[Qemu-devel] Which qemu ports actually work?

[Torbjorn Granlund <tg@gmplib.org>]

I am not sure this inquiry is appropriate for this mailing list.  But at
the qemu web site, this is the only mailing list mentioned.

I would like to run as many OS's as possible under as many processors as
possible, using qemu.  Results thus far has not been very encouraging,
though.

Here is my test matrix:

         fbsd-8_1       nbsd-5_0_2    debian-5      gentoo        hurd

sparc      n/a          OK            n/a           n/a           n/a

sparc64    fw crash     fw crash      kern crash    black fb      n/a

ppc        early hang   fw crash      OK            kern hang     n/a

ppc64      early panic  fw crash      kern hang     kern hang     n/a

i386       OK           OK            OK                          installs,
                                                                  non-booting
x86_64     OK           OK            OK

These are results from multiple attempts and google searches for what
other people have done.  Unfortunately, there aren't many matches,
except that the various error messages I get have been experienced by
several other people.

Is this what I can expect from qemu today?  Are the goals of the qemu
project to make the various ports operational for running these OS's?
If yes, what is the time frame?

It would be nice with a status page (there is a blank such page already,
I mean a non-blank page...) informing about the status of the various
ports.  A naive user--such as myself--tends to assume that a released
port actually works.  It takes many hours of poorly used effort before
one can conclude that e.g., sparc64 does not work at all.

(We should probably not blame qemu for hurd's shortcomings here.  Hurd
is highly experimental.  I have not tried it on actual hardware.)

-- 
Torbjörn