Problem building sparc solaris machine with large memory

[Steve Demko]

I want to keep alive old sparc based app for which we only have binaries that builds large data structures in memory when it runs.

I'm having trouble with building a qemu sparc vm with memory > 512M.

Documents say that sparc machine models other than SS-5 can have up to 2048M, but I haven't been able to get any working.

As an example, this command (running under CentOS 7, with a recently compiled qemu version 4.2.0) works fine with 512M, but fails with -m 1024 or -m 2048:

qemu-system-sparc -M SS-20 -m 512 -cpu "TI SuperSparc 50" -drive file=/vm/ss20.qcow2,if=scsi,bus=0,unit=0,media=disk -drive file=/iso/S9_sw1.iso,bus=0,unit=2,media=cdrom,readonly=on

If I try to just change the memory on a working machine, it just hangs when it tries to boot the hard drive, so I thought maybe the memory config gets written to disk somewhere, so I thought I'd try to just make a brand new  machine with the memory I want.

Here is how it fails when I try to create a brand new machine with large memory and I boot from the cdrom to start the OS install.

0 > boot cdrom:d -vs Not a bootable ELF image

Loading a.out image...

Loaded 7680 bytes

entry point is 0x4000

bootpath: /iommu@f,e0000000/sbus@f,e0001000/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@2,0:d

switching to new context:

Size: 0x41649+0xd52e+0x1ccaa Bytes

SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic 32-bit

Copyright 1983-2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.

Use is subject to license terms.

out of malloc memory (200)!

panic[cpu0]/thread=f0244020: BAD TRAP: type=7 (Memory address alignment) rp=f0243234 addr=0 mmu_fsr=0 rw=0

: Memory address alignment

out of malloc memory (200)!

out of malloc memory (200)!

out of malloc memory (200)!

qemu: fatal: Trap 0x07 while interrupts disabled, Error state

pc: f017626c  npc: f0176278

%g0-7: 00000000 f0248800 f007fc00 f025ff14 0001002b f0243b88 00000000 f0244020

%o0-7: 00000002 f0260034 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 f025ff28 f005d39c

%l0-7: 40400fc3 f0260034 00000002 00000000 00000000 00000000 f02698a0 00000000

%i0-7: f0262f30 f0260034 00000000 00010000 00000002 00000000 f025ffd8 f004143c

%f00:  0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

%f08:  0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

%f16:  0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

%f24:  0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000

psr: 40000fc3 (icc: ---- SPE: SP-) wim: 00000008

fsr: 00000000 y: 00000000

Aborted (core dumped)

Am I just using the wrong machine or the wrong processor, or am I missing something? I haven't worked my way exhaustively through the list for machines or CPUs, but if anyone has any experience building a bigger memory machine, I'd be glad of the input.

Steve