VMware reality check

[Myles Watson]

I decided to look into using VMware for coreboot development, but even
though we support the same chipset (i440bx), since VMware doesn't emulate
the CPU you can end up with an Opteron on i440bx, or a laptop processor with
i440bx, etc.

Has anyone run into this?  Is there a reasonable way to make this work?  Do
you really have to configure coreboot for VMware based on which CPU the host
has?

Thanks,
Myles

[Peter Stuge]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 10:27:38AM -0700, Myles Watson wrote:
> Is there a reasonable way to make this work?  Do you really have
> to configure coreboot for VMware based on which CPU the host has?

Counter-question:

How does RAM and HT init work if you have Opteron+440bx?

//Peter

[Myles Watson]

> On Behalf Of Peter Stuge
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 10:27:38AM -0700, Myles Watson wrote:
> > Is there a reasonable way to make this work?  Do you really have
> > to configure coreboot for VMware based on which CPU the host has?
>
> Counter-question:
>
> How does RAM and HT init work if you have Opteron+440bx?

Good point.  I'm not sure why I can't get VMware to boot coreboot configured
for Qemu.  It fails before there is any output with the message:

The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system. You will
need 	to power off or reset the virtual machine at this point.

Since when I boot into Linux with their BIOS /proc/cpuinfo shows my laptop's
processor, I thought this must be part of the problem.  Maybe it's not.

Myles

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

On 22.02.2008 18:27, Myles Watson wrote:
> I decided to look into using VMware for coreboot development, but even
> though we support the same chipset (i440bx), since VMware doesn't emulate
> the CPU you can end up with an Opteron on i440bx, or a laptop processor with
> i440bx, etc.
>
> Has anyone run into this?  Is there a reasonable way to make this work?  Do
> you really have to configure coreboot for VMware based on which CPU the host
> has?

I'd say stop the project before you get too frustrated. It simply 
doesn't make sense. Basically, any combination of incompatible CPU and 
chipset makes testing useless/impossible, so having the host CPU appear 
with identical/similar characteristics in the virtual machine makes the 
virtualization solution a no-go. You could try VirtualBox and VirtualPC, 
but I believe they both have similar problems.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

[Myles Watson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 3:59 PM
> To: Myles Watson
> Cc: 'Coreboot'
> Subject: Re: [coreboot] VMware reality check
>
> On 22.02.2008 18:27, Myles Watson wrote:
> > I decided to look into using VMware for coreboot development, but even
> > though we support the same chipset (i440bx), since VMware doesn't
>
> emulate
> > the CPU you can end up with an Opteron on i440bx, or a laptop processor
>
> with
> > i440bx, etc.
> >
> > Has anyone run into this?  Is there a reasonable way to make this work?
>
> Do
> > you really have to configure coreboot for VMware based on which CPU the
>
> host
> > has?
>
> I'd say stop the project before you get too frustrated. It simply
> doesn't make sense. Basically, any combination of incompatible CPU and
> chipset makes testing useless/impossible, so having the host CPU appear
> with identical/similar characteristics in the virtual machine makes the
> virtualization solution a no-go. You could try VirtualBox and VirtualPC,
> but I believe they both have similar problems.

That's probably the right solution.  I was just surprised that that was the
case, because it seems like VMware would have similar troubles with their
own BIOS.  I expected to see the virtual processor as something other than
mine.

Myles
> Regards,
> Carl-Daniel