Re: [Qemu-devel] Linux as VirtualBox quest OS with QEMU running Solaris

[Michal Suchanek <hramrach@centrum.cz>]

On 7 January 2011 18:28, Mateusz Loskot <mateusz@loskot.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> First, I'm sorry if my question does not belong here. The qemu-devel
> says it's "devel", but I can't find any qemu-users mailing list.

I have seen it once but could not find it either when searching for a
qemu mailing list to subscribe to.

>
> I have no experience with QEMU. I've been using x86-only virtualization
> software like VirtualBox, VMWare and others.
>
> I need to run Solaris (SPARC) OS and I'd like to do it under QEMU.
> Due to hardware constraints, I'm wondering if the following setup
> would work at all:
>
> 1. Quad-core workstation with 16GB RAM with Windows Vista 64-bit
>   as host OS
> 2. The Windows runs VirtualBox with Linux installed as guest OS.
> 3. The Linux guest OS runs QEMU
> 4. QEMU runs Solaris (SPARC)
>
> The Linux guest OS can be either Linux x86-32 or x86-64,
> depending which one is recommended and would perform better.
>
> Is this configuration reasonable?
> Would it work well?
>
> I have found the "QEMU on Winows" [1] but I'm not sure if this is an
> official project and if it's "production ready".
> I need to have fairly stable environment for building and
> testing software on SPARC architecture.
>

If you can find a build of recent qemu for Windows it should preform
as well as qemu on Linux for emulating a SPARC (= different
architecture).

Adding another layer of virtualization is going to hurt performance at
least and could potentially introduce additional issues.

However, the device emulation is different on Windows compared to
Linux so you may find that networking and screen emulation works
differently compared to Linux.

HTH

Michal