Hi Nick,
Thanks again for testing this. The issue with Solaris not detecting the disks is a known one - the following guide should point you in the right direction:
http://virtuallyfun.blogspot.com/2010/10/formatting-disks-for-solaris.html
Also don't forget the "set scsi_options" part from Artyom's SPARC/QEMU howto here: http://tyom.blogspot.com/2009/12/solaris-under-qemu-how-to.html
I think it may actually be possible to come up with a patch for OpenBIOS so that the scsi_options change isn't required - let me know how you get on with the above links, and if it all seems to work I'll look at creating the patch for you.
Okay, I got passed the issue with formatting the root filesystem. Apparently there are some limitations on the C/H/S parameters you use for the disk that correspond with how UFS wants to format a new filesystem. I'm not sure what exactly those limitations are at this point, but, by adjusting a couple of the C/H/S settings when using format to set up the disk I was able to get it to work correctly. So, I now have Solaris 9 installed on qemu-system-sparc with OpenBIOS! I'll probably go back to Solaris 8 as that one has a free binary license while Solaris 9 is a commercial license, IIRC. I do own a Solaris 9 commercial license, but I like the free idea, better.
Anyway, now I'm on to an issue with networking - I've used the following two qemu network parameter combinations: -net nic -net tap,ifname=tap0 -net nic -net user
In the first instance, tap0 was configured on my Linux box and added to my bridge br0. In both cases the Solaris system is unable to obtain a DHCP address - the DHCP client times out. Not sure if I should be using a different parameter set, or if this is another area that needs some work either for OpenBIOS or qemu?
-Nick
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