Re: FreeBSD Big Endian in a VM and VirtIO

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Timo V=C3=B6lker" <[email protected]>
> To: "freebsd-ppc" <[email protected]>
> Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2026 3:15:33 AM
> Subject: FreeBSD Big Endian in a VM and VirtIO

> Hi!
>=20
> How do you run FreeBSD with Big Endian in a VM?

Simply boot a big endian kernel vs. a little endian kernel.  The hardware h=
andles the rest, it's true mixed-endian even inside a KVM accelerated VM.

> Is qemu the de facto only hypervisor used for this?

At the moment, yes.  Raptor is slowly (off and on) working on Xen support b=
ut that's a long way away still.  Bhyve would be nice, but if I'm being rea=
listic it would need someone willing to fund the project and a couple of de=
velopers willing to work on it given the complexity involved.

> To avoid CPU emulation, I installed Debian (Little Endian) on a Raptor Bl=
ackbird
> to run a FreeBSD (Big Endian) VM with qemu.

Make sure you're passing the kvm and CPU host flags to QEMU, and everything=
 should just work.

Best of luck on the bug!