how to run a ppc kernel using qemu-system-ppc on ubuntu 11.04?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  while this might be a slightly off-topic question that is more
qemu-related, i'm starting to think it has something to do with
missing ubuntu packages so i'm going to ask here.

  i'm using a commercial embedded system builder (which shall remain
nameless) to build a complete ppc-based embedded system -- kernel,
initrd, filesystem, modules, the works.  but it would be fun to at
least test if i could boot the kernel all by itself with
qemu-system-ppc, even though it would obviously fall over when it came
to mount the (missing) root filesystem.  i'd just like to see it get
that far.

  from the early output of the build process, i have a raw vmlinux
file:

$ ls -l vmlinux
-rwxr-xr-x 1 rpjday rpjday 40185988 2011-07-20 16:25 vmlinux
$ file vmlinux
vmlinux: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1
(SYSV), statically linked, with unknown capability 0x41000000 =
0x11676e75, with unknown capability 0x10000 = 0x90402, not stripped
$

so far, that looks good.  it's also been built for an MPC8548
processor, which might be handy to know later.

  as i read it, i should be able to do the following as a first
attempt which, as you can see, does not end well:

$ qemu-system-ppc -kernel vmlinux
qemu: hardware error: qemu: could not load PowerPC bios 'openbios-ppc'

CPU #0:
NIP 00000000   LR 00000000 CTR 00000000 XER 00000000
MSR 00000000 HID0 00000000  HF 00000000 idx 0
TB 00000000 00000000 DECR 4294967294
... etc etc ...
Aborted
$

  hmmmm ... not sure what to do there, but a quick google brings me
here:

http://fossplanet.com/f10/%5Bbug-773031%5D-%5Bnew%5D-openbios-sparc-ppc-still-missing-11-04-a-144262/

  ok, so there's apparently no openbios-ppc package for ubuntu.  and
there's more explanation here:

http://pkgs.org/ubuntu-11.04/ubuntu-universe-amd64/qemu-system_0.14.50-2011.03-1-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb.html

"Don't depend on openbios-ppc, openbios-sparc, or openhackware; these
are still needed for proper ppc/sparc system use, but these packages
aren't available in Ubuntu so that would just make qemu-system
uninstallable."

  so what exactly is one supposed to do here?  i'm open to
suggestions.  surely someone else has done this before and there's a
simple workaround.  thanks.

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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