aplay --buffer-size=32768 --period-size=4096 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav.

Prerequisites

Device Tree compiler (dtc) is required. To install it on Debian/Ubuntu Linux, enter the following command:

$ sudo apt install device-tree-compiler

For macOS, use the following command:

$ brew install dtc

For demonstration purposes, ext4 is used for file system mounting. ext4 is a native Linux filesystem, offering stability, high capacity, reliability, and performance while requiring minimal maintenance. The mkfs.ext4 command can create an ext4 file system from disk partitions. This command is a symbolic link of the mke2fs command, and its usage is the same as the mke2fs command.

For most GNU/Linux distributions, mkfs.ext4 command should be installed in advance. For macOS, use the following command:

$ brew install e2fsprogs

Build and Run

Build the emulator:

$ make

Download prebuilt Linux kernel image:

$ make check

Please be patient while semu is running.

Reference output:

Starting syslogd: OK
Starting klogd: OK
Running sysctl: OK
Starting network: OK

Welcome to Buildroot
buildroot login:

Enter root to access shell.

You can exit the emulator using: <Ctrl-a x>. (press Ctrl+A, leave it, afterwards press X)

Usage

./semu -k linux-image [-b dtb-file] [-i initrd-image] [-d disk-image]

• linux-image is the path to the Linux kernel Image.
• dtb-file is optional, as it specifies the user-specified device tree blob.
• initrd-image is optional, as it specifies the user-specified initial RAM disk image.
• disk-image is optional, as it specifies the path of a disk image in ext4 file system for the virtio-blk device.

Build Linux kernel image and root file system

An automated build script is provided to compile the RISC-V cross-compiler, Busybox, and Linux kernel from source. Please note that it only supports the Linux host environment.

To build everything, simply run:

$ make build-image

This command invokes the underlying script: scripts/build-image.sh, which also offers more flexible usage options.

Script Usage

./scripts/build-image.sh [--buildroot] [--linux] [--all] [--external-root] [--clean-build] [--help]

Options:
  --buildroot         Build Buildroot rootfs
  --linux             Build Linux kernel
  --all               Build both Buildroot and Linux
  --external-root     Use external rootfs instead of initramfs
  --clean-build       Remove entire buildroot/ and/or linux/ directories before build
  --help              Show this message

Examples

Build the Linux kernel only:

$ scripts/build-image.sh --linux

Build Buildroot only:

$ scripts/build-image.sh --buildroot

Build Buildroot and generate an external root file system (ext4 image):

$ scripts/build-image.sh --buildroot --external-root

Force a clean build:

$ scripts/build-image.sh --all --clean-build
$ scripts/build-image.sh --linux --clean-build
$ scripts/build-image.sh --buildroot --clean-build

License

semu is released under the MIT License. Use of this source code is governed by a MIT-style license that can be found in the LICENSE file.