Re: QEMU booting of non-NetBSD CDs and virtual HDs

[Chavdar Ivanov <ci4ic4%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Sun, 23 Aug 2020 at 15:41, Robert Nestor <rnestor%mac.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> I received a couple of messages off list that suggested a few things and it prompted me to try investigating further with just components found in NetBSD.
>
> This test was run on a fairly recent NetBSD build of 9.99.70.  I downloaded the amd64 images for 9.99.71 (the ISO and IMG files), and tried booting them with qemu using -nvmm and the OVMF binaries currently in pkgsrc with the following:
>
> qemu-system-x86_64 -m 4096 -machine q35 -accel=nvmm -boot menu=on \

-accel nvmm

>     -device qemu-xhci -device usb-tablet -device usb-mouse -smbios type=2 \
>     -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/pkg/share/OVMFX64.fd \

the OVMFX64.fd file is actually in /usrpkg/share/ovmf directory, but
perhaps this is a typo. Anyway. I have no idea about this particular
way of specifying the bios; anyway, with


-bios /usr/pkg/share/ovmf/OVMFX64.fd \

it boots just fine. Otherwise I get the same crash as you.


>     -device ich9-ahci,id=sata \
>     -device ide-cd,bus=sata.0,drive=disk \
>     -drive id=disk,if=none,media=cdrom,format=raw,file=NetBSD-9.99.71-amd64.iso
>
> This produces an immediate “failed to start VCPU” and results in a core dump. Also tried the NetNSD-9.99.71-amd64-install.img file with:

>
> qemu-system-x86_64 -m 4096 -machine q35 -accel=nvmm -boot menu=on \
>     -device qemu-xhci -device usb-tablet -device usb-mouse -smbios type=2 \
>     -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/pkg/share/OVMFX64.fd \
>     -device ich9-ahci,id=sata \
>     -device ide-hd,bus=sata.0,drive=disk \
>     -drive id=disk,if=none,media=disk,format=raw,file=NetBSD-9.99.71-amd64-install.img
>
> And it provides the same results - “failed to start VCPU” and a core dump.
>
> Removing the “-accel=nvmm” from both of the scripts allows the boot to proceed, but the OVMF code fails to find the CD or HD image and boot falls back to attempting to boot over the network.  This appears to be a bug in the version of OVMF found in pkgsrc which is based on stable2018.  Replacing the OVMF with binaries obtained from a build of stable202005 fixes the disk access issue and the boot then succeeds brining up the NetBSD installer.
>
> I then proceeded to do two installations of NetBSD under qem; one using the defaults for an MBR setup and one for a GPT setup.  The resulting MBR disk doesn’t boot under qemu; the GPT disk does boot however.  In the case of the MBR disk it appears the problem is that OVMF can’t find the disk or anything bootable on it.
>
> I’ve opened two PRs for these issues.  PR-55582 for the NVMM issues and PR-55582 for the OVMF issue.
>

Chavdar

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