Static binaries that run under the Linux kernel don't run under qemu-ppc. For example, the prebuilt busybox binaries here:
http://busybox.net/downloads/binaries/1.16.0/busybox-powerpc Don't run under qemu-ppc, but runs just fine under qemu-system-ppc with the image at: http://impactlinux.com/fwl/downloads/binaries/system-image-powerpc.tar.bz2 The reason is that the "powerpc spec" that qemu was written to is for AIX, not for Linux, and thus the register layout qemu application emulation provides for powerpc doesn't match what the kernel is actually doing. For dynamically linked executables, the dynamic linker reorganizes the register contents to match the AIX spec from IBM, but statically linked binaries get what the kernel provides directly. Thus binaries statically linked against uClibc won't run under qemu-ppc, but run under qemu-system-ppc just fine. I tracked down this problem in 2007: http://landley.net/notes-2007.html#28-03-2007 And reported it on the list at the time: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2007-03/msg00713.html http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2007-03/msg00720.html http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2007-04/msg00315.html However, the then-maintainer of powerpc believed nobody else ever had the right to touch "her code": http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2007-04/msg00198.html And I was unable to convince her that insisting reality change to match a spec which wasn't even for the right platform was not a useful approach. Thus the binary in the first link still won't run under qemu-ppc three years later, despite running fine under a real Linux kernel. Rob -- Latency is more important than throughput. It's that simple. - Linus Torvalds