[Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Rob Landley]

Can the virtio things (serial, network, block, virtfs) be used on  
arbitrary targets yet? I.E. Can I use a virtio network device on arm,  
mips, powerpc, sparc... (And can the virtio serial console hook up to  
qemu's stdin/stdout in -nographic mode yet?)

I asked this in 2010 and the answer at the time was "no". Still not  
entirely sure why.

Rob

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Richard Henderson]

On 2013-03-25 17:52, Rob Landley wrote:
> Can the virtio things (serial, network, block, virtfs) be used on arbitrary
> targets yet? I.E. Can I use a virtio network device on arm, mips, powerpc,
> sparc... (And can the virtio serial console hook up to qemu's stdin/stdout in
> -nographic mode yet?)
>
> I asked this in 2010 and the answer at the time was "no". Still not entirely
> sure why.

Yes, so long as the machine description has a supported bus, e.g. pci.
It took almost nothing to hook up virtio-pci to alpha.


r~

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Rob Landley]

On 03/25/2013 08:24:44 PM, Richard Henderson wrote:
> On 2013-03-25 17:52, Rob Landley wrote:
>> Can the virtio things (serial, network, block, virtfs) be used on  
>> arbitrary
>> targets yet? I.E. Can I use a virtio network device on arm, mips,  
>> powerpc,
>> sparc... (And can the virtio serial console hook up to qemu's  
>> stdin/stdout in
>> -nographic mode yet?)
>> 
>> I asked this in 2010 and the answer at the time was "no". Still not  
>> entirely
>> sure why.
> 
> Yes, so long as the machine description has a supported bus, e.g. pci.
> It took almost nothing to hook up virtio-pci to alpha.

I'm out of date: did Alpha get the ability to boot linux on an emulated  
board? (I'd like to play with it, if so.)

I periodically google for it, but it comes up with stuff like this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10938216/install-an-os-of-alpha-architecture-in-qemu

If so, is there an example image or kernel .config, and corresponding  
qemu command line you could point me at?

The stuff on http://wiki.qemu.org/Testing is mostly way behind my own  
images at
http://landley.net/aboriginal (which I hope to have updated to 3.8 in  
the next day or so), but I just checked again and there's no Alpha  
image there either...

Rob

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Artyom Tarasenko]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> Can the virtio things (serial, network, block, virtfs) be used on arbitrary
> targets yet? I.E. Can I use a virtio network device on arm, mips, powerpc,
> sparc...

Yes. Moreover, for sparc64 the virtio network is currently the only
way to have a network under Linux guest (and a virtio block is the
only to have a disk under Linux guest).

-- 
Regards,
Artyom Tarasenko

Linux/sparc and solaris/sparc under qemu blog:
http://tyom.blogspot.com/search/label/qemu

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Rob Landley]

On 03/26/2013 02:34:50 AM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> > Can the virtio things (serial, network, block, virtfs) be used on  
> arbitrary
> > targets yet? I.E. Can I use a virtio network device on arm, mips,  
> powerpc,
> > sparc...
> 
> Yes. Moreover, for sparc64 the virtio network is currently the only
> way to have a network under Linux guest (and a virtio block is the
> only to have a disk under Linux guest).

Do you have an example kernel .config and qemu command line showing how  
to use virtio for those? (Or a working sparc64 image you can point me  
to?)

Thanks,

Rob

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Artyom Tarasenko]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:03 PM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> On 03/26/2013 02:34:50 AM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
>> > Can the virtio things (serial, network, block, virtfs) be used on
>> > arbitrary
>> > targets yet? I.E. Can I use a virtio network device on arm, mips,
>> > powerpc,
>> > sparc...
>>
>> Yes. Moreover, for sparc64 the virtio network is currently the only
>> way to have a network under Linux guest (and a virtio block is the
>> only to have a disk under Linux guest).
>
>
> Do you have an example kernel .config and qemu command line showing how to
> use virtio for those? (Or a working sparc64 image you can point me to?)

