Now finally something new

Loading: /platform/sun4u/boot_archiveramdisk-root ufs-file-system
Loading: /platform/sun4u/kernel/sparcv9/unix
module /platform/sun4u/kernel/sparcv9/unix: text at [0x1000000, 0x10bf34d] data at 0x1800000
module /platform/sun4u/kernel/sparcv9/genunix: text at [0x10bf350, 0x12b5c7f] data at 0x1865e00
module /platform/sun4u/kernel/misc/sparcv9/platmod: text at [0x12b5c80, 0x12b5c97] data at 0x18bac30
module /platform/sun4u/kernel/cpu/sparcv9/SUNW,UltraSPARC-II: text at [0x12b5cc0, 0x12c2a37] data at 0x18bb2c0
SunOS Release 5.11 Version MilaX_0.3.2 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
os-io Ethernet address = 52:54:0:12:34:56
Using default device instance data
mem = 262144K (0x10000000)
avail mem = 154615808
...
Preparing live image for use
Hostname: milax
Requesting System Maintenance Mode
(See /lib/svc/share/README for more information.)
Console login service(s) cannot run

Root password for system maintenance (control-d to bypass):
single-user privilege assigned to /dev/console.
Entering System Maintenance Mode

May 20 07:26:42 su: 'su root' succeeded for root on /dev/console
-bash: /usr/sbin/quota: No such file or directory
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      MilaX_0.3.2     October 2008
-bash: /bin/mail: No such file or directory
-bash: id: command not found
-bash: id: command not found
-bash: [: !=: unary operator expected
(root@milax)# uname -X
System = SunOS
Node = milax
Release = 5.11
KernelID = MilaX_0.3.2
Machine = sun4u
BusType =
Serial =
Users =
OEM# = 0
Origin# = 1
NumCPU = 1

(root@milax)# uname -a
SunOS milax 5.11 MilaX_0.3.2 sun4u sparc sun4u
(root@milax)#

The missing files above are caused by the maintenance mode which in turn is caused by the missing network card. So the next steps are obvious:
- plug in a supported NIC
- find a customer for the sun4u emulation
- ???
- PROFIT!

PS. Btw, are there any live OpenSolaris/Illumos based live CDs newer than MilaX 0.3.2? The later MilaX versions seem to be PC-only.

Seen a really broken pipe

Have you seen a broken pipe? Sounds like a stupid question for everyone who is working with *NIX. Everyone who has English as a mother tongue, or is old enough to use a non-localized OS has seen a "broken pipe" message. A younger generation might have seen the message in their native language.

Well, that's not the sort of brokenness  I'm talking about.  I mean it more literary:

# echo "This pipe works fine" |cat
This pipe works fine
# echo "And this pipe is veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery broken. This pipe is really very broken. Broken." | cat
Ths pip eisveTkebn

Ops. Had to spend a lot of of time in Solaris ascending from SCSI driver (at first I didn't realize that the bug appears in pipes, it looked like a DMA bug) to streams, pipe and so on and then descending to the memcpy which was the source of trouble. It turned out, memcpy uses different routines for small and large data chunks. The small chunks are copied in a loop word-wise and the large ones are copied using VIS instructions (that's SPARC equivalent for Intel's MMX). The emulation of VIS instructions in qemu is buggy, so the memory gets corrupted when these instructions are used.

Once again I'm very impressed that Solaris 2.5.1 - Solaris 7 boots without problems on such a broken hardware. Let's see if  the newer Solaris versions would work with this emulation bug fixed.