On Thu, Dec 04, 2025 at 10:29:50AM +0100, Jakob Bohm via wrote:
> On 02/12/2025 06:57, [email protected] wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 01, 2025 at 01:36:03PM -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
> > > Hello all,
> > > 
> > > [email protected] dijo [Mon, Dec 01, 2025 at 06:44:40PM +0100]:
> > ...
> > > > - the image is from
> > > >    https://raspi.debian.net/tested/20231109_raspi_4_bookworm.img.xz
> > > Right. It is an _old_ image, as you are aware. Two years old.
> > > 
> > > > - Is this interesting for Debian? How else can we support the "Debian
> > > >   images for Raspi" effort?
> > > > 
> > > >   (This one is probably for you, Gunnar)
> > > Somebody must take over the responsability of building the images. I have
> > > been consistently failing to do so for over two years.
> > I think we both are willing to give it a try. Perhaps more chime in.
> > 
> > I do have a salsa account, tomas.zerolo
> > 
> > > I do not think raspi.debian.net is any longer of service to Debian, and if
> > > nobody steps up for it soon, I think I will retire it.
> > So let's try -- I'd, of course, welcome any help (those shoes are so big,
> > I could completely fit in one of them :)
> > 

Hi, Jakob, and thank you for your kind words :)

[re-added ratten@ to the CC list -- me alone won't get very far]

> Given that the Raspberry Pi is one of the well known hardware designs
> that are mostly built around running Debian, it would be sad for the
> ecosystem if Debian support went away.

Well, thank you for your kind words. We are trying to pick up, the
thing has for long been a one-person effort (Gunnar), and he is
overwhelmed with other things. Let's see whether we are up to the
task :)

> Since the modern Pi hardware versions (such as Pi 4) are well known
> entities with more detailed hardware specs than the partially
> proprietary original Pi hardware, it would make more sense for Qemu
> to grow the missing hardware emulation than for the OS images to be
> changed to run on incompatible qemu hardware as well as real Pi
> hardware.
> 
> In practice Qemu doesn't need to emulate the full "machine", just
> enough to make previously published OS images boot to a shell and run
> basic tests and image management tasks.
> 
> Key hardware elements:
> * Emulate the USB port hardware if not already one of the Qemu-emulated
> USB host controllers.
> * Emulate the (allegedly USB-attached) ethernet NIC, probably a generic
> USB-Networking device (check the Pi specs).
> * Emulate the SDCard interface from the PI as a disk controller and
> emulate generic SD cards as disk devices (The latter would also be
> useful for other architectures with SD card interfaces).
> * Emulate just enough of the Pi timer hardware to make the Linux scheduler
> configured for Pi work.
> * Etc.
> Screen, audio and GPIO support are probably less critical to create basic
> images
> 
> Another Debian-based ARM board series that might be nice to emulate
> with enough fidelty to test boot images is the BeagleBone series
> (Original, Black, Green, Blue and the new faster one).
> 
> For buildbots, Debian might be able to use a less accurate emulation
> on a virtualization platform using larger ARM64 hardware than a mere
> Pi 5.

All of them good points, but at the end of a long winding road we are
just at the beginning of. In the meantime, hoping for help from all
sides :-)

Cheers
-- 
tomás

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