Yes. Will send it to you as I get to my home machine. Can you make them
available on your site?
I have a Debian Wheezy RC1 / SPARC64 How-To, it would be nice to link to
the .config and kernel, so people would be able to install it just by
a few clicks.

Artyom

--
Regards,
Artyom Tarasenko

linux/sparc and solaris/sparc under qemu blog:
http://tyom.blogspot.com/search/label/qemu

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

On 14/04/13 10:38, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:

>> Do you have an example kernel .config and qemu command line showing how to
>> use virtio for those? (Or a working sparc64 image you can point me to?)
>
> Yes. Will send it to you as I get to my home machine. Can you make them
> available on your site?

Note that there is a section of test kernel images on the QEMU site at 
http://wiki.qemu.org/Testing, so if you could upload it to there that 
would be great :)

> I have a Debian Wheezy RC1 / SPARC64 How-To, it would be nice to link to
> the .config and kernel, so people would be able to install it just by
> a few clicks.

This is very interesting - could you post a link to the how-to?


ATB,

Mark.

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Artyom Tarasenko]

On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Mark Cave-Ayland
<mark.cave-ayland@ilande.co.uk> wrote:
> On 14/04/13 10:38, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
>
>>> Do you have an example kernel .config and qemu command line showing how
>>> to
>>> use virtio for those? (Or a working sparc64 image you can point me to?)
>>
>>
>> Yes. Will send it to you as I get to my home machine. Can you make them
>> available on your site?
>
>
> Note that there is a section of test kernel images on the QEMU site at
> http://wiki.qemu.org/Testing, so if you could upload it to there that would
> be great :)

I don't see how to upload files. Can only edit the page.

>> I have a Debian Wheezy RC1 / SPARC64 How-To, it would be nice to link to
>> the .config and kernel, so people would be able to install it just by
>> a few clicks.
>
>
> This is very interesting - could you post a link to the how-to?

I temporarily put it offline till I find a hosting for the kernel. For
some reason the standard Wheezy/sparc64 kernel is not stable under
QEMU.
Stay tuned. :)

Artyom

--
Regards,
Artyom Tarasenko

linux/sparc and solaris/sparc under qemu blog:
http://tyom.blogspot.com/search/label/qemu

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Rob Landley]

On 04/14/2013 02:49:53 PM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Mark Cave-Ayland
> <mark.cave-ayland@ilande.co.uk> wrote:
> > On 14/04/13 10:38, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
> >
> >>> Do you have an example kernel .config and qemu command line  
> showing how
> >>> to
> >>> use virtio for those? (Or a working sparc64 image you can point  
> me to?)
> >>
> >>
> >> Yes. Will send it to you as I get to my home machine. Can you make  
> them
> >> available on your site?
> >
> >
> > Note that there is a section of test kernel images on the QEMU site  
> at
> > http://wiki.qemu.org/Testing, so if you could upload it to there  
> that would
> > be great :)
> 
> I don't see how to upload files. Can only edit the page.

I've got build scripts that reproducibly create bootable system images  
(with native compilers capable of building linux from scratch) for  
several different variants of arm, mips, ppc32, sparc32, sh4, x86, and  
x86-64. (It also builds m68k that runs under aranym but not qemu.)

   http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html

Basically go to http://landley.net/aboriginal/bin and grab a  
system-image-*.tar.bz2 and ./run-emulator.sh in there. If you want an  
extracted root-filesystem-*.tar.bz2 that's in there too, and the  
various config files used to make it should be in /usr/src under there.

If you want to build from source, grab the  
http://landley.net/aboriginal/downloads most recent tarball, extract  
it, and "./build.sh sparc" or similar. (If it breaks, tell me. I  
collect reproducible bug reports.)

I put out a new release about each time a kernel comes out. I don't  
announce 'em here because I didn't think you were interested...

> >> I have a Debian Wheezy RC1 / SPARC64 How-To, it would be nice to  
> link to
> >> the .config and kernel, so people would be able to install it just  
> by
> >> a few clicks.
> >
> > This is very interesting - could you post a link to the how-to?
> 
> I temporarily put it offline till I find a hosting for the kernel. For
> some reason the standard Wheezy/sparc64 kernel is not stable under
> QEMU.

