Gentoo on GXemul (formerly Mips64emul)

[stonent]

I'm interested in Gentoo/MIPS being ran inside GXemul. (see ebuild https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88552)

Right now, according to the author of GXemul. A DECstation PMAX is the best supported system and with recent patches to the Debian PMAX kernel, it can now boot and install Debian for PMAX or Redhat.

http://gavare.se/gxemul/stable-doc/guestoses.html#declinux

The way it works, is the kernel is kept externally to the emulator. (Loaded directly from the host file system) and as the kernel boots, it mounts the disk image. I was going to try to make some kind of disk image using the information provided but have found it rather hard to make an image like they wanted. You have to make a disk image with partitions inside it, some how mount it and untar things into it. I've been able to make a blank image, fdisk it, make partitions, but you can't really mkfs a partition inside an image.

One way around would be to engineer an iso to boot on the PMAX, but that would take quite a bit of effort on the developer's side. But my idea would be simpler. Make a small mountable disk image that can be downloaded from one of the developer's home pages. So the install could be done like this:

Launch gxemul with the debian kernel, set the root fs to what amounts to the contents of the latest gentoo mips CD (compiled as r3k) and have the user create a second blank image that will actually be chrooted.

I did some research about formatting and mounting partitions inside an image but it required hacking the loopback device code and some changes to the kernel. If someone has a better idea on how to create for example a blank 200MB disk image with a PC style partition and put a root fs inside of it , (either the redhat fs or the livecd contents), it would be pretty neat to have.

There has been work in GXemul for SGI emulation but it isn't complete. (It can boot a linux or Netbsd kernel, but most devices aren't emulated yet)

The PS2 target can now boot a PS2 netbsd kernel and mount a disk image but USB is not emulated so there is no way to input into the system (no usb meants no keyboard)
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