How to Emulate Raspberry Pi OS
I’d like to share my technique on emulating a Raspberry Pi OS image, which involves creating an initrd that loads virtio_gpu, allowing graphical emulation with QEMU.
This technique:
- Does not require access to a Raspberry Pi
- Does not modify the image[1]
- Does not emulate Raspberry Pi hardware
- Allows GPU emulation
- Works for a backup image or an image downloaded from the Raspberry Pi website
You will learn:
- How to install Debian (32- or 64-bit arm)
- How to modify the initrd to include virtio_gpu and other modules
- How to boot an unmodified Raspberry Pi image using the modified initrd