Installation Solaris Sparc 2.6 (SunOS 5.6) on Qemu – Part1 Qemu Installation

Introduction

The goal of this article is to describe patching, configuration, compilation and installation Qemu 0.14.1 for x86 architecture. I choose Qemu version 0.14.1  as it has been the highest version with written patch for UDP tunnels and multicast and it is known to work with GNS3.  As you know GNS3 uses UDP tunnels to connect Qemu instances themselves.

The tutorial also shows configuration, compilation and installation the latest Qemu git version for  sparc-32 architecture. First, I tried to emulate SS-20 sparc machine with Qemu 0.14.1 but Solaris 2.6 installation hanged up shortly after boot from CDROM. I haven’t notice such a problem with the latest Qemu version.

The Qemu image with installed Solaris 2.6 Sparc (SunOS 5.6) can be used for quick testing of Cisco IOU binary images compiled for Sparc platform.

Unfortunately I managed to install Solaris into SS-5 only so we are limited to maximum 256 MB RAM. Use the latest Qemu version 1.x to emulate SS-20.  SS-20 offers 512MB RAM comparing to SS-5 that allows only 256MB.  As you can imagine this RAM size is not convenient for running complex topology with multiple IOU instances. Try to set at least 4GB space for swap during  installation.

The  tutorial describing Solaris 2.6 Sparc installation can be found here:

http://brezular.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/installation-solaris-2-6-sparc-on-qemu-part2-solaris-installation/

1. Requirements

- Host System    -   x86, Linux Fedora 15
- Guest system  -  Solaris 2.6 (sunOS 5.6) Sparc
- Emulator          -  Qemu 0.14.1 and the latest Qemu from git
- BIOS                 -  proprietary Sparc BIOS for Slolaris

2. Qemu 0.14.1 Installation

a)  Install required Fedora packages for Qemu compilation

sudo yum install ncurses-libs ncurses-devel zlib-devel SDL-devel libpcap-devel glib2-devel

b)  Download and untar Qemu 0.14.1

wget http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/qemu/qemu-0.14.1.tar.gz

tar zxvf ./qemu-0.14.1.tar.gz
cd qemu-0.14.1/

c)  Patch Qemu source for UDP tunnels and multicast

Download patch and copy it to Qemu source.

http://www.4shared.com/file/STdSHGb4/0018-qemu-0141-mcast-udp.html

cp /home/brezular/Download/0018-qemu-0.14.1-mcast-udp.patch /home/brezular/Download/GNS3-files/Qemu/qemu-0.14.1

Patch Qemu source.

patch -p1 -i 0018-qemu-0.14.1-mcast-udp.patch

You should see output like this:

patching file block/raw-win32.c
patching file hw/e1000.c
patching file Makefile.objs
patching file net/udp.c
patching file net/udp.h
patching file net.c
patching file net.h
patching file qemu-options.hx

d)  Compile and install Qemu for x86 architecture

./configure --target-list=i386-softmmu
make
sudo make install

Qemu x86 binaries are now placed to /usr/local/bin/ directory. Check the version with command:

/usr/local/bin/qemu --version
QEMU emulator version 0.14.1, Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard

3. Installation Qemu from git

a)  Download the latest development tree  from git

git clone git://git.qemu.org/qemu.git

b)  Compile and install Qemu for sparc architecture

cd ./qemu
./configure --target-list=sparc-softmmu
make
sudo make install

Now, qemu-system-sparc binary is placed to /usr/local/bin/ directory. Check the version with command:

/usr/local/bin/qemu-system-sparc --version
QEMU emulator version 1.0.50, Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard

Note: If you cannot install Solaris 2.6 to Qemu disk running by Qemu downloaded from the master development branch, just install  Qemu version 1.0.50 version and try again.

4. BIOS Handling

The last step consists from copy particular BIOS image to /usr/local/share/qemu/ directory.

a)  BIOS for Sparc machine

As it is mentioned in this How-To, the default BIOS -  openbios-sparc32 – distributed with Qemu is not working well for Solaris.

http://tyom.blogspot.com/2009/12/solaris-under-qemu-how-to.html

We have to use the proprietary BIOS that you can download from here:

http://home.earthlink.net/~reif/

or alternatively from here:

http://www.4shared.com/file/6gJgTCQ6/ss10_v2.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/3DAMJAcy/ss10_v2_2.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/axFQXBJR/ss5-170.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/IglwTwUA/ss5.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/-7TR5cCC/ss10-20_v225r.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/05hZGv8d/ss20_v2.html

Qemu can emulate several types of Sparc machines (SS-5, SS-10 etc.) For each Sparc machine you have to use particular BIOS.  As I mentioned I had been able to install Solaris 2.6 to SS-5 machine only.

sudo cp /home/brezular/Download/ss5.bin /usr/local/share/qemu/
sudo cp /home/brezular/Download/ss5-170.bin /usr/local/share/qemu/
sudo cp /home/brezular/Download/ss20_v2.25_rom /usr/local/share/qemu/

b)  BIOS for JunOS

This step is only needed if you run Olive – JunOS installed on the top of FreeBSD with Qemu. Qemu version above 0.12.0 contains a bug in SeaBIOS which causes JunOS hangs up during boot. Simple workaround  is described here:

Here is a download link with working BIOS I compiled by myself.

http://www.4shared.com/file/BJw1Ik2x/bios.html

sudo cp /home/brezular/Download/bios.bin /usr/local/share/qemu/