Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 30/30] target-sparc: fix up niagara machine

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 27/01/2017 15:06, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>> Is rom_add_file_fixed supposed to mark the memory region read-only? Or
>> should it be created read-only before calling rom_add_file_fixed?
> I'm not familiar with the memory API, but the fact that you're getting
> RW suggests that you need to mark read-only yourself.  Suggest to
> examine similar code elsewhere for additional clues.
> 
>>> The monkey-patching of dinfo->is_default is to silence the "Orphaned
>>> drive without device" warning.  Naughty.
>>>
>>> This use of -drive if=pflash is highly unorthodox.  To suggest better
>>> ways, we need to understand the role of "the virtual ramdisk".  Can you
>>> explain?  How does it work on a physical system?
>> AFAIK except for simulators it's only used on FPGA boards. It's what
>> the comment says: a kind of initrd, but it resides outside of the
>> partition RAM. So, it is a RAM region pre-filled with data in the way
>> not visible to the guest.
>>
>> I would have used an -initrd option instead of -pflash, but it
>> required a -kernel option, and there is no sensible way to use the
>> -kernel with Solaris.
>> If QEMU had something like a nvram-disk - it would have worked here the best.
>
> Have you considered pressing -bios into service?  -option-rom?  -object
> memory-backend-file?  Paolo, any recommendations?

Yeah, I think -bios is closest.  By the way, where do I get all the .rom
files for the Niagara board?  "make check" complains about them.

Paolo