[SerialICE] Experiencing a qemu segfault (SOLVED) and serialice accessibility problems

[Corey Osgood]

Oh! I'm not the only one seeing qemu segfault! I don't have the patch
available, but I've written a patch for my Zotac NM10 board with a
Nuvoton NCT5571D super IO. I'm trying to boot the vendor BIOS. I'm
sure that I'm using the correct clock in (48MHz) and settings, because
I can get a serial boot console in linux with the stock BIOS, and if I
look at serialice through minicom, I can see the console. If I start
qemu then start the system, I will get the same message you did
(target alife!) then something for a message about a communication
failure (0/a). It will then hang there. If I reboot it (turn it off
and back on) qemu segfaults.

I think this error is related to my null modem cable, nullmodem.com
illustrates two different types, mine is currently the type without
the CD signal connected to anything. I tried modifying it to short
pins 1 and 6 on both ends, but it doesn't seem to have worked. I'll
have another one here in a few days that hopefully does have the CD
tapped into the DTR signal.

I also had some problems trying to compile QEMU on 64-bit, oddly I
*did* get beyond those initial 2 lines (with the same cable), but it
would fail when trying to run the lua script. I couldn't get bitlib-25
to compile against Ubuntu 10.04 with lua from source, so I used
bitlib-26 at first, but it would give me an error in bit.so, trying to
call an undefined symbol, lua_pushnumber (IIRC). I then removed the
lua from source and installed Ubuntu's lua5.1 and liblua5.1 packages,
got bitlib-25 to compile (with --with-lua-suffix=5.1), compiled qemu
(after making symlinks in /usr/lib from liblua5.1.x to liblua.x), and
it would segfault about 6 lines down (during/after trying to reserve a
couple memory ranges). After that I got frustrated and installed
32-bit ubuntu.

-Corey

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 8:26 PM, Idwer Vollering <vidwer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/8/5 Idwer Vollering <vidwer at gmail.com>
>>
>> 2010/8/3 Myles Watson <mylesgw at gmail.com>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 10:59 AM, Idwer Vollering <vidwer at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > My problem is two-fold:
>>> >
>>> > 1) Running the patched qemu segfaults.
>>> >
>>> > $ sudo ./i386-softmmu/qemu -serialice /dev/ttyUSB0 -hda /dev/zero -L
>>> > bios/
>>> > [sudo] password for idwer:
>>> > SerialICE: Open connection to target hardware...
>>> > SerialICE: Waiting for handshake with target... target alife!
>>> try the latest qemu in the SerialICE tree
>>>
>>> svn://serialice.com/serialice/trunk/qemu-0.11.0
>>>
>>> It's already patched, and it has been updated more recently than the
>>> patch.
>>>
>>> > 2) Right now, the serialice shell appears only once: after flashing
>>> > serialice.rom and performing a soft reset from vendor bios to
>>> > serialice.
>>> >
>>> > SerialICE v1.5 (Aug  3 2010)
>>> >
>
> Following quote is after soft reset, typing some text and hitting the reset
> button:
>
> SerialICE v1.5 (Aug 27 2010)
>
>> 1
>> 2
>> 3
>> 4
>> 5
>> 6
>> 7
>> 8
>> 9
>> 0
>> r
>> e
>> s
>> e
>> t
>> -
>> -
>> >
>> òóñôõöôöòñðôõô÷ôôöðôÿôõõôõôô
>
>>>
>>> Sounds like SerialICE is depending on some initialization from the
>>> vendor BIOS.  I guess an ugly way to test it would be to copy the
>>> working configuration bits from lspci and hard code them into
>>> SerialICE until you find what's wrong.
>
> Since the southbridge and superio datasheets mention the existence of two
> serial ports, I followed their guidance.
> I thought that (the console printing part of) SerialICE, when setup the
> correct way, should survive a hard reset/power cycle regardless of the qemu
> part is running or not.
>
> Since I don't have an oscilloscope, I've tried setting CLKSEL to 24 MHz and
> 48 MHz:
> pnp_write_register(SUPERIO_CONFIG_PORT, 0x24, 0xb4); // 24 MHz and KBC=1
> pnp_write_register(SUPERIO_CONFIG_PORT, 0x24, 0xc4); // 48 MHz and KBC=1
>
> What information is leading, the info from the superio or the info from the
> southbridge ?
>
>>
>> Attached the mainboard code as well.
>
> Attaching .config, dmesg, lspci and the patch against svn.
>>
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Myles
>>
>
>
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