Re: [Qemu-devel] Q: SPARC Solaris as guest operating system with qemu?

[Martin Bochnig <mb1x@gmx.com>]

Nardmann, Heiko wrote:

>how far is support for SPARC Solaris as a guest operating system inside qemu? 
>  
>

Latest public PROLL stuff has still the following problems:

>>From: "Blue Swirl" <blueswir1@hotmail.com>
>>To: renau@soe.ucsc.edu
>>Bcc: 
>>Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 17:42:56 +0200
>>
>>
>>Here's a translation: Boot sector "bootblk" gets loaded. It reads 8k from 
>>disk sd(0,2,0) (without partition code, mmh) at offset 8k. The contents is 
>>not what is expected, so it prints "bootblk: not a UFS file system.". After 
>>a couple of tries it gives up, prints "bootblk: can't find the boot 
>>program." and halts.
>>
>>Looks like a problem with obp_devopen. I'll make a new Proll image soon.
>>

>I have read something about PROLL but did not understand what it is for or or 
>how to use it. Can anyone shed some light onto it?
>  
>

It is the emulated system's main firmware.
x86 target for example uses a "BIOS".
The SPARC target needs "PROLL". Physical SPARC's use OpenBootProm.
The PPC target needs "Open Hack'Ware". Physical PPC's use either 
conventional "PREP" firmware, "OpenFirmware" CHRP or even 
"VirtualOpenFirmware" loaded through floppy.

Some time ago you mentioned that you are actually using real SPARC machines.
Shouldn't you be well aware of, what OBP is?

See http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/linux/ :


    JavaStation and PROLL

My Krups

JavaStations come with two versions of PROM, 2.30 and 3.11. Linux works 
with 2.30 out of the box. In 3.11 Sun changed virtual memory layout and 
discarded an improtant interface (romvec). Thus 3.11 is not compatible 
with Linux.

My solution for the PROM 3.11 problem is *Proll*. Proll is a PROM 
replacement which takes over the machine instead of original PROM and 
presents a 2.x interface to Linux kernel. Documentation is not available 
yet but the code is easy to read as I hope. Current of Proll is *ID18*, 
which supports all SPARC based JavaStations. Download it from the 
following list.

    * proll_18.tar.gz
      <http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/linux/proll_18.tar.gz>: Latest
      source code.
    * proll.version.h
      <http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/linux/proll.version.h>: Change log.
    * proll.mrcoffee.ID18
      <http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/linux/proll.mrcoffee.ID18>:
      Binary for JavaStation-1.
    * proll.krups.ID18
      <http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/linux/proll.krups.ID18>: Binary
      for JavaStation-NC, good for network bootstrapping and for flash.
    * proll.krups-ser.ID18
      <http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/linux/proll.krups-ser.ID18>:
      Binary for JavaStation-NC, same as above but with serial console.
    * proll.espresso.ID18
      <http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/linux/proll.espresso.ID18>:
      Binary for JavaStation-E, now the same joint codebase as Krups.
    * proll.espresso-ser.ID18
      <http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/linux/proll.espresso-ser.ID18>:
      Binary for JavaStation-E, same as above but with serial console.

I am not good at documenting stuff, but Robb Dubinski wrote a nice 
HOWTO, located at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/JavaStation-HOWTO/index.html.

Jim Mintha has filesystem images at http://www.ultralinux.org/js. Those 
are snapshots of a live system originally based on Red Hat 5.2.

On JavaStation-E a hardware fix 
<http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/notes/espresso_ide.txt> is needed to 
get IDE interrupts.