On 20.12.2010, at 23:24, Andreas Färber wrote: > Am 20.12.2010 um 13:30 schrieb Alexander Graf: > >> On 20.12.2010, at 13:19, François Revol wrote: >> >>>>>> So we certainly do need some open source firmware solution for prep to >>>>>> at least have Linux running. For other guests, I don't see a reason why >>>>>> users shouldn't try to fetch a real firmware blob separately :). >>>>> >>>>> We're not shipping any firmware for ppcemb either, so that argument seems >>>>> moot. OpenBIOS, SeaBIOS and ZIPL are the only ones currently. Feel free >>>>> to supply additional blobs for U-Boot etc. >>>> >>>> IIUC you don't need u-boot for the embedded targets. You just pass in a >>>> kernel and the rest is magic. >>> >>> This holds only for Linux which imposes its own startup API to bootloaders >>> and go with kernel drivers directly. >>> >>> Other OS like Haiku use a 2nd stage bootloader which assumes a working >>> callable BIOS (OF on ppc), and getting it to run on U-Boot is already >>> tricky on its own. >> >> That was my point :). I'm not aware of us supporting firmware on ppcemb, so >> it's capable of running an OS all by itself already. > > No, you rather mean: It's capable of running The OS so you don't care about > proper firmware there. > By the same argument we could just load a Linux kernel directly on PReP and > be good with it. Any pointers appreciated. > >>>>> >>>>> Recent vanilla Linux kernels wouldn't run on PReP. So what Linux do you >>>>> want to run using open source firmware? >>>>> I certainly do not intend to write firmware for the upcoming 40p machine. >>>>> If Linux runs on real 40p hardware then it should run with real firmware >>>>> under emulation, too. QEMU is an emulation project, not a Linux testing >>>>> framework. >>>> >>>> I completely agree. Linux is usually easy because it's fully open source >>>> and supports a lot of targets. If you feel like running NetBSD or Haiku >>>> instead, feel free to do so. >>> >>> Thanks for thinking about Haiku ;) >>> >>> Btw there are other existing targets, like AROS, MorphOS, or AmigaOS which >>> uses a modified U-Boot with a 'boota' command that passes their 2nd stage >>> Parthenope bootloader a list of BIOS-like callbacks into U-Boot, cf. : >>> http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=2 >>> http://www.acube-systems.biz/download/u-boot-1.3.1c_20101206_prod.tar.gz >>> >>> Though they probably won't run on PReP, and PReP support in Haiku might >>> come only for the sake of supporting the BeBox, which had its own dumb >>> firmware (MAME seems to have some emulation support for BeBox). >>> >>> OTOH, I've been thinking about adding a Sam440 target, but it'd still >>> require the custom U-Boot to start AmigaOS for example. >> >> I'd call U-Boot the firmware that we can ship with Qemu then because it's >> open source :). I'm not advocate for openBIOS. If it works, great. If >> something else works better, let's take that. >> >> The only thing I really want to see is a target that does something useful. >> That's it :). A target that loads proprietary firmware halfway through is >> not valuable to users IMHO. A target that loads proprietary firmware and >> boots an OS is valuable. A target that doesn't need firmware and loads an OS >> is valuable. Maybe a target that doesn't boot an OS quite yet, but loads >> open source firmware pretty well is valuable too. > > Then we agree, a target that doesn't load any firmware or kernel is not > really valuable. > > If you look around then you'll find all kinds of starved QEMU branches, e.g., > alpha es40, avr32 and z80. They're collecting virtual dust while QEMU grows > things like qdev. That's why I'm trying to fix (note: fix) things in > upstream, not create another fork to bitrot.
Also on the other forks. I'm not sure what happened with the Alpha port, but for AVR32 and z80 I have not seen any upstream submissions since I joined qemu. I know that the AVR32 people were eager in learning things, but I haven't seen any code submitted upstream. I don't believe this is what will happen with you. You're well aware of how open source works and will hopefully pester at least me - preferably others too - until stuff gets in :). Alex
