Linux Vm on windows OP25

[dave3825]

Is it possible to take the contents (make an image) of an sd card that's in a Raspberry pi3+B, that already has a ton of sdr software installed and working, and use it in a Linux VM on Windows 10?

Thanks

 

[lwvmobile]

AFAIK, I believe this can be done with something like QEMU. The main issue is that RPi has an ARM processor, and most PCs use x86-64 architecture, so that's the big problem. QEMU can emulate an ARM setup, but I don't know what the performance would be like realistically. I've seen a few tutorials on doing this, but it was written while using Ubuntu as the host operating system, so I am unsure if doing this in Windows if feasible or not.

How to run the Raspberry Pi Os in a virtual machine with Qemu and Kvm

In this article we see how to run the official Raspberry Pi Os in a virtual machine using qemu and Kvm

linuxconfig.org

What might be much simpler, and help keep your sanity intact, would be to make an x86 Linux VM (Debian, LM20, Ubuntu 20.04) and just install the software on that first and copy over your relevant config files (like OP25 json, tsv, and startup scripts) from your Raspberry Pi to the new setup.

 

[a417]

What you're looking to do is something called P2V (Physical To Virtual) nowadays. I just did something like this with my venerable Moto programming laptop and it now runs in a VM appliance on my VirtualBox host.

What you want to do is possible, but as the wise @lwvmobile pointed out...your biggest hurdle will be emulating an ARM setup. He was correct that QEMU can emulate it, but you're doing a ton of extra work for what may turn out to be a polished turd. There are listed binaries for QEMU on windows, but I've never had the need/desire to work that particular direction.

His second suggestion is spot on. I would make up a VM in the host of your choosing, and then I would systematically install every current piece of software that you like on the raspi you have in front of you, and then copy over the configuration files and relevant data. This will get you a fresh install that will not have to worry about an entire emulated architecture/compatibility layer.