Re: [Qemu-devel] [Bug 808737] Re: No option to load additional binary files from command line in QEMU

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Anup Patel <address@hidden> wrote:
> I am trying to develop a lightweight hypervisor for ARM Cortex-A8. In my
> case I have to load hypervisor elf as kernel and there and number of
> other binaries like flattened device tree binary for hypervisor
> configuration, guest kernel binary, guest ramdisk, etc.
>
> Currently, I am developing it for Realview PB-A8 board. For loading the
> above specified images I have to hack QEMU in hw/arm_boot.c, which is
> not a good solution.
>
> In general, I will encounter similar problem for any other architecture
> too.
>
> What I wish is that can QEMU have an command option to load a binary file to 
> a physical location after system initialization is done and before QEMU 
> starts emulating a virtual CPU.
> (Note: the command line option will be concerned with physical address and 
> not virtual address so in case of x86_64 it does not matter if)
>
> I believe this option can be very handy for OS development and/or
> firmware development which require multiple binaries.
>
> Do you think multiboot is suitable for scenario ??

Doesn't arm_boot.c already load an arbitrary binary when the image is
neither a kernel ELF or uboot image?  I don't know the arm_boot.c
details but skimming the source shows it already does
load_image_targphys().

Stefan