virt-builder: Fedora 21 ppc64 and ppc64le images

virt-builder now has Fedora 21 ppc64 and ppc64le images available, and you can run these under emulation on an x86-64 host. Here’s how to do it:

$ virt-builder --arch ppc64 fedora-21 \
    -o fedora-21-ppc64.img

or:

$ virt-builder --arch ppc64le fedora-21 \
    -o fedora-21-ppc64le.img

To boot them:

$ qemu-system-ppc64 -M pseries -cpu POWER8 -m 4096 \
    -drive file=fedora-21-ppc64[le].img \
    -serial stdio

Oddly the boot messages will appear on the GUI, but the login prompt will only appear on the serial console. (Fixed)

Libvirt also has support, so with a sufficiently new version of the toolchain you can also use:

$ virt-install --import --name=guestname \
    --ram=4096 --vcpus=1 \
    --os-type=linux --os-variant=fedora21 \
    --arch=ppc64[le] --machine pseries \
    --disk=fedora-21-ppc64[le].img,format=raw
$ virsh start guestname

It’s quite fun to play with Big Iron, even in an emulator that runs at about 1/1000th the speed of the real thing. I know a lot about this, because we have POWER8 machines at Red Hat, and they really are the fastest computers alive, by a significant multiple. Of course, they also cost a fortune and use huge amounts of power.

Some random observations:

1. The virt-builder --size parameter cannot resize the ppc64 guest filesystem correctly, because Anaconda uses an extended partition. Workaround is to either add a second disk or to create another extended partition in the extra space. (Fixed)
2. The disks are ibmvscsi model (not virtio or ide). This is the default, but something to think about if you edit or create the libvirt XML manually.
3. Somehow the same CPU/machine model works for both Big Endian and Little Endian guests. It must somehow auto-detect the guest type, but I couldn’t work out how that works. Anyway, it just works by magic. it’s done by the kernel
4. libguestfs inspection is broken for ppc64le
5. Because TCG (qemu software emulation) is single threaded, only use a single vCPU. If you use more, it’ll actually slow the thing down.

Thanks: Maros Zatko for working out the virt-install command line and implementing the virt-builder script to build the images.