Re: [Qemu-devel] [Qemu-ppc] [PATCH 3/3] PPC PReP: can run without bios image

["Edgar E. Iglesias" <edgar.iglesias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Apr 06, 2013 at 01:38:52PM +0200, Alexander Graf wrote:
> 
> On 06.04.2013, at 13:27, Peter Maydell wrote:
> 
> > On 6 April 2013 10:07, Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de> wrote:
> >> On ARM, look at highbank. Because we're not running we're lacking
> >> a monitor mode blob that provides sys calls for flushing caches.
> >> Thus today the highbank machine doesn't boot anymore with Linux.
> >> If we ran firmware like the real board, that would provide for the
> >> sys call.
> > 
> > We also flat out don't implement enough monitor mode to allow
> > a hypothetical firmware blob to work.
> 
> Why don't we implement enough monitor mode? Because we're not running firmware :). It's a chicken and egg thing. Bottom line is that Linux validly expects that firmware exists. If we don't run firmware, we diverge, thus we potentially break.


Hi guys, A question -  For linux kernels that depend on preivous stages to setup
HW state. What is the prefered way to handle it?

In particular, if the boot loader chain depends on for example a boot rom
that is not Open Source. Is providing a QEMU specific loader in pc-bios/ a good
option?

Cheers,
Edgar