Powermac G5 KVM Qemu

Powermac G5 KVM Qemu

[Dan Whitehouse]

Hi,
I have a Powermac G5 (dual core) running: Linux powermac-g5 6.0.0-6-powerpc64 #1 SMP Debian 6.0.12-1 (2022-12-09) ppc64, from Debian Ports.

I have been trying to get Qemu working with KVM for some time with no luck. Any attempt to do so causes my disk to thrash and I see:

[ 2718.262923] Couldn't emulate instruction 0x00000000 (op 0 xop 0)
[ 2718.274439] kvmppc_exit_pr_progint: emulation at 100 failed (00000000)

filling my dmesg. 

This was briefly discussed in a thread titled "Re: [PATCH 2/9] target/ppc: add errp to kvmppc_read_int_cpu_dt()” on the Qemu-PPC mailing list from July 6th of last year, but there doesn’t appear to have been much resolution.
It appears that KVM works on G4 processors on reasonably recent kernels: (Linux macmini 5.1.0-rc2+ #56 Wed Mar 27 00:38:43 GMT 2019 ppc GNU/Linux) and there is evidence from the Macrumors forum that it was working on G5 hardware back in the days of: Linux debian 4.19.0-4-powerpc64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.28-2 (2019-03-15) ppc64.

I’m not a developer so at this stage I’m uncertain whether the issue lies with Qemu or the Kernel, but any help with this would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dan