rocklinux/misc/config-examples/bbs-sparc-qemu/NOTES

Introduction
------------

This configuration offers a cross-build of (a subset of) the build-bootstrap
package selection for the sparc architecture as emulated by qemu-system-sparc.
It includes support for all the hardware emulated by qemu, a working udev,
kernel and userland support for TCP/IP networking, and more.

With qemu and the resulting build you can at least:
- boot the kernel and first stage initrd,
- execute a shell from the initrd,
- load the second stage from a CD-ROM,
- and install packages from the CD on a hard disk using the stone installer.

The packages included should be sufficient for native builds on the targeted
platform.

Quick Start
-----------

- Boot from CD with framebuffer console:
    qemu-system-sparc -cdrom bbs-sparc-qemu_cd1.iso -hda /srv/qemu.hda \
	-boot d

- Boot from CD with serial console:
   qemu-system-sparc -cdrom bbs-sparc-qemu_cd1.iso -hda /srv/qemu.hda \
	-boot d -append "console=ttyS0 video=tcxfb:off" -nographic


Hints And Known Bugs
--------------------

- To use the CD image in qemu, create it after the build has finished:
    ./scripts/Create-ISO bbs-sparc-qemu bbs-sparc-qemu

- To use a hard disk in qemu, create it with e.g.:
    qemu-img create /srv/qemu.hda 2048M

- When using a console on the serial port, be sure to enter 'ttyS0' as the
  terminal device in boot stage 2, or you won't get to see the command line.

- glibc26 does not build for sparc with -Os because extern inline functions are
  not used when optimizing for size, resulting in a missing __ieee754_sqrtl
  function for libm_pic.a; glibc-2.6/sysdeps/sparc/sparc32/fpu/e_sqrtl.c
  is compiled but glibc-2.6/sysdeps/sparc/sparc32/soft-fp/q_sqrt.c contains
  the actual __ieee754_sqrtl function.

- the SCSI support in kernel is not compiled as a module because udev can't
  load it automatically, and loading it and creating the /dev entries manually,
  the SCSI devices don't work. Furthermore, if partitioning a previously empty
  hard disk, the new partitions won't show up until after a reboot.

- the size of the uncompressed kernel image (/boot/image) is limited to 2,5 MB
  when booting with silo.

- strace does not (cross-)build for sparc yet.