mindflakes

Dec 25, 2018 - 3 minute read

NC QEMU

Build Status

Changes

  • Azure Pipeline to build x86_x64 target QEMU in MSYS2 on Windows
  • Upgraded to Capstone with fixes that allow building in MSYS2.

About

“NC QEMU” is a very lightly augmented and experimental fork of QEMU to build on Azure Pipelines and with Windows Hypervisor Platform (WHPX) support for users who care the most about running the x86_64 target fast. This build only cares about the x86_64 target and other targets are not built.

The output is a zip file with some DLLs and qemu-system-x86_64.exe. This QEMU distribution can be run from a folder by itself. Alternatively, qemu-system-x86_64.exe can be dropped into QEMU for Window’s installation directory at C:\Program Files\qemu, replacing the existing version. Some features like USB network redirection might be missing though.

The pipeline provides a differently compiled QEMU compared to QEMU for Windows’s own build instructions which are cross-compiled on Linux. Notably, NC QEMU is built on a Microsoft-provided copy of Windows in MSYS2 with access to the Windows SDK headers for WHPX distributed by Microsoft. The MingW64 Toolkit which QEMU for Windows is built with has unfortunately currently not reproduced the WHPX headers in a free software manner. Users who want a QEMU for Windows with WHPX support but aren’t licensed nor want to accept the terms of installing the Windows 10 SDK are out of luck.

Another benefit is that this project provides a declaratively made and executable pipeline that builds QEMU for Windows. Fork, setup an Azure Pipeline, and adjust if needed. This can be considered a bit “executable documentation” for building a QEMU x86_64 target of this nature. The build logs are public and can be used as reference. For users having trouble building or configuring their systems to build QEMU, this reproducible setup can be quite useful.

Why QEMU+WHPX for x86_64

Absolutely not exhaustive:

  • Acceleration is great. You can reach near-native speeds with acceleration.
  • WHPX is native to the OS. No foreign kernel drivers/modules/extensions needed.
  • It’s great for users who don’t have access to Intel’s HAX because they either want Hyper-V and/or AMD support. With AMD CPUs being multi-core bargain monsters, developers and power users on AMD are becoming more numerous.
  • QEMU+WHPX boots Windows ISOs. HAX currently does not.
  • QEMU is easier to hack on, script, and developed by many organizations, not one. WHPX support was contributed by Microsoft but is probably most useful for Google’s QEMU-based Android emulators!
  • Users hacking on or working with QEMU in Windows can bring their work to Linux KVM accelerated systems easier. And vice-versa.

Packer WHPX workaround

The executables provided here do work for Packer. Simply add the directory with qemu-system-x86_64.exe to the PATH. Packer does not currently recognize whpx as a valid argument for the acceleration key. The workaround is to add it to qemu-args as a manual argument.

Additionally, the cpu argument of QEMU does not support cpu=host for whpx. Specify something supported manually.

References