Re: [Qemu-devel] [offtopic] Sparc Softmmu

["P. Wilhelm" <bearcat.pilot@gmail.com>]

We use the old Solaris/Sparc in a medical device we produce where I 
work. Since we can't get new Sparc hardware any longer (many countries 
no longer accept "refurbished" devices - so we can't sell this product 
to them when we use refurbish IT parts) that is reasonable cost for our 
application, we need to find a way to continue to produce our product. 
The application is moderately complicated and will take some effort/time 
to port to another OS / processor. I was just evaluating the possibility 
of using an emulated Sparc machine to replace the Solaris box. The 
thought behind using Qemu was that we can reduce hardware obsolescence 
issues in the future with this layer of abstraction. Conceivably, future 
hardware changes would be easier to do with less regulatory overhead. My 
evaluation was exciting because I was able to, with just a couple of 
days of work, get our application up and running and talking to the 
other hardware associated our product. However, given the maturity level 
of Qemu for Solaris on Sparc, we'll almost certainly do a port of our 
application to other hardware and OS. With the evaluation work, my 
interest was piqued, so I've continued to play around with Solaris / 
Sparc on Qemu on my own time. Since I had a fairly well encapsulated 
symptom, I thought I might be able to help identify a fix or two for Qemu.


Respectfully,
Paul

On 2/21/2012 12:49 PM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> may I ask you why do you need Solaris 8/sparc? I spent really a lot of
> time on sparc emulation in qemu, it was fun and I would probably do it
> further, but I saw no projects where it would be useful. Somehow it
> looked that all the apps available for Solaris are available for
> Linux/Windows as well... Do you by any chance have an example of an
> app which would be worth the efforts?
>
> Artyom
>
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 4:45 PM, P. Wilhelm<bearcat.pilot@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> I've been able to install Solaris 8 using CDs on the Sparc Softmmu client
>> system. Kudos to those responsible for Sparc development!
>>
>> I've been able to run a number of applications without problems on the
>> client machine. I noticed something odd, however, and have been trying to
>> isolate the cause. Hopefully, someone here will have an idea or two for me
>> to try.
>>
>> The issue:
>> The syslogd seems to accept and post to the appropriate log file only a
>> small number of messages before no longer updating the log file when further
>> messages are posted, the syslogd seems to hang. The symptom does not appear
>> to be different when rebooting or restarting the syslog daemon. The daemon
>> will post a couple of message to the log file and then stop accepting any
>> more.
>>
>> Why ask here?
>> I've done a couple of things to see if I can isolate the source of the
>> oddity and they seem to point to qemu.
>>
>> What I've done so far:
>> 1) I've tried using "logger" and a C program I wrote to use the syslog()
>> function. - Both have the same issue noted above.
>> 2) I've used both the OpenBios and SS5.bin bios. - Symptom does not change
>> between the two.
>> 3) I checked my /etc/syslog.conf on real hardware running the same version
>> of Solaris 8. Syslogging works as you'd expect there. (Note - I don't have
>> real SparcStation 5 hardware. I've been using an old Sun4u machine, Ultra-1
>> -- hopefully, that does not invalidate my "real hardware" checks.).
>> 4) I ran syslogd in debug mode on both the client and the real hardware, but
>> did not see anything in the output from each that gave a clue as to the
>> issue. Generally, the output confirmed that I had syslogd configured the
>> same way on both.
>>
>> How to proceed?
>> I am a reasonably adept software developer, however, I do not have
>> experience at the guts-level of Solaris OS or Sparc hardware. My work on
>> Solaris/Sparc has been at the application level, but I have worked at the
>> hardware level on other (proprietary) systems. If I had access to syslogd
>> source code, I'd be comfortable working from there, but I am fairly certain
>> that is not available - let me know if I am wrong. I've thought about
>> looking for an open source syslog daemon and trying to use it instead of the
>> Solaris version.
>>
>> Any thoughts about next steps are appreciated.
>>
>>
>> Respectfully,
>> Paul
>>
>>
>
>