How is your kernel nonstandard, and what's the instability? I booted  
the one you sent me but it went:

netconsole: network logging started
VFS: Cannot open root device "vda1" or unknown-block(253,1): error -6
Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available  
partitions:
fd00           28212 vda  driver: virtio_blk
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on  
unknown-block(253,1)
Call Trace:

Probably because the sparc root filesystem I have lying around is  
squashfs. I can rebuild with ext2 but not on my lunch break. (I cleaned  
out the build dir so it has to build the cross toolchains first,  
underpowered netbook, takes a while...)

I have various patches I need to apply to get stuff to work at
http://landley.net/hg/aboriginal/file/tip/sources/patches and am always  
working out more. (I push them upstream when I can, but the maintainers  
aren't always interested.)

(Currently the project is migrating from uClibc to musl libc, in part  
because I can fish target support out of klibc and apply it to musl in  
a way I can't for uClibc, so I can _finally_ get s390 and such to  
work... But day job and my other projects eat lots of time so it goes  
slowly...)

Rob

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Rob Landley]

On 04/14/2013 04:38:23 AM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:03 PM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> > On 03/26/2013 02:34:50 AM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
> >>
> >> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>  
> wrote:
> >> > Can the virtio things (serial, network, block, virtfs) be used on
> >> > arbitrary
> >> > targets yet? I.E. Can I use a virtio network device on arm, mips,
> >> > powerpc,
> >> > sparc...
> >>
> >> Yes. Moreover, for sparc64 the virtio network is currently the only
> >> way to have a network under Linux guest (and a virtio block is the
> >> only to have a disk under Linux guest).
> >
> >
> > Do you have an example kernel .config and qemu command line showing  
> how to
> > use virtio for those? (Or a working sparc64 image you can point me  
> to?)
> 
> Yes. Will send it to you as I get to my home machine. Can you make  
> them
> available on your site?

I plan to add a sparc64 target built from source to Aboriginal Linux.

For a lot of the 64-bit targets, actual 64 bit userspace support is  
strangely lacking. For ppc64 they say to use ppc32, and I've been told  
that about sparc64 as well. I don't know if this is an optimization or  
a requirement. I have a 32 bit image, I'd like to test the 64 bit  
codepaths as well...

> I have a Debian Wheezy RC1 / SPARC64 How-To, it would be nice to link  
> to
> the .config and kernel, so people would be able to install it just by
> a few clicks.

I have http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html

Rob

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Blue Swirl]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 2:15 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> On 04/14/2013 04:38:23 AM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:03 PM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
>> > On 03/26/2013 02:34:50 AM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
>> >> > Can the virtio things (serial, network, block, virtfs) be used on
>> >> > arbitrary
>> >> > targets yet? I.E. Can I use a virtio network device on arm, mips,
>> >> > powerpc,
>> >> > sparc...
>> >>
>> >> Yes. Moreover, for sparc64 the virtio network is currently the only
>> >> way to have a network under Linux guest (and a virtio block is the
>> >> only to have a disk under Linux guest).
>>
>> >
>> >
>> > Do you have an example kernel .config and qemu command line showing how
>> > to
>> > use virtio for those? (Or a working sparc64 image you can point me to?)
>>
>> Yes. Will send it to you as I get to my home machine. Can you make them
>> available on your site?
>
>
> I plan to add a sparc64 target built from source to Aboriginal Linux.
>
> For a lot of the 64-bit targets, actual 64 bit userspace support is
> strangely lacking. For ppc64 they say to use ppc32, and I've been told that
> about sparc64 as well. I don't know if this is an optimization or a
> requirement. I have a 32 bit image, I'd like to test the 64 bit codepaths as
> well...

