virtrun is a library and binary QEMU wrapper for running binaries in an isolated system.

The package uses itself for testing, so see the guest tests in testing/guest_test.go for a real life example.

The binaries for running QEMU for the architecture matching the kernel and binary you want to use, either qemu-system-x86_64 or qemu-system-aarch64. If not in $PATH, you can specify the path to the binary with the flag -qemu-bin.

The kernel must be compiled to work with some support for working in QEMU. Especially some kind of serial console or virtual console must be present. All of this must be compiled into the kernel directly. Additional modules can be loaded for functionality required bu the binary itself.

The absolute path to the kernel must be given by flag -kernel. Make sure the kernel matches the architecture of your binaries and the QEMU binary.

By default, the most likely correct IO transport is chosen automatically. It can be set manually with the flag -transport. With x86 pci is usually the right now. With arm64 it is mmio. isa can be tried as a fallback, in case there is no output ("Error: run: guest did not print init return code").

The Ubuntu kernels work out of the box and have all necessary features compiled in.

By default, virtrun brings a simple init program, that sets up the guest system and then executes your binary. So, your binary will be a direct child of PID 1.

Usage: virtrun [flags...] binary [args...]

All arguments after the binary will be passed to the guest's /init program. The default init program will pass them to the binary.

The following examples assume you have virtrun installed in a directory that is in $PATH. Instead, you can can also use go run github.com/aibor/virtrun.

Let's use env as our main binary to show simple invocation and default environment variables.

$ virtrun -kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux /usr/bin/env
HOME=/
TERM=linux
PATH=/data

Loopback interface is initialized by init:

$ virtrun -kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux /usr/bin/ip address
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host proto kernel_lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Additional files can be added to the guest system with the flag -addFile that can be used multiple times. The files are added into the directory /data. PATH is set to this directory, so binaries can be invoked easily. Also, required shared libraries are added to the ELF interpreter's default library directory as well:

$ virtrun -kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux -addFile /usr/bin/bash /usr/bin/tree -x
.
|-- data
|   `-- bash
|-- dev
|-- init
|-- lib
|   |-- ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
|   |-- libc.so.6
|   |-- libncursesw.so.6
|   |-- libreadline.so.8
|   `-- modules
|-- lib64 -> /lib
|-- main
|-- proc
|-- root
|-- run
|-- sys
|-- tmp
`-- usr
    `-- lib -> /lib

Kernel modules can be added with the flag -addModule that can be used multiple times. Absolute paths must be given. The modules are added to the directory /lib/modules and are loaded automatically by the default init in the order they are given in the command line. Dependencies must be provided an are not resolved automatically. The modules must be added in the correct order.

Virtrun can be used to run go tests that require root privileges, have special system environment requirements, test for a different architecture or kernel version. It can be used to wrap go test binary execution by using it with the go test's -exec flag. Just pass the complete virtrun invocation as string to that flag. It will be invoked for each test binary.

Since go test changes into the package directory for running the test, absolute paths must be used for any file path that is passed to virtrun by flag (-kernel, -addFile, qemu-bin, ...).

Use without installation:

$ go test -exec "go run github.com/aibor/virtrun -kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux" .

Installed into $PATH:

$ go test -exec "virtrun -kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux" .

Setting flags by environment variable:

$ export VIRTRUN_ARGS="-kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux"
$ go test -exec virtrun .

Use arm64 kernel on a amd64 host:

$ export VIRTRUN_ARGS="-kernel /absolute/path/to/vmlinuz-arm64"
$ GOARCH=arm64 go test -exec virtrun .

Virtrun supports go test flags that set output files, like coverage or resource profile files, and uses virtual consoles to send the content from the guest system back to the host:

$ go test -exec 'virtrun' -cover -coverprofile cover.out .

For debugging, use virtrun's flag -verbose together with go test's flag -v:

$ go test -exec "virtrun -verbose" -v .

In Standalone mode, your given binary is executed as /init directly. For this to work, your binary must do system setup itself. The only essential required task it has is to communicate the exit code on stdout and shutdown the system.

The sub-package sysinit provides helper functions for necessary tasks.

A simple init can be built using sysinit.Run which is a wrapper for those essential tasks. See the simple init program that is used in the default wrapped mode, for inspiration.

For go test binaries sysinit.RunTests can be used in a custom TestMain function if you need to do any additional set up for your test run. It is is a wrapper for sysinit.Run around testing.M.Run.

So, in a test package, define your custom TestMain function and call sysinit.RunTests. You may keep this in a separate test file and use build constraints in order to have an easy way of separating such test from normal go tests that can run on the same system:

//go:build virtrun

package some_test

import (
    "testing"

    "github.com/aibor/virtrun/sysinit"
)

func TestMain(m *testing.M) {
    sysinit.RunTests(m, sysinit.DefaultConfig())
}

See the testing/guest directory for a working example.

Instead of using sysinit.RunTests you can use call the various parts individually, of course, and just mount the file systems you need or additional ones. See sysinit.RunTests for the steps it does.

Virtrun wraps QEMU and runs an init program that runs and communicates its exit code via a defined formatted string on stdout that is parsed by the virtrun. Everything else on stdout is printed directly as is.

For writing into files on the host (like for go test profiles), a dedicated virtual console is set up for each file.

Depending on the presence of the environment variables VIRTRUN_ARCH, GOARCH, or with the runtime arch, the correct qemu-system binary and machine type is used. KVM is enabled if present and accessible. Those things can be overridden by flags. See virtrun -help for all flags.

Virtrun supports different QEMU IO transport types. Which is needed depends on the kernel and machine type used. If you don't get any output, try different transport types with flag -transport