NetBSD QEMU image generation scripts

These scripts allow generating customizable live disk images for various NetBSD architectures, bootable in QEMU. They were originally intended to facilitate CI on a certain source code hosting website, but the website decided to go in a different direction instead.

A NetBSD host machine must be used, because the scripts depend on various NetBSD-specific tools. You must run the image generation scripts as root because they use vnd(4) and partitioning tools.

The scripts are useful for:

• quickly provisioning NetBSD systems
• testing and development

Modifying the scripts to suit your needs is encouraged.

You can log in as "root" with no password.

Please refer to the comments at the top of each script for further information.

amd64/i386

• Boots from GPT on BIOS.
• VirtIO works.
• X11 and headless use work.

aarch64/earmv7hf

• Boots from GPT on EFI.
• VirtIO works.
• X11 and headless use work.

macppc

• Boots from two images, one FFSv2 (NetBSD system), and one HFS (bootloader).
• Headless only.
• Reqires root partition (wd0c) to be manually specified at prompt (or specified in custom kernel config).

Architectures to add later

• MIPS: Requires NetBSD 9.99.x for MIPSSIM. Problems with interrupts (sleep 1 takes several minutes). MALTA does not finish booting.
• Alpha: Requires NetBSD 9.99.x.
• SPARC: Requires a sunlabel to boot. How do you create this on a vnd(4) on a non-SPARC system?
• HPPA: ???
• RISC-V: ???
• M68K: ???

Other useful simulators for running NetBSD

• GXemul: http://gavare.se/gxemul/ (MIPS, SuperH)
• SimH: http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ (VAX)
• TME: http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredette/tme/ (sun2, sun3, SPARC)
• Can one of the many Amiga emulators run NetBSD/amiga?
• Can NetBSD/sgimips run in MAME?

Anita1 is an alternative that automates running the installation process rather than bypassing it.