[OpenBIOS] openfirmware boot partition layout

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

On 16/02/11 13:23, Dinar Valeev wrote:

>> Okay - first question to ask is this: which version of KVM and which SVN
>> revision of OpenBIOS are you using? There has a been a lot of work in this
>> area last year for example.
>
> I'm using kvm with 2.6.38-rc3-67365-g7a67422 kernel
>
> mine qemu version is:
> QEMU emulator version 0.14.50, Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard
>
> I believe this is most recent version.

Ooooh okay but since you're using ppc64, you're going to have to build 
from SVN trunk - the changes are that recent! BTW I thought the latest 
qemu/kvm version was 0.13.x, i.e. 0.14.x is still currently at RC stage 
at least in qemu world.

>> Note that you can get more debugging output from OpenBIOS if you load up KVM
>> with a couple of extra options on the command line: -nographic
>> -prom-env='auto-boot?=false'. This will enable you to see the debug output,
>> and also drops you to the Forth command prompt rather than trying to boot
>> the device automatically.
>>
>> You can then try manually booting a PPC partition, e.g.
>>
>> boot cdrom:1
>> boot disk:2
>> boot
>>
>> etc.
>>
>> Or even browse some of the filesystem contents to see if the FS is
>> recognised:
>>
>> dir cdrom:1\
>> dir disk:2\
>
> My qemu command is:
> ./ppc64-softmmu/qemu-system-ppc64 -enable-kvm -drive
> file=/root/k0daz_ppc_lvm_appliance.ppc64-1.0.1.raw -cpu power4
> -nographic -prom-env 'auto-boot?=false'
>
> Once I'm in OF prompt I've tried to invoke:
> 0>  dir disk:1\ pc-parts: Unable to determine filesystem
>   ok

So that's easy - OpenBIOS can't work out what the filesystem on the 
partition is.

> If I'm trying to boot VM with one you proposed. VM just hangs.

Andreas' last email to the list was here: 
http://lists.openbios.org/pipermail/openbios/2011-February/006275.html. 
The short version is, the basic PPC64 BIOS works but if you need RTAS 
then currently developer help is needed. Would this be something you'd 
be willing to help with?


ATB,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Cave-Ayland - Senior Technical Architect
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