Video of the Development VM in action
I just did a quick screen capture video of the Raspberry Pi development VM in action and have uploaded it to youtube. I'm not very good with making screencasts so please forgive how rubbish it looks.
New Raspberry Pi development vm version 0.2
[update (11/3/12): This version is now out of date. Please use v0.8 the torrent of which is at http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/tools/ukscone/RaspberryPi-Development%20VM%20v0.8/RaspberryPi-Development%20VM%20v0.8.torrent The readme http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/tools/ukscone/RaspberryPi-Development%20VM%20v0.8/README.txt and the sha1 http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/tools/ukscone/RaspberryPi-Development%20VM%20v0.8/RaspberryPi-Development%20VM%20v0.8.ova.sha1 ]
[update: There is a tiny little buglet in the vm that slipped passed me as it didn't crop up when I was testing that yum worked as I didn't install a library that needed to go in the top level of the rootfs. If you get a lot of errors about unpacking or mkdir... when trying to install something using yum then you'll need to do the following
cd $HOME/raspberry_pi_development/f13arm_rootfs
sudo chmod -R 777 *
and that should fix it. sorry about that.
the torrent is now available.]
I have put together a new VM for developing software for the Raspberry Pi. I've made a few tweaks and cleaned up a lot of stuff and it's a much more pleasant setup and easier to use and update without making a whole new VM. I also used fedora13 for ARM as the seed rootfs so it should be possible to just swap files from/to a real Raspberry Pi and it should just run and you can update the seed rootfs as well (hopefully I guessed Raspberry Pi standardized educational disto correctly). I was planning to use fedora16 as the guest OS in the VM but after struggling with some of it's foibles for several hours and having to rebuild it a few times i gave up and reverted back to a ubuntu based release. it's currently compressing and uploading and with my upstream speed being so rubbish it'll take about 8 to 18 hours to finish but once it is finished i'll post a link to it and hopefully someone will make a torrent of it.
http://russelldavis.org/RaspberryPi/raspberrypi_dev_vm_02.torrent
Below is the README that is included with the exported appliance.
-------
RaspberryPi Development Virtual Machine 0.2
This is an exported virtualbox virtual machine for developing software for
the RaspberryPi. It is setup using the git versions of scratcbox2 & qemu (19/01/12), the fedora 13 for ARM as rootfs seed & arm-2011.03 codesourcery toolchain.
The root password is toor and the username and password for the normal user
is raspberry/password
To compile software for the raspberrypi as you would normally on an x86 machine
prefixing sb2 to any command. e.g. instead of gcc hello.c -o hello you would type sb2 gcc hello.c -o hello
To update, install or remove libraries and software in the seed rootfs use the command sb2 -eR yum ... where update, install, remove etc.
If you want to build and install libraries to use when building other software
that are not availble via fedora yum then rather than prefixing with sb2 prefix the command with sb2 -eR e.g. sb2 -eR make && make install
You can upgrade scratchbox2, qemu, the rootfs or toolchain quite easily as they are all in seperate dirs inside the raspberry_pi_development directory. it shoudl be possible to just swap them out when/if you need/want.
I have installed apache2 adn linked the $HOME/build directory so you can download anything you build to another system. You will probably want to change the network settings for the VM from NAT to Bridged though.
An ssh server is also installed so you can ssh in to the vm if you want as well (same proviso as above though. You'll need to change from NAT to Bridged to get it working).
If you have any other questions about the VM then you can send them via my blog (http://russelldavis.org) or post on the raspberry pi forum. (http://raspberrypi.org)
I have added one of my favourite bash aliases to the .bashrc doch is very handy in case you forget to use the sudo prefix to a command. just type doch and it'll redo the command but with sudo added.
Russell Davis (ukscone) 20/01/12
The Raspberry Pi (part two)
[Disclaimer: All opinions in this post are mine and mine alone. Although I am a moderator on the http://raspberrypi.org I don't speak for the foundation and any factual errors, upset I may cause or spelling mistakes are completely my responsibility]
Chapter the Second in which we meet the Alpha board, the Beta board and the people who whine a lot.
