[Qemu-discuss] Help resurrecting the dead

[Dennis Murphy]

Hi folks,

        I’m new to QEMU and I’m trying to use it for a special project I’m 
working on.

What I’m trying to do is resurrect a dead operating system - Banyan VINES 8.5.  
Given how closed and dead VINES is, I’m really limited as to what drivers and 
devices I can use to virtualize it.  QEMU is super exciting because it can 
emulate LSI 53c810 and NE2000 Ethernet devices, both of which VINES knows how 
to talk to natively.

My issue is disk-related.  What I need to do is mount a hard disk image to 
install VINES to, as well as the VINES CD-ROM install media.

If I use the standard QEMU IDE emulation, I can’t get VINES to install 
correctly; I get an “srmount: Cannot mount root” panic from VINES when I 
install Compaq’s EIDE/ATAPI driver (Which is necessary if I’m using IDE to 
emulate the CD-ROM device.)  I’ve tried that 6 ways from Sunday but something 
in QEMU or SeaBios’s CHS translation is giving VINES fits.

So, Plan B, let’s try the SCSI route….

If I try to use the LSI 53c810 device and an option ROM, VINES can see the hard 
disk and CD image, but when VINES tries to read the disk image, QEMU throws an 
“lsi_scsi: Unhanded writeb” error and goes into a 100% CPU loop.

I’m still new to QEMU, so is there any way someone can help me generate some 
debug or I/O logs to see what’s hanging the lsi_scsi driver?  Unfortunately, 
again, this is such a closed OS that any changes have to be made on the QEMU 
side; I can’t change out the drivers or anything in VINES.

Thanks folks — I’m *this* close to having VINES up and running (I can actually 
get the server booted and running in VMware, but given that they only emulate a 
PCNet32 Ethernet device, I can’t get anything to talk to VINES since it doesn’t 
have a PCNet32 driver!) ….  so frustrating!!

—Dennis