From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Feb 26 18:46:11 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2B6A61065670 for ; Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:46:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from mail.potentialtech.com (internet.potentialtech.com [66.167.251.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E947113C45D for ; Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:46:10 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from vanquish.ws.pitbpa0.priv.collaborativefusion.com (pr40.pitbpa0.pub.collaborativefusion.com [206.210.89.202]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.potentialtech.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4F3F6EBC08; Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:30:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:30:07 -0500 From: Bill Moran To: Peter Schuller Message-Id: <20080226133007.87340fd2.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <200802251858.05767.peter.schuller@infidyne.com> References: <200802251858.05767.peter.schuller@infidyne.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.4.8 (GTK+ 2.12.8; i386-portbld-freebsd6.3) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Recommended virtualization technique for debugging/developing FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:46:11 -0000 In response to Peter Schuller : > Hello, > > I was wondering what people use, in the abscense of suitable actual hardware, > to debug/develop FreeBSD (the kernel in particular). I'm willing to resort to > almost any host, including Windows, as long as I have something reliable. > > I haven't had much luck with qemu (crashes), nor virtualbox (crashes). I was > going to go for vmware on Windows, but while it ran FreeBSD pretty well, > before I had even percolated the disk layout enough to trigger the bug > (required root-on-zfs) I was hoping to trigger, the vmware configuration tool > crapped out on me and produced a configuration it could not itself read. > > What do all you regular kernel developers use, if not physical hardware? I know that bochs was used during some of the initial development of the amd64 port, because bochs can emulate amd64 on i386 hardware. You're not going to see anything like impressive performance with bochs, but it will allow you to see _everything_ the kernel is doing, i.e., you can track each CPU instruction if you so desire. -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com