Thanks for providing the kernel and initrd. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get them far enough to trigger the assert. More on that at the bottom of this message but in the meantime I looked over the relevant commits and spotted an issue with the assert.
Please try this branch: http://repo.or.cz/w/qemu/stefanha.git/shortlog/refs/heads/scsi_assert_moved That branch contains a small code change that moves the assert later into the read code because we're doing the assert too early. Hopefully this fixes the issue for you. Regarding the kernel and initrd, I'm unable to get it far enough to fsck, which is where you hit the assertion. Either kernel parameters need to be set or the image depends on a root filesystem (which I don't have). $ sparc-softmmu/qemu-system-sparc -m 128 -hda test.raw -kernel ~/sparc-images/nigel/vmlinuz -initrd ~/sparc-images/nigel/initrd.img -nographic Configuration device id QEMU version 1 machine id 32 CPUs: 1 x FMI,MB86904 UUID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 Welcome to OpenBIOS v1.0 built on Aug 26 2010 17:52 Type 'help' for detailed information [sparc] Kernel already loaded switching to new context: PROMLIB: obio_ranges 1 bootmem_init: Scan sp_banks, init_bootmem(spfn[20b],bpfn[20b],mlpfn[7f18]) free_bootmem: base[0] size[7f18000] reserve_bootmem: base[800000] size[244000] reserve_bootmem: base[0] size[20b000] reserve_bootmem: base[20b000] size[fe4] Booting Linux... mem_init: Calling free_all_bootmem(). PROMLIB: Sun Boot Prom Version 3 Revision 2 Linux version 2.4.27-4-sparc32 (pbuil...@sparc) (gcc version 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-13)) #1 Tue Mar 4 08:22:06 UTC 2008 ARCH: SUN4M TYPE: SPARCstation 5 Ethernet address: 52:54:0:12:34:56 Boot time fixup v1.6. 4/Mar/98 Jakub Jelinek (j...@ultra.linux.cz). Patching kernel for srmmu[Fujitsu TurboSparc]/iommu On node 0 totalpages: 31432 zone(0): 32536 pages. zone(1): 0 pages. zone(2): 0 pages. Found CPU 0 <node=ffd73e14,mid=0> Found 1 CPU prom device tree node(s). Power off control detected. Kernel command line: Calibrating delay loop... 222.82 BogoMIPS Memory: 122120k available (1436k kernel code, 220k data, 128k init, 0k highmem) [f0000000,07f18000] Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes) Inode cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes) Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) Buffer cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes) Page-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes) POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX IOMMU: impl 0 vers 5 page table at f05c0000 of size 262144 bytes sbus0: Clock 21.1250 MHz dma0: Revision 2 dma1: Revision 2 Sparc Zilog8530 serial driver version 1.68.2.2 Sun Mouse-Systems mouse driver version 1.00 tty00 at 0xffeab004 (irq = 44) is a Zilog8530 tty01 at 0xffeab000 (irq = 44) is a Zilog8530 tty02 at 0xffeac004 (irq = 44) is a Zilog8530 tty03 at 0xffeac000 (irq = 44) is a Zilog8530 keyboard: not present Console: ttyS0 (Zilog8530) Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4 Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039 Initializing RT netlink socket ioremap: done with statics, switching to malloc apc: power management initialized Starting kswapd VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1 devfs: v1.12c (20020818) Richard Gooch (rgo...@atnf.csiro.au) devfs: boot_options: 0x0 pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M reset set in interrupt, calling f00d3fb8 floppy0: no floppy controllers found RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 8192K size 1024 blocksize Initializing Cryptographic API NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0 IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 16384) NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0. RAMDISK: cramfs filesystem found at block 0 RAMDISK: Loading 2320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done. Freeing initrd memory: 2320k freed VFS: Mounted root (cramfs filesystem). mount[8]: Unimplemented SPARC system call 188 cat[9]: Unimplemented SPARC system call 188 mount[10]: Unimplemented SPARC system call 188 linuxrc[7]: Unimplemented SPARC system call 188 Freeing unused kernel memory: 128k freed initrd-tools: 0.1.84.2 umount[11]: Unimplemented SPARC system call 188 cat[12]: Unimplemented SPARC system call 188 SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00 esp0: IRQ 36 SCSI ID 7 Clk 40MHz CCYC=25000 CCF=8 TOut 167 NCR53C9XF(espfast) ESP: Total of 1 ESP hosts found, 1 actually in use. scsi0 : Sparc ESP100A-FAST Vendor: QEMU Model: QEMU HARDDISK Rev: 0.13 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Vendor: QEMU Model: QEMU CD-ROM Rev: 0.13 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 SCSI device sda: 20971520 512-byte hdwr sectors (10737 MB) Partition check: /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p3 Journalled Block Device driver loaded pivot_root: No such file or directory /sbin/init: 432: cannot open dev/console: No such file Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init! Press L1-A to return to the boot prom Stefan