Fails to install ppcle version of Ubuntu 19.10 dued to downlevel qemu-system-ppc

[Chris Ward]

I have an installation of Ubuntu 19.10 on my x86_64 system, and I want to install a PowerPC little-endian Ubuntu 19.10 in a virtual machine managed by virt-manager.
I installed qemu-system-ppc, and then set up the Ubuntu 19.10 ppc64le DVD image to do the install.
Quite near the beginning of the install, the virtual machine gets 'illegal instruction' errors.
This is due to a downlevel qemu-system-ppc; I have previously had the same problem with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed installed on an x86_64 system, and the problem was solved there by bringing in the latest qemu-system-ppc from the upstream qemu package.
Please fix for Ubuntu.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10
Package: qemu-system-ppc 1:4.0+dfsg-0ubuntu9.3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-29.31-generic 5.3.13
Uname: Linux 5.3.0-29-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.4
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Feb 18 12:14:17 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-02-13 (4 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" - Release amd64 (20191017)
MachineType: Dell Inc. OptiPlex 790
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.3.0-29-generic root=UUID=15bac8d7-d2b7-49e5-bd3d-76a619ae2a53 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: qemu
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 07/03/2018
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A22
dmi.board.name: 0D28YY
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A01
dmi.chassis.type: 15
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA22:bd07/03/2018:svnDellInc.:pnOptiPlex790:pvr01:rvnDellInc.:rn0D28YY:rvrA01:cvnDellInc.:ct15:cvr:
dmi.product.name: OptiPlex 790
dmi.product.version: 01
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Does an install of 20.04-devel work properly? It has qemu version 4.2 available.

[Chris Ward (tjcw)]

I will try setting up a 20.04-devel virtual machine and using that to install a ppc64le version of Ubuntu. (I don't see a public ppc64le build of 20.04-devel, but I don't need that for what I think I am being asked to do)

[Chris Ward (tjcw)]

I tried installing a 20.04-devel(x86-64) virtual machine on my 19.10 real system using virt-manager, but I didn't get very far. The virtual machine behaved as if it had no keyboard (the mouse worked fine), so when the installer wanted me to enter my name, I got stuck. This will be the subject of another bug report.
So now I have gone to a different machine which runs 20.04.

[Chris Ward (tjcw)]

I am making better progress installing this ppc64le virtual machine on a system running 20.04 . I will add another note when the install completes.

[Chris Ward (tjcw)]

With 20.04 installed on the host machine, the install of the ppc64le virtual machine completes successfully. So what to do about this bug ? Does it make sense to backport qemu 4.2 to ubuntu 19 and ubuntu 18, or should people wanting ppc64le virtual machines just wait until ubuntu 20 is released ?

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Hi Chris,
the emulation issue is known (bug 1847806) and resolved (as you confirmed) in qemu 4.2 that is in Ubuntu 20.04.

The TL;DR is that glibc in >=19.10 picked up some new instructions that are not emulated before the newer qemu version. I'll mark the bug as a dup ...