This repository contains a bare-bones Linux boot environment, meant to run pKVM tests.

It runs entirely from the initramfs image (normally provided alongside the kernel to both real systems and Qemu). It does almost no system bring-up. After boot, it runs a given set of executables, and then halts the system.

Executables can be added to the payload/ directory. The image will run all executables in that directory.

Executables must be either statically compiled aarch64 binaries, or shell scripts compatible with busybox ash.

Add any executables to payload/, and run make. This produces _build/{var,efi,initramfs}.img which can be used with Qemu. The kernel must be provided separately.

Alternatively, just run scripts/run-vm --kernel <KERNEL>. This rebuilds the images and boots Qemu.

If Qemu is not instelled system-wide, or to use a different UEFI image, run make UEFI=<IMAGE> instead.

Requires zsh, make, jq, a few Linux utilities which are usually installed, a Qemu installation providing qemu-system-aarch64, and an UEFI compatible with it. These are all provided by distribution packages on regular Linux distributions.