[OpenBIOS] operating systems that I'm able and not able to run on QEMU PPC

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

Massimo Montecchi wrote:

> Sorry to make, maybe, some confusions in the previous posts.
> I try now to make clear situation about my test data.
> 
> *QEMU last trunk (0.13.50) + openbios last trunk (the details are in the 
> first post of this thread):*
> *
> - DEBIAN 5.0.5 PPC it works
> - OPENSUSE 11.1 PPC it works

Great :)

> - FreeBSD 8.1 PPC => hangs at "Kernel entry at 0x100100 ..."

This may be the same issue that Blue sees with SPARC to do with ofmem 
allocating memory from the same region that the kernel tries to use.

> - NETBSD 5.0.2 (netbsd-ofppccd-5.0.2.iso) PPC => hangs in the OpenBios 
> console wuith message "Trying cd:,\\:tbxi..."
 >
 > - AIX 4.3.3 PPC, AIX 5.1 PPC, AIX 6.1 PPC => hangs in the OpenBios
 > console wuith message "Trying cd:,\\:tbxi..."

These two appear to be triggering some kind of bug in the filesystem 
code related to finding system executable files from the CD image. Do 
these images contain HFS filesystems or other? If you let me know which, 
I can point you towards the files you need to look at.

> - NETBSD 5.0.2 (netbsd-prepcd-5.0.2.iso) PPC => waiting in the OpenBios 
> console after message "No valid state has been set by load or init-program"
> - SLES 11 SP1 PPC => waiting in the OpenBios console after message "No 
> valid state has been set by load or init-program"

See my previous email to Andreas - these mean that either the load 
failed, or init-program failed to detect a valid ELF header after the 
load took place.

> I hope this info help someone to understand the ppc "caos" in openbios 
> code or qemu code :-)

It's really great to have someone interested in looking at the various 
outstanding PPC issues. Given that you can build OpenBIOS from SVN, all 
you need is a cross-gdb and you're good to go - I'm happy to point you 
towards the relevant sections of code. I don't think the fixes should be 
too complicated either.


ATB,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Cave-Ayland - Senior Technical Architect
PostgreSQL - PostGIS
Sirius Corporation plc - control through freedom
http://www.siriusit.co.uk
t: +44 870 608 0063

Sirius Labs: http://www.siriusit.co.uk/labs