Re: Qemu / KVM On Powermac G5 MP970

[BALATON Zoltan]

Hello,

Keeping the qemi-ppc list posted in case there's anybody who could add 
something to this or for later reference for the benefit of those trying 
it later so they don't have to get through the same again.

On Thu, 19 Jan 2023, Dan Whitehouse wrote:
> Thanks for your advice - attempting to install a 64-bit Debian guest was 
> my next target, although I believe I struggled with that when I tried it 
> before (hence the 32-bit guests!).
> I wasn’t actually sure if KVM would work with a 32-bit guest even if I 
> could get it working hence my question.
> I’ll read through those links.

I came across this lengthy forum thread:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,4600.75.html

where they debugged booting MacOS9 on G5 and found the same dcbz problem 
the other blog posts also mentioned and also rfi vs rfid which may be a 
problem as well. It also shows how to enable debug logging in MacOS9 
nanokernel with the AAPL,debug property in the device tree which may be 
useful to know how far it gets and what's happening.

After verifying KVM works with Linux guest you could go on to check if at 
least these known instruction differences with G5 that cause problem with 
MacOS9 are handled correctly by KVM or check you're not getting the same 
problem. Even if these are handled there can be problem with BATs that 
aren't there on G5 so maybe you'll need some patches to MacOS9 to boot. 
They used QEMU with gdb to debug this but I think with TCG, don't know if 
the same also works with KVM. This could give you some more info on where 
to go next or how to debug this.

Regards,
BALATON Zoltan