Networking in Linux/sparc64 under qemu...

... is also possible. The bulit-in ne2k-pci network card doesn't work, but hey there is an even faster virtio-net alternative. At the OpenBIOS "ok" prompt, before the "boot" command in the previous post, type

cd /pci@1fe,0/pci1af4,1000
0 encode-int " interrupts" property
device-end

Will send this patch upstream as soon as we clarify whether "0" is allowed for the "interrupts" property.

Booting Linux/sparc64 on todays OpenBIOS

Historical day for everyone interested in the vanilla qemu-system-sparc64 emulator. For the first time it can boot Linux!

Although the patches I sent upstream are  fixing CPU and IOMMU, there is still one missing piece: cmd646 IDE. Luckily it's not a showstopper at all: qemu-sparc64 is a PCI machine, which means one could use the fast virtio instead! Now, this is the command line:

$  sparc64-softmmu/qemu-system-sparc64 -m 256 -nographic -prom-env 'auto-boot?=false' -kernel /path/to/kernel/image -drive file=/path/to/debian-disk,if=virtio,index=0 -append 'root=/dev/vda1 init=/bin/sh'

Some time ago, I used Forth to workaround missing qemu features  to get OBP working.
Now it's pretty similar: OpenBIOS doesn't have all the properties necessary for Linux to get the interrupt mapping.

So at the ok command prompt where you'd get after the command above, type:
 
cd /
1 encode-int " #interrupt-cells" property
cd /pci@1fe,0/ebus
000001fe encode-int 020003f8 encode-int encode+ 1 encode-int encode+
ffe29140 encode-int encode+ 2b encode-int encode+ " interrupt-map" property
000001ff encode-int ffffffff encode-int encode+ 00000003 encode-int encode+
" interrupt-map-mask" property

cd /pci@1fe,0/ebus@3/su
1 encode-int " interrupts" property
cd /pci@1fe,0/pci-ata@5
0 encode-int " interrupts" property

cd /pci@1fe,0/pci1af4,1001
0 encode-int " interrupts" property
device-end
boot


The only magical constant above is actually "ffe29140" - the address of the root pci node in the OpenBIOS device hierarchy. Although it the same in all the recent builds, in theory it could be moved somewhere else one day. But I guess till that day OpenBIOS will have the missing properties... ;-)

Update:

Oh, and a few words to /path/to/kernel/image and /path/to/debian-disk:

I found no Linux/sparc64 distribution which has a built in virtio driver. This makes installing from a  CD/DVD image not possible. The solution is build your own kernel with the virtio driver compiled in and put it at /path/to/kernel/image.

As for the disk, the user space utilities from the sparc32 world can be used in the sparc64 world as is. So, you can install Debian (or your favorite sparc32 distribution) in the /path/to/debian-disk, using qemu-system-sparc (no 64 at the end), and then use it with qemu-system-sparc64 as described above.

If you know a Linux/sparc64 distribution with the virtio support, please let me know.

/Happy hacking

Qemu is going to boot Linux/sparc64

After considering it a bit, I thought, it's a good marketing strategy: the free QEMU version shall run the free OS - Linux. And if anyone is interested in running something else, feel free to ask me for a [paid] support. :-)

So, Linux is going to be the second OS which vanilla qemu-system-sparc64 would boot - HelenOS was the first one. But, unlike HelenOS, Linux will be fully functional, having not just a stdout, but a stdin as well. And a serial port support!

At the moment OpenBIOS has some missing features - it doesn't describe the interrupt mappings - and a regression - currently it can't even boot HelenOS from a command line. But both are not show-stoppers.

Once my patches are accepted I'll publish the OpenBIOS command to boot Linux (not because it's top secret, but due to the dependency to a certain version).