qemu-user-i386 error

[SDRausty]

The following packages will be upgraded:
apt bash curl libcurl openssl pulseaudio qemu-user-i386

qemu-user-i386/stable,now 1:5.2.0-1 arm [installed]

Newly arisen error:

proot info: vpid 1: terminated with signal 11

Steps to reproduce:
Install Arch Linux 32 on armv7l with qemu support. Command setupTermuxArch v attempts to install and configure Arch Linux 32 on armv7l architecture.

Expected behavior:

PRoot with QEMU enabled run correctly like it did before this last upgrade.

[ghost]

I've just tested these binaries on armv7l device and it seems like QEMU is working fine:

• https://busybox.net/downloads/binaries/1.31.0-defconfig-multiarch-musl/busybox-i686
• https://busybox.net/downloads/binaries/1.31.0-defconfig-multiarch-musl/busybox-x86_64

I will not do tests "distribution-wide", considering as QEMU user mode is usually less stable that system variant and v5.2.0 upstream can have regressions.

Emulation errors are not subject for debugging & fixing by me. Complexity of QEMU's Tiny Code Generator is quite beyond my skills. Reverting to previous version will not be done as well.

Closing.

[ghost]

The option apt -o APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages="true" used to allow local rollback.

Downloaded packages are kept in

/data/data/com.termux/cache

They are no longer stored in $PREFIX to be preserved when termux-reset was executed.

The result has this error; qemu-system-i386: -U: invalid option.

@SDRausty qemu-system-i386 emulates the full machine. It is not usable with proot and operates on disk images instead of file system.

Don't get me wrong, but I only pointed on that qemu-i386 is known to have problems. I have not suggested to replace qemu-i386 with qemu-system-i386 (they are 2 entirely different things).

[ghost]

Start with these:

• x86 (32bit): https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.12/releases/x86/alpine-virt-3.12.2-x86.iso
• x86_64 (64bit): https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.12/releases/x86_64/alpine-virt-3.12.2-x86_64.iso

Boot downloaded image (basic):

qemu-system-i386 -m 512M -nographic -cdrom alpine-virt-3.12.2-x86.iso

Modified to boot from URL with no local image:

qemu-system-i386 -m 512M -nographic -boot d -drive file=https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.12/releases/x86/alpine-virt-3.12.2-x86.iso,readonly=on,media=cdrom

In both cases output is printed directly to console as image supports serial line emulated by QEMU.
CTRL+a x to terminate VM.

Extending command line by switching to VirtIO devices (rng, nic, drives), increasing TCG cache (e.g. by -accel tcg,tb-size=512), using musl-based & non-systemd distributions like Alpine Linux makes execution under QEMU faster.

---

Arch Linux can be booted too, yet it is slower and ISO will require many RAM (1-2 GB, maybe more). Probably will have issues with text-only mode and you will need a VNC.