openbios-sparc64 missing

[Tim Spriggs]

It appears that a broken symlink is shipped instead of the actual openbios image:

$ qemu-system-sparc64 phobos.raw
qemu: could not load prom 'openbios-sparc64'

$ dpkg-query -S openbios-sparc64
qemu-system-sparc: /usr/share/qemu/openbios-sparc64

$ ls -la /usr/share/qemu/openbios-sparc64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Feb 12 22:11 /usr/share/qemu/openbios-sparc64 -> ../openbios/openbios-sparc64

$ ls -la /usr/share/openbios
ls: cannot access /usr/share/openbios: No such file or directory

$ apt-cache policy qemu-system-sparc
qemu-system-sparc:
  Installed: 1.3.0+dfsg-5expubuntu2
  Candidate: 1.3.0+dfsg-5expubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 1.3.0+dfsg-5expubuntu2 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu Raring Ringtail (development branch)
Release: 13.04

[Tim Spriggs (tims-t)]

I should also add that under Debian there is an openbios-sparc package which contains the actual openbios image:

$ ls -la /usr/share/{qemu,openbios}/openbios-sparc64
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 737264 Jun 9 2012 /usr/share/openbios/openbios-sparc64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Jan 14 03:37 /usr/share/qemu/openbios-sparc64 -> ../openbios/openbios-sparc64

$ dpkg-query -S openbios-sparc64
openbios-sparc: /usr/share/openbios/openbios-sparc64
qemu-system: /usr/share/qemu/openbios-sparc64

This may be a broken dependency as I don't find the same package under Ubuntu.

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

For now if you need that bios, you will indeed need to get it from Debian.

In order to ship (and depend on) the openbios-sparc, or openbios-ppc for that matter, we will need to either have bug 217427 fixed, or have cross-compilers to build the packages.

[Tim Spriggs (tims-t)]

Aha, interesting. In fact, it would seem that you need cross-compilers in any case since there are no sparc64 buildd nodes, if I am understanding this correctly. ie: under Debian, fixing either one might work but under Ubuntu, cross compiling is the only real solution.

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

> Aha, interesting. In fact, it would seem that you need cross-compilers
> in any case since there are no sparc64 buildd nodes, if I am
> understanding this correctly. ie: under Debian, fixing either one might
> work but under Ubuntu, cross compiling is the only real solution.

Good point :) I keep thinking about the ppc case, but yeah for the
sparc case we'd need cross compilers.

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

The openbios-sparc package is built in ppa:serge-hallyn/crossc. You can install from there if you need it for qemu-system-sparc. I was able to start a debian squeeze image on a 1G SS-10 VM with that.

Since we have no ubuntu images for sparc, there is still a question of whether this package will be acceptable in the archive.

[Tim Spriggs (tims-t)]

Thanks Serge,

I tried loading a sparc64 class machine before loading your package with the Debian package still installed and got to the OpenBIOS screen. After I installed it, the same qemu-system-sparc64 invocation just remained a dark black screen. The qemu-system-sparc binary seems to get me to the OpenBIOS screen appropriately though. I tested with qemu version 1.1.2+dfsg-2 and 1.4.0+dfsg-1expubuntu4 with the same results.

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

openbios-sparc is now available. However it is in unifse so qemu-system-sparc cannot depend on it. We could add a Suggests if people want that.