qemu on Kubuntu - error regarding 3dnow support.

[Joel Stanley]

On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 1:35 AM, Kent Dahl <kentda at pvv.org> wrote:
> I was going through the instruction on the Wiki regarding setup of qemu
> on Linux:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Emulating_the_XO/Quick_Start/Linux
>
> But once I select a boot entry (such as 'OLPC for qemu target (Full
> size)') it fails to load the kernel with the message:
>        This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU:
>        3dnow
>        Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU.

I'm seeing the same.

As of 2.6.23, if the kernel is configured with support for instruction
set extensions, it will refuse to boot without the presence of the
flags that indicate support for those instructions.  Some digging
revealed a patch[1] for qemu that enables 3dnow emulation, but it
hasn't been merged to qemu svn.

How much do we gain from having 3DNow support turned on in the
kernels?  If the difference is small, perhaps we could disable it?

Is booting xo images under qemu still worthwhile functionality to
include, now that there are other options for running Sugar, as well
higher[2] availability of XO's for developers?  If this path was
taken, software such as grub and additional drivers could be dropped
in return for free space on the NAND.

Cheers,

Joel

[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/qemu-devel@nongnu.org/msg16531.html
[2] compared to the B-test days