Bug 13230

Summary:	Switch qemuarm (another others) to virtio graphics
Product:	[Build System, Metadata & Runtime] OE-Core	Reporter:	Jon Mason <jon.mason>
Component:	virtual machines	Assignee:	Jon Mason <jon.mason>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	Medium	CC:	alex.kanavin, ndec13, randy.macleod, richard.purdie, ross.burton, sakib.sajal
Version:	2.7
Target Milestone:	4.99
Hardware:	x86
OS:	Multiple
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto:	---	Type of Regression:	---
Verified:		Documentation change:	Don't know

Description Jon Mason 2019-03-18 19:53:40 UTC

Currently, qemuarm and qemuarm64 are using Bochs graphics (aka, VGA) for the graphics hardware being emulated by the virtual machine.  Optimally, this should be virtio graphics.  However, this does not appear to be functional.  More investigation needs to be done to determine the cause of the issue, and replace the Bocks with Virtio.

Comment 1 Alexander Kanavin 2020-04-07 14:52:33 UTC

To me the reason is pretty clear: qemu upstream doesn't have virtio available in arm/arm64:

ak@linux-f9zs:~/development/poky/build> tmp/work/x86_64-linux/qemu-helper-native/1.0-r1/recipe-sysroot-native/usr/bin/qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt -vga help
none                 no graphic card
std                  standard VGA
cirrus               Cirrus VGA (default)
vmware               VMWare SVGA
xenfb                Xen paravirtualized framebuffer


ak@linux-f9zs:~/development/poky/build> tmp/work/x86_64-linux/qemu-helper-native/1.0-r1/recipe-sysroot-native/usr/bin/qemu-system-arm -machine virt -vga help
none                 no graphic card
std                  standard VGA
cirrus               Cirrus VGA (default)
vmware               VMWare SVGA
xenfb                Xen paravirtualized framebuffer

While in x86_64:

ak@linux-f9zs:~/development/poky/build> tmp/work/x86_64-linux/qemu-helper-native/1.0-r1/recipe-sysroot-native/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 -vga help
none                 no graphic card
std                  standard VGA (default)
cirrus               Cirrus VGA
vmware               VMWare SVGA
xenfb                Xen paravirtualized framebuffer
virtio               Virtio VGA

Comment 2 Richard Purdie 2021-09-16 15:07:29 UTC

Jon to check whether this is possible and status upstream

Comment 3 Jon Mason 2021-09-17 13:22:02 UTC

virtio-vga has been deprcated.  See https://github.com/qemu/qemu/commit/938912a866114deb5660c93907a80635b16e5807

However, the correct current usage is virtio-gpu.  This should be done properly for qemuarm, qemuarm64, and qemuarmv5 in https://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?h=master-next&id=cf2e1ee9c6d70058cbab9ef21b390b43f23bd123

Comment 4 Jon Mason 2021-09-21 14:45:19 UTC

Patch to resolve now in master branch