[PATCH 1/1] doc: qemu-riscv: describe running as flash image

Heinrich Schuchardt heinrich.schuchardt at canonical.com
Tue Jul 29 09:47:26 CEST 2025


Describe how to build U-Boot to be run by QEMU as an emulated flash image.

Signed-off-by: Heinrich Schuchardt <heinrich.schuchardt at canonical.com>
---
 doc/board/emulation/qemu-riscv.rst | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 26 insertions(+)

diff --git a/doc/board/emulation/qemu-riscv.rst b/doc/board/emulation/qemu-riscv.rst
index cf2f893b723..b5948d9affc 100644
--- a/doc/board/emulation/qemu-riscv.rst
+++ b/doc/board/emulation/qemu-riscv.rst
@@ -179,6 +179,32 @@ Provide the U-Boot S-mode ELF image as *-kernel* parameter and do not add a
 
     qemu-system-riscv64 -accel kvm -nographic -machine virt -kernel u-boot
 
+Running as flash binary
+-----------------------
+
+U-Boot can be provided to QEMU as an emulated flash drive.
+This can for instance be used to test capsule updates.
+
+Build qemu-riscv64_smode_defconfig with::
+
+    CONFIG_XIP=y
+    CONFIG_TEXT_BASE=0x20000000
+    CONFIG_CMD_MTD=y
+    CONFIG_FLASH_CFI_MTD=y
+
+Pad u-boot.bin to 32 MiB size:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    truncate -s 32M u-boot.bin
+
+Invoke QEMU with:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    qemu-system-riscv64 -M virt -nographic \
+    -drive if=pflash,format=raw,unit=0,file=u-boot.bin,readonly=off
+
 Debug UART
 ----------
 
-- 
2.50.0



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