How can i emulate an x86 32 bits program on an ARM host?

I am running a Kali Linux distribution on an arm cpu (aarch64).

I have successfully install x86_64-linux-gnux32-gcc and x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc.

I have wrote a basic c program:

#include <stdio.h>

void main()
{
   printf("Hello world\n");
}

I have compiled 2 versions:

x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc test1.c -o test1_64
x86_64-linux-gnux32-gcc test1.c -o test1_32

The first binary (64 bits) works fine when i run it with this command:

qemu-x86_64-static ./test1_64

But i have an error with the second binary (32 bits):

qemu-x86_64-static ./test1_32

qemu-x86_64-static: ./test1_32: Invalid ELF image for this architecture

I have tried to force a 32 bits cpu with this command:

qemu-x86_64-static -cpu qemu32 ./test1_32

I have also tried to compile the binary with -static option. I got the same result.

How can i run my 32 bits executable ?

Thanks a lot

Solution

x86_64-linux-gnux32-gcc is not what you want for building 32-bit programs. This is actually a 64-bit compiler that targets the x32 ABI, a scheme to have 64-bit code that needs only 32 bits for pointers. It never really caught on and is fairly obscure these days, so I'm not surprised that qemu wouldn't support it.

The x86_64 target of gcc supports building 32-bit programs as well, using the -m32 option. So you ought to be able to build your 32-bit Hello World with

x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc test1.c -o test1_32 -m32

(You might have to separately install 32-bit x86 libraries to successfully cross compile.)

Then to run it, use qemu-i386 instead of qemu-x86_64.