[yocto] runqemu - "Could not initialize SDL(No available video device) - exiting"

[Martin Kelly]

Hi,

I'm hitting an error on runqemu when I try to build an SDK and image on 
one machine and run it on another, even when the build machine and 
qemu-running machine match very closely (both running Debian Jessie on 
Intel 64-bit hardware). Specifically, I get this error:

Could not initialize SDL(No available video device) - exiting

Interestingly, I don't get this when I do runqemu on the same machine 
that built the image and SDK (in fact, it works on either machine, as 
long as the image/SDK never leave the machine). Now, if I manually copy 
and paste the runqemu command, but just use the Debian-provided qemu 
instead of the one from the SDK, then again everything works fine. Note 
also that libSDL-1.2.so.0 is installed on both systems. At this point 
I'm pretty stumped.

Google says that, in the past, this occurred because of X11 ABI issues:

https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5040

However, the x11-native version I'm building through 1.6.3, and Debian 
Jessie provides 1.6.2, so I would guess the ABI is OK between those two 
versions. In addition, the fact that it works on the same machine that 
built the SDK and image is strange.

Any ideas what might be wrong?

Thanks,
Martin