Can ARM qemu system emulator boot from card image without kernel param?

Question

I\'ve seen a lot of examples how to run a QEMU ARM board emulator. In every case, besides SD card image param, QEMU was also always supplied with kernel param, i.e.:

Answer 1

You will need to pass it some kind of bootloader image via -bios (or a pflash option), yes. I doubt that a ROM dump would work though -- typically the ROM will assume much closer fidelity to the real hardware than QEMU provides. You'd want a bootloader written and tested to work with QEMU. One example of that is if you use the 'virt' board and a UEFI image which is built for QEMU.

Otherwise QEMU will use its "built in bootloader" which is a handful of instructions that are capable of booting the kernel you pass it with -kernel.