Re: [Question] Can I start qemu-system-aarch64 with a vmlinux(ELF format)?

[Kunkun Jiang via <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>]

Hi Peter,

On 2024/2/27 23:28, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Feb 2024 at 14:42, Kunkun Jiang via <qemu-devel@nongnu.org> wrote:
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> I want to start qemu-system-aarch64 with a vmlinux,
>> which is an ELF format file. The arm_load_elf() is
>> implemented in arm_setup_direct_kernel_boot(). So I
>> thought it was supporting the ELF format file.
> No, you can't do this. The hw/arm/boot.c code assumes
> that ELF files are "bare metal" binaries, whereas
> uImage format, AArch64 Image format, and raw binary files
> are Linux kernels. Only the last three kinds of files will
> be started with the boot protocol the Linux kernel expects.
>
> For AArch64, pass the -kernel option the path to the Image
> file, not the vmlinux file.

Yes, it works fine using Image files.
I would also like to ask again, is it because AArch64 does not
support vmlinux, or is it because qemu does not implement
this capability?

Thanks,
Kunkun Jiang