openbios support for netboot? (qemu-system-sparc32/solaris)

[Joe Dery]

Intrepid openBIOS developers,
Though not new news, thank you for providing an openBIOS that is able to
boot solaris in qemu-system-sparc32!   While I am able to disk boot (with
qcow2 image containing ufs filesystems), but would prefer to serve as much
of my guest filesystem from NFS as possible.  Netboot allows a 'diskless'
system, so that is the most extreme case, but I'm open to other
suggestions.

Does OpenBIOS 1.1 (eg the snapshot attached to QEMU GIT HEAD as of last
Friday) support boot net:rarp, boot net:dhcp, or any other more manual
method of providing the kernel&parameters?  I haven't been able to find
this in the documentation or code so I imagine it does not.

PS - FWIW this is the command line I am presently using for a 'disk0'
boot.  Note that the tftp/bootfile do not do anything, but I included them
as an example based on the other qemu documentation.

qemu/sparc-softmmu/qemu-system-sparc \
  -net nic,macaddr=00:03:BA:04:A5:AD -net
user,hostfwd=tcp::8023-:23,hostfwd=tcp::5911-:5911,tftp=/tftpboot,bootfile=inetboot.sun4m
\
  -hda sol8_36G.disk.install \
  -nographic -serial telnet:0.0.0.0:3000,server \
  -m 256

PPS Mark Cave-Ayland, it appears you're active on this list.  Thanks again
for your help (now years ago!) fixing the MUTEX_HELD & related problems in
2.6.... the current GIT still runs clean.   I have not really worked with
QEMU since ~2.6, around that time I picked up a SunBlade 1000, which is
supported by the old kernel I need, and is able to run the (mostly CC
compile) workloads an order of magnitude faster.  QEMU remains interesting
for applications requiring less performance, e.g. lmgrd license server.

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

On 18/12/2018 15:53, Joe Dery wrote:
> Intrepid openBIOS developers, 
> Though not new news, thank you for providing an openBIOS that is able to boot solaris
> in qemu-system-sparc32!   While I am able to disk boot (with qcow2 image containing
> ufs filesystems), but would prefer to serve as much of my guest filesystem from NFS
> as possible.  Netboot allows a 'diskless' system, so that is the most extreme case,
> but I'm open to other suggestions.
>
> Does OpenBIOS 1.1 (eg the snapshot attached to QEMU GIT HEAD as of last Friday)
> support boot net:rarp, boot net:dhcp, or any other more manual method of providing
> the kernel&parameters?  I haven't been able to find this in the documentation or code
> so I imagine it does not.
>
> PS - FWIW this is the command line I am presently using for a 'disk0' boot.  Note
> that the tftp/bootfile do not do anything, but I included them as an example based on
> the other qemu documentation.
>
> qemu/sparc-softmmu/qemu-system-sparc \
>   -net nic,macaddr=00:03:BA:04:A5:AD -net
> user,hostfwd=tcp::8023-:23,hostfwd=tcp::5911-:5911,tftp=/tftpboot,bootfile=inetboot.sun4m
> \
>   -hda sol8_36G.disk.install \
>   -nographic -serial telnet:0.0.0.0:3000 http://0.0.0.0:3000/,server \
>   -m 256
>
> PPS Mark Cave-Ayland, it appears you're active on this list.  Thanks again for your
> help (now years ago!) fixing the MUTEX_HELD & related problems in 2.6.... the current
> GIT still runs clean.   I have not really worked with QEMU since ~2.6, around that
> time I picked up a SunBlade 1000, which is supported by the old kernel I need, and is
> able to run the (mostly CC compile) workloads an order of magnitude faster.  QEMU
> remains interesting for applications requiring less performance, e.g. lmgrd license
> server.

Hi Joe,

Glad to hear that everything is still working well for you! Unfortunately OpenBIOS
doesn't have a TCP/IP stack (and I don't have any immediate plans to do this) so
you'll need to find another solution.

Probably the easiest one I can think of right now is to get hold of a real SS5 ROM
from the internet and pass that into QEMU via the command line parameter -bios
/patch/to/SS5.bin. You can then use some expect scripting or similar in -nographic
mode to enter the relevant boot command automatically into the PROM on startup.

ATB,

Mark.