Re: NetBSD/alpha on qemu-system-alpha

[Remy van Elst <relst%relst.nl@localhost>]

Hi All,

Since there is so much exciting development on the QEMU side and since 
astr0baby's twitter is overflowing with NetBSD on all kinds of 
architectures at the moment, I thought, lets do a write up / guide on 
NetBSD for Alpha on QEMU. It is linked here:


https://raymii.org/s/articles/NetBSD_on_QEMU_Alpha.html


Compliments for how great it works, I think its awesome! I have a few 
questions though:


- pkgin fails to update with an error (pkgin: Short read of pkg_summary: 
truncated bzip2 input), which, as far as I can find out (port-sparc 
list), is not something I can fix, but has to be "regenerated"? I'm now 
using pkg_add and source compilation via pkgsrc, which works fine as well.

- Why do I need to provide the kernel to QEMU as (two, one for install, 
one after) a seperate file? The kernel is installed on disk after 
installation right?

- What is the purpose of the two different kernel files? astr0baby just 
said, use them, but not why.

- How do I handle updates for the kernel (in regards to the seperate 
qemu file)?

- Installing any package that depends on GTK (like xfce4-wm or netsurf) 
takes long to install. xfce4-wm has been going for 18 hours now, either 
updating the gtk icon cache or some other post install process. Can I 
speed this up?


Cheers and thanks again for the hard work!

Remy