[As an aside, The above line is in the style of one of my favourite children's book that is fun to read as an adult as you'll appreciate it more. They rereleased it about a year or so ago as well so it isn't as hard to find as it used to be. In the 80s I was given a copy by my at the time girlfriend C.H.M. and have reread it so many times i've had to replace it 3 times (once was because I gave my copy to a kid). If you spot it in a book store (support you local independant book store) buy a copy of Noel Langley's The Land of Green Ginger. ISBN: 978-1567923339 ]
Ok back to the Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi (part one)
[Disclaimer: All opinions in this post are mine and mine alone. Although I am a moderator on the http://raspberrypi.org I don't speak for the foundation and any factual errors, upset I may cause or spelling mistakes are completely my responsibility]
I first heard about the Raspberry Pi in May 2011, I actually stumbled across it while looking for more details about another device, a bluetooth keyboard in a ZX Spectrum case which unfortunately doesn't seem to have materialized 
, and I have been closely following the project since July 2011, when the Raspberry Pi Charitable Foundation created their website and forum. I haven't written about the Raspberry Pi before, apart from a quick scratchbox2 for the Raspberry Pi setup post and a premade Raspberry Pi VM post, so while I am taking a bit of a break from the myriad things that normally distract me I am going to rectify that situation. I also have a bit of an ulterior motive, but more about that later.
The Raspberry Pi as I am sure you all know by now is a small, credit card size, inexpensive, $25/$35, Single Board Computer aimed at schools and school children in the United Kingdom. The brainchild of Cambridge University Graduate, Ph.D & Executive MBA (Not quite sure what an Executive MBA is but i'm sure it's impressive and anything PHB-y about it is cancelled out by the Ph.D 
) Eben Upton & several of his friends, colleagues & professors from Cambridge University and surrounding area. The Raspberry Pi is aimed to help solve the terrible state of affairs in the UK in the last ten to fifteen years or so where incoming university freshmen wishing to study Computer Science are completely unprepared for the course of study due to lack of real computer science and programming lessons in the curriculum but instead a catchall subject called ICT, that is effectively an update to the old typing & secretarial skills lessons that were available in the 70s & 80s when I was at school.
Virtualbox VM for RaspberryPi development
[update: this vm is obsolete. please use the one in the follow post http://russelldavis.org/2012/01/20/new-raspberry-pi-development-vm-v0-2/ ] I am currently in the process of uploading a have uploaded created virtual machine running debian with lxde in which I have installed and configured scratchbox2, qemu and the codesourcery toolchain so that it is possible to build software for the RaspberryPi (although noone actually has one other than the lucky few developers that have access to a alphaboard).
The vm file will be is available from about (it's about 1.3GB so is about 7 hours from completing the upload)  11pm 10/09/11 (uk date format) at http://russelldavis.org/RaspberryPi/RaspberryPi.zip and as a torrent (created by #raspberrypi user obarthelemy)
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6667294
http://www.demonoid.me/files/details/2726361/
Although this virtual machine is meant to be used for developing for the RaspberryPi it should be usable for any ARM based device especially if you have a rootfs from the device that you can use to seed the scratchbox2 environment (see http://russelldavis.org/2010/10/20/setting-up-scratchbox2-to-build-software-for-zubuntu/ &Â http://russelldavis.org/2010/11/03/mounting-a-raw-disk-image/ &Â http://russelldavis.org/2011/09/07/setting-up-scratchbox2-from-scratch-for-the-raspberry-pi/ ).
I did forget a couple of important things in the included README. I have installed apache2 and symbolic linked $HOME/raspberrypi-development/build into /var/www and you should build everything in (or under) the $HOME/raspberrypi-development/build directory.
Setting up Scratchbox2 from scratch (for the Raspberry Pi)
It has been confirmed that binaries built using this method will run on real Raspberry Pi hardware (alphaboard).
