Bash scripts to run Raspbian (ARM architecture) on macOS Catalina using QEMU

As of October 2020, consider leveraging QEMU's native emulation of the Raspi2/3 that became available instead of running the scripts in this directory. Navigate to the native-emulation/ directory to try native emulation. QEMU version 5.1 or higher is required.

See https://github.com/dhruvvyas90/qemu-rpi-kernel/tree/master/native-emuation for background information on the use of QEMU's native emulation.

Install homebrew, if you haven't already. Next, run the following script:

./install.sh

./run.sh

This script doesn't require macOS, but the Raspbian image/kernel and QEMU are required.

Note that this scripts forwards port TCP/5022 on the host (e.g., macOS) to port TCP/22 on the Raspbian guest where Raspbian's SSH server is listening. To run Raspbian in QEMU, no other application including Raspbian may listen on port TCP/5022 on the host.

Either log in via the QEMU console or use SSH:

ssh -F /dev/null -o "PreferredAuthentications password" -o "PasswordAuthentication yes" -p 5022 [email protected]

If you can't connect, sshd probably failed to start in QEMU. In this case, log in via the QEMU console, and then run sudo service ssh restart to restart sshd in QEMU.

To get a root shell, run the following:

sudo bash

Note that no desktop manager is running, as the "Lite" image is used. See https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/operating-systems/ for pointers to other images.

Log into Raspbian, and then execute sudo halt in the Raspbian shell.

Advanced configuration instructions under Raspbian are provided at https://azeria-labs.com/emulate-raspberry-pi-with-qemu/

Scripts in this repository are based on https://gist.github.com/hfreire/5846b7aa4ac9209699ba#gistcomment-3075728 . Credit goes to @janwillemCA, @tinjaw, and the other contributors to that GitHub gist.