It's a sort of optimization, the pointers are smaller. OpenBSD/sparc64
takes a different approach, every binary is 64 bits. Would it be hard
to make Aboriginal *BSD? ;-)

>
>
>> I have a Debian Wheezy RC1 / SPARC64 How-To, it would be nice to link to
>> the .config and kernel, so people would be able to install it just by
>> a few clicks.
>
>
> I have http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html
>
> Rob
>

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Rob Landley]

On 04/20/2013 05:36:46 AM, Blue Swirl wrote:
> > I plan to add a sparc64 target built from source to Aboriginal  
> Linux.
> >
> > For a lot of the 64-bit targets, actual 64 bit userspace support is
> > strangely lacking. For ppc64 they say to use ppc32, and I've been  
> told that
> > about sparc64 as well. I don't know if this is an optimization or a
> > requirement. I have a 32 bit image, I'd like to test the 64 bit  
> codepaths as
> > well...
> 
> It's a sort of optimization, the pointers are smaller. OpenBSD/sparc64
> takes a different approach, every binary is 64 bits. Would it be hard
> to make Aboriginal *BSD? ;-)

Not _that_ hard, but I'm not sure it's interesting?

Aboriginal Linux is basically 7 packages: linux, gcc, binutils, uClibc,  
make, bash, and busybox. (I also add distcc so the native toolchain can  
move some of the heavy lifting of compilation outside the emulator, but  
that's optional.)

This is the smallest system capable of not only rebuilding itself under  
itself, but building Linux From Scratch under the result (and thus  
natively bootstrapping up to an arbitrary set of packages).

I'm gradually replacing busybox with toybox, and I'm migrating from  
uClibc to musl. I vaguely plan to read the various klibc arch support  
bits to add new architectures to musl, but my day job doesn't have  
anything to do with my hobby programming so there's a chronic shortage  
of time, and toybox 1.0 is my priority right now for reasons I blatered  
at length about at ELC a month or so back (http://youtu.be/SGmtP5Lg_t0).

In theory swapping in a bsd kernel and libc, and beating the toolchain  
into accepting it, might not be too hard. But what I'm more likely to  
do is try to add sparc64 support to musl and convince the toolchain  
it's just going to have to cope with the idea of a 64 bit sparc  
userspace.

Rob

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Artyom Tarasenko]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 4:15 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> On 04/14/2013 04:38:23 AM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:03 PM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
>> > On 03/26/2013 02:34:50 AM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
>> >> > Can the virtio things (serial, network, block, virtfs) be used on
>> >> > arbitrary
>> >> > targets yet? I.E. Can I use a virtio network device on arm, mips,
>> >> > powerpc,
>> >> > sparc...
>> >>
>> >> Yes. Moreover, for sparc64 the virtio network is currently the only
>> >> way to have a network under Linux guest (and a virtio block is the
>> >> only to have a disk under Linux guest).
>> >
>> >
>> > Do you have an example kernel .config and qemu command line showing how
>> > to
>> > use virtio for those? (Or a working sparc64 image you can point me to?)
>>
>> Yes. Will send it to you as I get to my home machine. Can you make them
>> available on your site?
>
> I plan to add a sparc64 target built from source to Aboriginal Linux.

Good to hear that. The more use/test cases, the less bugs!
Actually I was asking whether you would host a non-Aboriginal, foreign
Debian kernel.
But never mind, I figured it's better to fix QEMU to be able use a
vanilla Debian kernel
instead of building custom kernels. :-)

So if you have more than one PCI / virtio device in your
qemu-system-sparc64 setup, you
may want to update your QEMU to today's git master.

> For a lot of the 64-bit targets, actual 64 bit userspace support is
> strangely lacking. For ppc64 they say to use ppc32, and I've been told that
> about sparc64 as well. I don't know if this is an optimization or a
> requirement. I have a 32 bit image, I'd like to test the 64 bit codepaths as
> well...

I guess it's rather an optimisation. At least I saw BusyBox working under
QEMU before the sparc v8plus was fixed.

