Seabios incompatible with Linux 2.6.26 host?

Pierre Riteau
2010-02-04T14:34:27Z

Hello,
I'm having trouble running the latest qemu-kvm code on Debian Lenny (Linux 2.6.26).
qemu-kvm dies with an error like this one:
exception 13 (0)
rax 0000000000000010 rbx 0000000000008c00 rcx 0000000000006ebe rdx 00000000000c8c00
rsi 00000000e2010000 rdi 00000000000c0000 rsp 0000000000006eb4 rbp 00000000e2010000
r8 0000000000000000 r9 0000000000000000 r10 0000000000000000 r11 0000000000000000
r12 0000000000000000 r13 0000000000000000 r14 0000000000000000 r15 0000000000000000
rip 00000000000fdeb0 rflags 00033002
cs 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
ds 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
es 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
ss 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
fs 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
gs 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
tr 0000 (feffd000/00002088 p 1 dpl 0 db 0 s 0 type b l 0 g 0 avl 0)
ldt 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 0 db 0 s 0 type 2 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
gdt f7a20/37
idt f8aa0/0
cr0 10 cr2 0 cr3 0 cr4 0 cr8 0 efer 0
code: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 --> 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

I think I traced back the issue to the switch from Bochs BIOS to Seabios. By forcing the usage of Bochs BIOS 5f08bb45861f54be478b25075b90d2406a0f8bb3 works, while it dies without the -bios override.
Unfortunately, newer versions don't seem to work with Bochs BIOS.

Upgrading the host kernel to 2.6.32 (Debian Squeeze) solves the issue. No problem on Fedora 12 as well.

--
Pierre Riteau -- PhD student, Myriads team, IRISA, Rennes, France