a loose pile of links, notes, and things worth keeping.

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QEMU SPARC64 Solaris u10/u11 is successfully booted on 1GB config (tlb MD fix)!

Came out with a booting text installer across all three Solaris 10 releases and a clean Solaris 11.0 11/11 kernel init.
Proof: Solaris 10u10 Solaris 10u11 Solaris Express 11/10 Solaris 11.0
Whole progress/matrix list

QEMU SPARC64 snv_134/Solaris10u8 are booted!

After bumping the RAM from 256 MB to 1024 MB in the MD, OpenSolaris build 134 boots successfully on QEMU SPARC64 with sun4v emulation. And Solaris 10u8 reaches the install screen!
Proof: snv_134 s10u8

QEMU SPARC64 - Machine Desctiption p.2 - build the proper 1up_md.bin/1up_hv.bin

So, in Part 1 we decided that the problem comes from a wrongly formed Machine Description (MD) file: the mblock doesn’t have an ‘fwd’ directive to the root node.

QEMU SPARC64 - Machine Description p.1 - the problem

Okay, the next stage of experiments was trying to boot the int64-patched version with a real ISO. I started with the oldest one I could find on the Internet: the Solaris Nevada Image, snv134, from here. IMO it’s a Holy Grail for QEMU experiments at this stage: this specific version is close to the latest available OpenSolaris code: it’s roughly some months before the first Solaris Express build in 10/2010.

QEMU SPARC64 - the first touch

UPD 13/07,14/07: Patch are reviewed and on/queue for qemu-devel

Leaving Oracle

Yesterday, after 18 years, I left Oracle — spanning two countries and several roles along the way. Looking back, it was a genuinely exciting stretch of my life; I met a lot of interesting people over these years.