[OpenBIOS] openbios compile issue, goal = solaris 8/9 (sparc64) under qemu

Blue Swirl blauwirbel at gmail.com
Thu May 3 21:33:25 CEST 2007


> So, why is sparc64 unusable, and what are the barriers to creating a
> fully usable sparc64 emulator which can run Solaris 8/9 (sparc64)?  ie,
> how far away is it and what resources are lacking?

There are bugs in Qemu's Sparc64 CPU implementation that need to be
found and fixed. Those prevent the OpenBIOS (or even simple C programs
for the easier sparc64-linux-user case) from running. This part is
just debugging, most things are in place.

When the CPU core is fine, OpenBIOS can probe for PCI devices, but the
PCI bridge is not complete. Any real kernel would want to enable
interrupts, but there is no interrupt controller yet. And so on. But
implementing these is not very difficult.

Also OpenBIOS needs some work before any kernel will run, for example
in the device tree and client interface. Should be easy.

For your specific system call problem, maybe you could implement a
Sparc64 user emulator for Solaris, like the Linux and Darwin
emulators. That would help by exercising the CPU core and finding the
bugs.



More information about the OpenBIOS mailing list