Re: [Qemu-devel] [offtopic] Sparc Softmmu

[Blue Swirl]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 23:47, P. Wilhelm <address@hidden> wrote:
> We use the old Solaris/Sparc in a medical device we produce where I work.
> Since we can't get new Sparc hardware any longer (many countries no longer
> accept "refurbished" devices - so we can't sell this product to them when we
> use refurbish IT parts) that is reasonable cost for our application, we need
> to find a way to continue to produce our product. The application is
> moderately complicated and will take some effort/time to port to another OS
> / processor. I was just evaluating the possibility of using an emulated
> Sparc machine to replace the Solaris box. The thought behind using Qemu was
> that we can reduce hardware obsolescence issues in the future with this
> layer of abstraction. Conceivably, future hardware changes would be easier
> to do with less regulatory overhead. My evaluation was exciting because I
> was able to, with just a couple of days of work, get our application up and
> running and talking to the other hardware associated our product. However,
> given the maturity level of Qemu for Solaris on Sparc, we'll almost
> certainly do a port of our application to other hardware and OS. With the
> evaluation work, my interest was piqued, so I've continued to play around
> with Solaris / Sparc on Qemu on my own time. Since I had a fairly well
> encapsulated symptom, I thought I might be able to help identify a fix or
> two for Qemu.

Another possibility is to make a Solaris/Sparc to Solaris/x86 user
emulator like Linux, BSD and Darwin user emulators. They just
translate CPU instructions and system call parameters instead of
emulating a whole machine.

The license of Solaris headers is not compatible with QEMU though but
this could be avoided.

I sent a quick patch once to the list which could be used as a
starting point if you want to try this way.

But I probably would not trust QEMU if my life depended on it, and as
COPYING explains, there is also no warranty.

>
> Respectfully,
> Paul
>
> On 2/21/2012 12:49 PM, Artyom Tarasenko wrote:
>>
>> Hi Paul,
>>
>> may I ask you why do you need Solaris 8/sparc? I spent really a lot of
>> time on sparc emulation in qemu, it was fun and I would probably do it
>> further, but I saw no projects where it would be useful. Somehow it
>> looked that all the apps available for Solaris are available for
>> Linux/Windows as well... Do you by any chance have an example of an
>> app which would be worth the efforts?
>>
>> Artyom
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 4:45 PM, P. Wilhelm<address@hidden>
>>  wrote:
>>
>>> I've been able to install Solaris 8 using CDs on the Sparc Softmmu client
>>> system. Kudos to those responsible for Sparc development!
>>>
>>> I've been able to run a number of applications without problems on the
>>> client machine. I noticed something odd, however, and have been trying to
>>> isolate the cause. Hopefully, someone here will have an idea or two for
>>> me
>>> to try.
>>>
>>> The issue:
>>> The syslogd seems to accept and post to the appropriate log file only a
>>> small number of messages before no longer updating the log file when
>>> further
>>> messages are posted, the syslogd seems to hang. The symptom does not
>>> appear
>>> to be different when rebooting or restarting the syslog daemon. The
>>> daemon
>>> will post a couple of message to the log file and then stop accepting any
>>> more.
>>>
>>> Why ask here?
>>> I've done a couple of things to see if I can isolate the source of the
>>> oddity and they seem to point to qemu.
>>>
>>> What I've done so far:
>>> 1) I've tried using "logger" and a C program I wrote to use the syslog()
>>> function. - Both have the same issue noted above.
>>> 2) I've used both the OpenBios and SS5.bin bios. - Symptom does not
>>> change
>>> between the two.
>>> 3) I checked my /etc/syslog.conf on real hardware running the same
>>> version
>>> of Solaris 8. Syslogging works as you'd expect there. (Note - I don't
>>> have
>>> real SparcStation 5 hardware. I've been using an old Sun4u machine,
>>> Ultra-1
>>> -- hopefully, that does not invalidate my "real hardware" checks.).
>>> 4) I ran syslogd in debug mode on both the client and the real hardware,
>>> but
>>> did not see anything in the output from each that gave a clue as to the
>>> issue. Generally, the output confirmed that I had syslogd configured the
>>> same way on both.
>>>
>>> How to proceed?
>>> I am a reasonably adept software developer, however, I do not have
>>> experience at the guts-level of Solaris OS or Sparc hardware. My work on
>>> Solaris/Sparc has been at the application level, but I have worked at the
>>> hardware level on other (proprietary) systems. If I had access to syslogd
>>> source code, I'd be comfortable working from there, but I am fairly
>>> certain
>>> that is not available - let me know if I am wrong. I've thought about
>>> looking for an open source syslog daemon and trying to use it instead of
>>> the
>>> Solaris version.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts about next steps are appreciated.
>>>
>>>
>>> Respectfully,
>>> Paul
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>