Radxa Cubie A7A/A7Z - Allwinner a733

[Linlunson]

Hello Nick A,

 

Thank you so much, I have a radxa a7z, I successed to use your 0.4 img to boot the soc cli and with desktop. 

 

So far I still can not figure out the kvm fuction, even I can get the same result with your command: grep CONFIG_KVM /boot/config-$(uname -r) 

 

I can not start the kvm related docker container like this one: https://github.com/dockur/windows-arm , which I successed to run this windows arm container on raspberry pi 5.

 

Would you help to have a look about this issue, thank you!

[wolfyportal]

I've also been dealing with KVM issues these past couple of days
and try to ask AI too
it said Nick is build the right kernel, like the command you check
but the problem seems is cpu can enter to EL2 mode(which has virtualization support)
and that's the problem on bootloader
so we need to wait Allwinner and radxa to fix together

 

and also since Nick quoted the offical response on "A7A: Harware Virtualization"
so I check the offical image too
and have the same issue, the system also don't supported virtualization too
I think this also confirms to some extent for EL2 mode switch support
btw Nick also discussing this issue with others in the Discord channel seems to have yielded no results

 

because I know very little about ARM SBC
I'm unable to participate in this discussion(can only watch and test)
but I think maybe this issue should be reported to official
so they will know only hardware supported it

but the bootloader stuck(if AI's conclusions right)

[Linlunson]

3 hours ago, wolfyportal said:

I've also been dealing with KVM issues these past couple of days
and try to ask AI too
it said Nick is build the right kernel, like the command you check
but the problem seems is cpu can enter to EL2 mode(which has virtualization support)
and that's the problem on bootloader
so we need to wait Allwinner and radxa to fix together

 

and also since Nick quoted the offical response on "A7A: Harware Virtualization"
so I check the offical image too
and have the same issue, the system also don't supported virtualization too
I think this also confirms to some extent for EL2 mode switch support
btw Nick also discussing this issue with others in the Discord channel seems to have yielded no results

 

because I know very little about ARM SBC
I'm unable to participate in this discussion(can only watch and test)
but I think maybe this issue should be reported to official
so they will know only hardware supported it

but the bootloader stuck(if AI's conclusions right)

Thank you Wolfypotal for the update,

 

The recent days I was also test the official image, Nick A's 0.4, but no good luck for the kvm, which actrally the big reason I purchase this cute small soc. I even upgrade the broad to have 8GB ram and 256 UFS, to use the kvm qemu...

[wolfyportal]

@Linlunson same, I want to run pxvirt on it
but now I can only play some container with docker without virtualization
funny thing even old raspberry pi can use kvm feature
but this "new" allwinner chip can't this out-of-the-box support this besic feature
I think I was also deceived by radxa's staff in some way
https://forum.radxa.com/t/a7a-harware-virtualization/29745

 

anyway I also test on Nick's image, but mean the offical image from radxa

https://github.com/radxa-build/radxa-a733/releases
and it also not work(still stuck on EL1)

so I think maybe Nick is do everything he can do
issue might on bootloader
I asked about the cpu exception levels on discord channel
sometime radxa's staff will answer in there too
or maybe someone knows about this
we just needs standby...

 

[eselarm]

28 minutes ago, wolfyportal said:

I think I was also deceived by radxa's staff in some way
https://forum.radxa.com/t/a7a-harware-virtualization/29745

 

anyway I also test on Nick's image, but mean the offical image from radxa

https://github.com/radxa-build/radxa-a733/releases
and it also not work(still stuck on EL1)

Radxa staff actually does not answer the original question w.r.t. Allwinner A733 HW virtualization, it is just that kernel config has it.

 

But I see from releases 'bullseye', that does not look good at all. In theory, that means 5.10 kernel, and oldoldstable libvirtd/KVM/QEMU etc. As this SoC is bigLITTLE, (Cortex-A76 Cortex-A55), starting a qemu-system-aarch64 process will pick some of those cores randomly, assuming you have more than 1 vCore (smp option > 1) . Kernel older than 6.8 or so does not support moving between an A76 and an A55.

That is the same for Rockchips (RK3588). It took me quite a while before I discovered that this is known behavior. So on for example on vendor rk35xx 6.1.115, I pin vCPUs, can be done in virt-manager GUI xml config or cmdline via taskset. As easy test, use -smp 1, then it should work. mainline kernel CPU numbers are such that simplest/lowest CPU's get lowest number. That might be the other way around on 6.1 or older downstream/vendor/BSP kernels.

On an RK3588, a 2-core VM with 2x A76  and 512MiB is done by:

       taskset --cpu-list 6-7 qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -cpu host -enable-kvm -m 512 -smp 2 \
       -bios u-boot.bin \
       -drive if=none,file=armbian.img,format=raw,id=hd0 \
       -device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \
       -netdev bridge,id=hn1 -device virtio-net,netdev=hn1 \
       -nographic

Same should work on A733

[wolfyportal]

32 minutes ago, eselarm said:

Kernel older than 6.8 or so does not support moving between an A76 and an A55

thank you for adding information about big.LITTLE
seems that will be the next issue when we need to work virtualization on A7A/A7Z

 

but for now, we seems facing the problem during the boot process
CPU in the wrong exception levels(model)
so the virtualization is not support in any situation(my guess)
also Nick thought it's about u-boot issue and used the official binary image
so we might need to wait for official update or we need to work by ourself