Artyom

--
Regards,
Artyom Tarasenko

linux/sparc and solaris/sparc under qemu blog:
http://tyom.blogspot.com/search/label/qemu

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Rob Landley]

On 04/27/2013 03:00:06 PM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
> > For a lot of the 64-bit targets, actual 64 bit userspace support is
> > strangely lacking. For ppc64 they say to use ppc32, and I've been  
> told that
> > about sparc64 as well. I don't know if this is an optimization or a
> > requirement. I have a 32 bit image, I'd like to test the 64 bit  
> codepaths as
> > well...
> 
> I guess it's rather an optimisation. At least I saw BusyBox working  
> under
> QEMU before the sparc v8plus was fixed.

If you mean http://busybox.net/downloads/binaries/busybox-sparc that's  
a 32-bit binary output from the Aboriginal Linux build. (I try to  
upload new ones each time Denys has a release, but I'm buried in todo  
items and don't always get to it. Right now I need to clean up and  
repost the inittmpfs patches for 3.9...)

Rob

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Artyom Tarasenko]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 7:43 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> On 04/27/2013 03:00:06 PM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
>>
>> > For a lot of the 64-bit targets, actual 64 bit userspace support is
>> > strangely lacking. For ppc64 they say to use ppc32, and I've been told
>> > that
>> > about sparc64 as well. I don't know if this is an optimization or a
>> > requirement. I have a 32 bit image, I'd like to test the 64 bit
>> > codepaths as
>> > well...
>>
>> I guess it's rather an optimisation. At least I saw BusyBox working under
>> QEMU before the sparc v8plus was fixed.
>
>
> If you mean http://busybox.net/downloads/binaries/busybox-sparc that's a
> 32-bit binary output from the Aboriginal Linux build.

No, I mean busybox-static_1.18.4-2_sparc64.deb from the older Debian
distribution.
Meanwhile it's 1.20,
http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian/pool-sparc64/main/b/busybox/busybox-static_1.20.0-8_sparc64.deb
but I only experimented with 1.18. Back then it was definitely a pure
64 bit application:

$  file busybox
busybox: ELF 64-bit MSB executable, SPARC V9, Sun UltraSPARC1
Extensions Required, relaxed memory ordering, version 1 (SYSV),
statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, stripped

HTH,
Artyom

--
Regards,
Artyom Tarasenko

linux/sparc and solaris/sparc under qemu blog:
http://tyom.blogspot.com/search/label/qemu

Re: [Qemu-devel] Target-agnostic virtio?

[Rob Landley]

On 04/30/2013 04:31:29 PM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 7:43 AM, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> > On 04/27/2013 03:00:06 PM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
> >>
> >> > For a lot of the 64-bit targets, actual 64 bit userspace support  
> is
> >> > strangely lacking. For ppc64 they say to use ppc32, and I've  
> been told
> >> > that
> >> > about sparc64 as well. I don't know if this is an optimization  
> or a
> >> > requirement. I have a 32 bit image, I'd like to test the 64 bit
> >> > codepaths as
> >> > well...
> >>
> >> I guess it's rather an optimisation. At least I saw BusyBox  
> working under
> >> QEMU before the sparc v8plus was fixed.
> >
> >
> > If you mean http://busybox.net/downloads/binaries/busybox-sparc  
> that's a
> > 32-bit binary output from the Aboriginal Linux build.
> 
> No, I mean busybox-static_1.18.4-2_sparc64.deb from the older Debian
> distribution.
> Meanwhile it's 1.20,
> http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian/pool-sparc64/main/b/busybox/busybox-static_1.20.0-8_sparc64.deb
> but I only experimented with 1.18. Back then it was definitely a pure
> 64 bit application:

let's see, wget the 1.20 version, dpkg-deb -X busybox-static* sparky,
strings sparky/bin/busybox | grep -i libc...

Statically linked against glibc 2.13. Still, good test for at least the  
application emulation side of things.

I hit the limits of platform support I could beat out of uClibc a few  
years back, and these days I'm poking at musl. (It doesn't support much  
yet, but it's a _lot_ easier to add new targets and klibc provides  
bsd-licensed templates for most of them.) I need to reproduce the  
existing uClibc targets I'm using so I can wean my project off of that  
package before worrying too much about new stuff though. :)

Thanks,

Rob