ELBE technical Details

This article describes the qemu features ELBE is using.

One essential point to understand is that qemu combines two fundamentally different functionalities, which can also be used independently and that ELBE uses both of them separately:

  • Virtualization (running a machine-in-a-machine)

  • Emulation (running foreign machine-code)

Both are traditionally used in combination (to run, for example, a full ARM-based Android mobile device on an x86-based development machine). ELBE, however, uses both functionalities separately, each one without the other:

At the outside, ‘elbe initvm’ runs a full virtual machine with the host system’s architecture, using the kvm technology. On a typical x86-based host, this VM still runs x86 code at full efficiency, but does so in a fully encapsulated environment, running its own kernel with virtualized devices in it own root-file resides in a single file (buildenv.img) on the hosts file system. This virtual machine must be booted before it can be used and communication happens through its virtual console or through virtual network connections.

At the inside, ‘elbe chroot’ runs a CPU emulation environment without machine virtualization. This command actually does two separate things at once:

  • chroot - i.e. divert all child processes to view a certain directory as their root. Within this directory, there is a full set of subdirectories (/etc, /usr, /var, …) and the child processes cannot see or access anything outside this directory.

  • qemu-user-binfmt - i.e. register qemu in such a way that binaries of the target architecture (e.g. ARM) are transparently called via qemu (this fairly complex technique is documented e.g. on https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation)

The effect is that inside this ‘elbe chroot’ environment target .deb packages can be deployed and target binaries executed. However, there is not kernel running in the target architecture and the devices are still those provided by the encapsulating initvm virtual machine.

While at the ‘elbe initvm’ boundary, the outside can only see a single ‘qemu’ process and a single ‘buildenv.img’ file, the ‘elbe chroot’ boundary is much more transparent, allowing the outside to observe individual processes and files of the inner environment.