Running android/debian as a KVM guest

Products Support HiKey
#1

Greetings,

I successfully ran a guest virtual machine running a minimal linux with busybox, using KVM
and qemu.

I want to take it a step further and run Android/Debian with graphics(x-org). Is there anyway of doing so? i couldn’t find any documentation on using graphics in the kvm guest. Do i need to compile the Hikey kernel differently? i compile my own kernel(4.16) with cherry-picked commits from the public 4.15 branch.

Thanks.

#2

Assuming you have the MALI driver working in the host then the next step
is too look at virgil (https://virgil3d.github.io/ ). However take
note that acording to the website GLES2 isn’t yet supported so you make
need to undertake some development work to exploit the MALI (which IIRC
is GLES2-only).

#3

This hasn’t been done before?
So you’re basically telling me theres somekind of a research and development requirement here…
am i right?

Is there any documentation about getting the MALI driver for this board?

Thanks!

#4

Hard to be sure but I am not aware of anyone who has done this on Hikey. Likewise Virgil is a sufficiently young project I think it is unlikely anyone has tried to run it an an OpenGL ES host. To be clear this is a guess, it is an reasonably well educated one but nevertheless is still a guess.

I’m not sure. The driver was pre-integrated into most of the builds for Hikey620 so I don’t think a HOWTO document was ever written (this is different on the Hikey960).

#5

Not sure if this will make any difference, but the Board i’m working on is the LeMaker Hikey 8GB, not Hikey 960.

#6

Not sure if this will make any difference, but the Board i’m working
on is the LeMaker Hikey 8GB, not Hikey 960.

Kiran 620 based Hikey boards (such as yours) are sometimes referred to
has Hikey620 simply because many users acidentally call Hikey960 a
“Hikey” (and post in the wrong sub-forum as a result).

Hence earlier I gave an answer that was correct for the sub-forum you
posted in but I was aware that you never actually said what board you
(except by chosing a sub-forum) had so I added enough precision with the
version numbers that if you had a Hikey960 you’d realize and ask for the
other answer!

#7

So… last year my guess would have been right. However it looks like there has been lots of movement over the last year and support for GL ES guests on GL ES hosts has landed in the various Virgil components: