Re: Deprecate the ppc405 boards in QEMU? (was: [PATCH v3 4/7] MAINTAINERS: Orphan obscure ppc platforms)

[Thomas Huth]

On 01/10/2021 11.14, Christophe Leroy wrote:
> Le 01/10/2021 à 10:35, Thomas Huth a écrit :
> > On 27/09/2021 06.48, David Gibson wrote:
> > > There are a nunber of old embedded ppc machine types which have been little
> > > changed and in "Odd Fixes" state for a long time.  With both myself and
> > > Greg Kurz moving toward other areas, we no longer have the capacity to
> > > keep reviewing and maintaining even the rare patches that come in for those
> > > platforms.
> > >
> > > Therefore, remove our names as reviewers and mark these platforms as
> > > orphaned.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
> > > Reviewed-by: Greg Kurz <groug@kaod.org>
> > > Reviewed-by: Cédric Le Goater <clg@kaod.org>
> > > ---
> > >   MAINTAINERS | 19 +++++--------------
> > >   1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)
> > >
> > > diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
> > > index f2060b46f9..1ecb5716c8 100644
> > > --- a/MAINTAINERS
> > > +++ b/MAINTAINERS
> > > @@ -1236,24 +1236,18 @@ F: hw/openrisc/openrisc_sim.c
> > >   PowerPC Machines
> > >   ----------------
> > >   405
> > > -M: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
> > > -M: Greg Kurz <groug@kaod.org>
> > >   L: qemu-ppc@nongnu.org
> > > -S: Odd Fixes
> > > +S: Orphan
> > >   F: hw/ppc/ppc405_boards.c
> >
> > Related question: Does *anybody* know how to still use the ref405ep or 
> > taihu board in QEMU? We just got another ticket asking for the related 
> > firmware image:
> >
> >   https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/651
> >
> > And if you google for 'ppc405_rom.bin', I only find pages where people are 
> > asking basically the same question, e.g.:
> >
> >   https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2007-08/msg00252.html 
> > (in 2007 already! And no answer)
> >
> >   https://github.com/Xilinx/qemu/issues/36 (in 2019, no answer)
> >
> >   https://lists.libreplanet.org/archive/html/qemu-ppc/2019-12/msg00263.html (in 
> > 2019, no answer about bios location)
> >
> >   https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/4/25/61 (in 2020, no answer)
> >
> >
> > Seems like the Linux kernel removed support for the 405ep board here:
> >
> >
> > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=548f5244f1064c9facb19c5e9 
>
> The EP405 board was removed because it was apparently based on the buggy 
> 405GP processor (It was selecting option CONFIG_405GP).
>
> AFAIU the EP405 board is different from the ref405ep. The ref405ep has a 
> 405EP processor which is still supported, see 
> https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v5.15-rc3/source/arch/powerpc/kernel/cputable.c#L1300 

Oh, that's pretty confusing, thank a lot for the clarification!

Nevertheless, as long as nobody has a hint where to find that 
ppc405_rom.bin, I think both boards are pretty useless in QEMU (as far as I 
can see, they do not work without the bios at all, so it's also not possible 
to use a Linux image with the "-kernel" CLI option directly).

 Thomas