[Qemu-ppc] Introducing myself

[Jacques Mony]

Greetings,

 

I have been a user of Qemu for a long time now and I am definitely a fan. I used it to develop hobby OSes, perform tests, etc. These days, though, I am more interested in the PPC guest support, more specifically AIX OS guest support.

 

I’ve seen a few posts about people testing AIX startup in QEMU, with various (successful or unsuccessful, depends where you stand) results. My understanding is that, from a CPU emulation point of view, Qemu has reached a good level of maturity… so before I dump my latest result (using 1.6.0-rc0), I would like to ask a question: what are the areas of Qemu (and/or external components) that need to be looked at to improve the AIX OS guest support? Firmware? Devices?

 

My test scenario is to boot qemu with the following command line syntax:

qemu-system-ppc64 –cpu POWER7_v2.3 –machine pseries –m 512 –serial stdio –cdrom /dev/cdrom –monitor unix:/tmp/ppc64-aix,server,nowait –smp 2 –hda /tmp/disk –boot d –mem-path /tmp/memory1 –display sdl

 

, without CD inserted, then type in “setenv load-base 16384”. Then, I insert the CD, and type “boot cdrom:\ppc\chrp\bootfile.exe ss verbose” And here’s what I get:

 

I get two different kind of outputs (random). Sometimes, I will get this (right away, doesn’t even seem to load CD):

 

Trying to load: -s verbose from: /vdevice/address@hidden/address@hidden:\ppc\chrp\bootfile.exe ... qemu: fatal: Trying to execute code outside RAM or ROM at 0xfffffffffffffffc

 

NIP fffffffffffffffc   LR 000000001dcd1e70 CTR ffffffffffffffff XER 0000000000000000

MSR 8000000000000000 HID0 0000000000000000  HF 8000000000000000 idx 1

TB 00000013 59689024137 DECR 440520378

GPR00 000000001dcd3738 000000001e53c8e0 000000001dce2f18 000000001e532f18

GPR04 000000001e592048 000000001e532f18 0000000000010000 0000000000000000

GPR08 000000001dd35388 0000000000000008 ffffffffffffffff 000000001e530198

GPR12 0000000024000084 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

GPR16 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 000000001dcd0d14 000000001dcdff00

GPR20 0000000000000053 000000001e59b26f 000000001dcd0c04 000000001e592398

GPR24 0000000000000000 000000001dcda600 000000001e53d050 000000001dcdb170

GPR28 0000000000000003 ffffffffffffffff 000000001e539010 0000000000000088

CR 24000088  [ E  G  -  -  -  -  L  L  ]             RES ffffffffffffffff

FPR00 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

FPR04 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

FPR08 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

FPR12 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

FPR16 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

FPR20 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

FPR24 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

FPR28 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

FPSCR 0000000000000000

SRR0 000000001dcd06e0  SRR1 8000000000000000    PVR 00000000003f0203 VRSAVE 0000000000000000

SPRG0 0000000000000000 SPRG1 000000000000bf30  SPRG2 0000000000000000  SPRG3 0000000000000000

SPRG4 0000000000000000 SPRG5 0000000000000000  SPRG6 0000000000000000  SPRG7 0000000000000000

CFAR 000000001dcd1904

Aborted

 

 

Other times, I will get this on Qemu console (I still have to compile with other display outputs than SDL), after AIX having booted kernel and display what seems to be normal error message (last one says that kernel debugging is enabled).

 

 

 

Trying to load: -s verbose from: /vdevice/address@hidden/address@hidden:\ppc\chrp\bootfile.exe ...   Successfully loaded

 

AIX

    StarPANIC: &ppda[0] != 03380000

Trying to read invalid spr 31 (0x01f) at 0000000000742240

Trying to read invalid spr 280 (0x118) at 00000000005a9a3c

 

 

 

 

I am getting the same kind of final error with either the AIX test CD or a real AIX DVD ISO.

 

 

 

I haven’t done low-level development for a long time… but I can try to dig with some help. How can I help?

 

Regards,

 

Jacques Mony – address@hidden