Below is the method i used to setup Scratchbox2. I am doing this using a Ubuntu 11.4 virtual machine in VirtualBox. It works for me but YMMV.
Because the version of Scratchbox2 and qemu available in the Ubuntu repositories are pretty old and the version of qemu available doesn't have support for the arm1176 I am going to use the git versions of qemu and Scratchbox2.
mkdir RaspberryPi
cd RaspberryPi
git clone git://gitorious.org/scratchbox2/scratchbox2.git
git clone git://git.qemu.org/qemu.git
You'll also need an ARM toolchain. Unless you want to build your own ARM toolchain you'll want to download the codesourcery ARM toolchain. https://sourcery.mentor.com/sgpp/lite/arm/portal/release1803
cd ~/RaspberryPi
wget https://sourcery.mentor.com/sgpp/lite/arm/portal/package8739/public/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/arm-2011.03-41-arm-none-linux-gnueabi-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.bz2
tar xjvf arm-2011.03-41-arm-none-linux-gnueabi-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.bz2
You will now have the codesourcery ARM toolchain in the directory ~/RaspberryPi/arm-2011.03
Now that you have a toolchain available it's time to build Scratchbox2 and qemu. Earlier you cloned the latest git versions available and if you haven't already got them installed you'll need to install "fakeroot" and "realpath" using your distributions package management system. To build and install Scratchbox2.
cd ~/RaspberryPi/scratchbox2
mkdir ../sb2
./autogen.sh
make install prefix=$HOME/RaspberryPi/sb2
Then build and install qemu
cd ~/RaspberryPi/qemu
./configure --prefix=$HOME/RaspberryPi/sb2 --target-list=arm-linux-user
make && make install
Now that your toolchain, scratchbox2 and qemu are installed you'll need to seed your development environment with some libs, include files and binaries and initilize Scratchbox2
mkdir ~/RaspberryPi/devel
cd ~/RaspberryPi/devel
export PATH=$HOME/RaspberryPi/sb2/bin:$PATH
cp -a ~/RaspberryPi/arm-2011.03/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/libc/{lib,etc,usr} .
sb2-init Raspi $HOME/RaspberryPi/arm-2011.03/bin/arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc
This will generate a working target configuration. If anything fails you can redo it again manually after fixing the problem.
You'll probably want to add
export PATH=$HOME/RaspberryPi/sb2/bin:$PATH
to your .bashrc as well
Now you have a working cross compile environment for the RaspberryPi (it isn't optimised or tweaked for the hardware but it's good enough for now and can be improved at a later date when we have more details about the hardware in particular the GPU and CPU).
To actually test that everything is working correctly write a small program (a hello, world program is a good choice).
raspberry@raspberrypi-VirtualBox:~/RaspberryPi/devel$ gcc hello.c -o hello raspberry@raspberrypi-VirtualBox:~/RaspberryPi/devel$ file hello hello: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, not stripped raspberry@raspberrypi-VirtualBox:~/RaspberryPi/devel$ sb2 gcc hello.c -o hello raspberry@raspberrypi-VirtualBox:~/RaspberryPi/devel$ file hello hello: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.16, not stripped raspberry@raspberrypi-VirtualBox:~/RaspberryPi/devel$ sb2 ./hello hello, world
If you have any questions you can find me on the raspberrypi forum, the irc channel or contact me via this blog.
[Addendum: Instead of seeding usign the libs and include files etc. from the codesourcery toochain you can use a rootfs of any ARM based distro. Just download an ARM rootfs from somewhere (exercise left for the user) and as root extract it into the ~RaspberryPi/devel directory and then chown -R user ~/RaspberryPi/devel and chgrp -R user ~/RaspberryPi/devel -- If you user a debian based rootfs (squeeze) the you can use apt to update and upgrade the files in the rootfs using the command
sb2 -eR apt-get update
sb2 -eR apt-get upgrade
]