running under qemu/libvirt boot problems

[lilmike]

Hi there,
I'm trying to get a qemu vm running under libvirt for the armv7l arch, using the virt board so I can add basically any hardware supported by the kernel. So far I've gathered I need to provide the kernel (places say zImage is fine), the initramfs, and the command line. I've done that with libvirt like so:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
<kernel>/var/lib/libvirt/images/armv7l-distcc-kernel/zImage</kernel>
<initrd>/var/lib/libvirt/images/armv7l-distcc-kernel/initramfs-linux.img</initrd>
<cmdline>console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sda1 rootfstype=ext4 rw</cmdline>
')

So far it doesn't seem to boot, I don't get any output whatsoever on the console, nor does qemu give an error in the logs. I tried even modifying to use the vexpress-a15 board emulation and added the dtb to the xml, along with changing the command line to boot from mmcblk0p1 and using ttyAMA0 as the console. Still no go. One very odd thing I found is that file reports the zImage file as "ARM firmware forth dictionary, [...]". Whereas binwalk reports 0x0 as ARM kernel zImage. Another odd thing is, when I tried to extract the image file from the zImage, each time the extracted file wasn't recognized as a kernel through file or binwalk. I've tried both with linux-armv7 5.4.1 and 5.5.1, so I don't think this *should* be the issue, but I'm mentioning it just in case.
Anyone have any suggestions as to how to get qemu to boot it on the virt board, or possibly on another emulated board if that's not possible.
Thanks,
-Michael.
P.S. I got aarch64 working in qemu extremely easily, it's just armv7l that's stumping me.