![Asahi Lina](/assets/img/avatar_default.png)
Apparently Chromium/CEF can chroot or otherwise sandbox the filesystem away before forking and checking for directory FDs, making /proc inaccessible, which means we can't stat it for our inode check, breaking the hiding. So, double down on things and do what Chromium does: open an fd to /proc ahead of time, so that continues to work. Then we use it to update the inode of our RootFS fd instead, and finally, also do the /proc fd itself to hide that one too. We also don't need to check the st_dev of /proc more than once, since that's not expected to change anyway. Fixes cefsimple.
FEX - Fast x86 emulation frontend
FEX allows you to run x86 and x86-64 binaries on an AArch64 host, similar to qemu-user and box86. It has native support for a rootfs overlay, so you don't need to chroot, as well as some thunklibs so it can forward things like GL to the host. FEX presents a Linux 5.0+ interface to the guest, and supports only AArch64 as a host. FEX is very much work in progress, so expect things to change.
Quick start guide
For Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 and 24.10
Execute the following command in the terminal to install FEX through a PPA.
curl --silent https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FEX-Emu/FEX/main/Scripts/InstallFEX.py --output /tmp/InstallFEX.py && python3 /tmp/InstallFEX.py && rm /tmp/InstallFEX.py
This command will walk you through installing FEX through a PPA, and downloading a RootFS for use with FEX.
Ubuntu PPA is updated with our monthly releases.
For everyone else
Please see Building FEX.
Getting Started
FEX has been tested to build and run on ARMv8.0+ hardware. ARMv7 hardware will not work. Expected operating system usage is Linux. FEX has been tested with the following Linux OSes:
- Ubuntu 22.04
- Ubuntu 24.04
- Ubuntu 24.10
- Arch Linux
On AArch64 hosts the user MUST have an x86-64 RootFS Creating a RootFS.
Navigating the Source
See the Source Outline for more information.
Building FEX
Follow the guide on the official FEX-Emu Wiki here.
RootFS generation
AArch64 hosts require a rootfs for running applications. Follow the guide on the wiki page for seeing how to set up the rootfs from scratch https://wiki.fex-emu.com/index.php/Development:Setting_up_RootFS