Qemu

Revision as of 08:29, 8 May 2018

QEMU SUPPORT STATUS REGARDING HPPA / PARISC

As of April 2018, starting with qemu version 2.12, qemu fully supports hppa user emulation (hppa-linux-user) and hppa system emulation (qemu-system-hppa).

All necessary changes to qemu have been merged into qemu upstream git repository at:

• https://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=summary

During development, Richard Henderson developed the hppa related patches in his qemu git tree at:

• https://github.com/rth7680/qemu/commits/tgt-hppa-softmmu

For hppa system emulation, qemu already includes a precompiled firmware for hppa (pc-bios/hppa-firmware.img).

This firmware is based on seabios and is available in Helge Deller's SeaBIOS git tree:

• https://github.com/hdeller/seabios-hppa/commits/parisc_firmware

HOW TO BUILD QEMU FROM SOURCE

• checkout out the qemu git tree
• run configure, e.g.
  • (for system emulation) ./configure --target-list=hppa-softmmu --enable-numa
  • (for user emulation) ./configure --target-list=hppa-linux-user --disable-stack-protector --prefix=/home/qemu-hppa/chroot-unstable --interp-prefix=/home/qemu-hppa/chroot-unstable --static
• run "make"

EXAMPLE HOW TO RUN QEMU WITH DEBIAN-10 INSTALL IMAGE

• Create a virtual hard disc once:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 hdd.img 50G

• download a Linux install image, e.g.
  • for debian: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/10.0/hppa/iso-cd/debian-10.0-hppa-NETINST-1.iso
  • for gentoo: http://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/hppa/autobuilds/
• Start emulator with the installer image once:

./hppa-softmmu/qemu-system-hppa -drive file=hdd.img -drive file=debian-10.0-hppa-NETINST-1.iso,media=cdrom -boot order=d -nographic -serial mon:stdio 

• Choose typical installation options, the defaults are OK.
• Skip the step "Configure the Package manager"
• Shut down virtual machine after installation

• Start emulator with installed operating system any time:

./hppa-softmmu/qemu-system-hppa -drive file=hdd.img -nographic -serial mon:stdio -accel tcg,thread=multi -smp cpus=2 

• Edit the sources.list (/etc/apt/sources.list) file:

deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports unstable main
deb [arch=all] http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main 
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main

Possible qemu options:

• -accel tcg,thread=multi - always use this to enable parallel tcg (otherwise all guest CPUs run on one host CPU)
• -smp cpus=4 - define number of CPUs in the guest (maximum CPUs: 32)
• -boot menu=on - Firmware: enable interactive mode (boot prompt)
• -boot order=c - Firmware: Boot from hard disc
• -boot order=d - Firmware: Boot from CD/DVD
• -serial mon:stdio use serial console
• -nographic - no graphics device
• -device VGA - provide PCI VGA graphic card