#817209 ppc64le emulation on i386 is broken

Package:
qemu-user-static
Source:
qemu
Description:
QEMU user mode emulation binaries (static version)
Submitter:
Ben Hutchings
Date:
2025-08-11 08:23:05 UTC
Severity:
normal
#817209#5
Date:
2016-03-09 01:56:20 UTC
From:
To:
In addition to bug #813698, I found that most Debian ppc64el binaries
go horribly wrong when running on the i386 build of
qemu-ppc64le-static even with QEMU_CPU=POWER8.  This seems to be
related to system call translation.  The amd64 build seems to be fine.

Ben.
#817209#10
Date:
2016-03-09 05:11:45 UTC
From:
To:
Hello!


09.03.2016 04:56, Ben Hutchings wrote:

I'm afraid i386 host in qemu receives almost no testing for a long time,
especially for 64bit targets.   Some places in the code use types such
as int or long to represent 64 bits, incl. syscall translation, or, if
that's done correctly, fail to translate high bits in host integers.

Anyway, can you be a bit more specific about the failures?  Maybe some
simple test cases, something reproducible, because I'm not sure I'll
find the right bugs when trying to reproduce this :)

Is 386 host important these days, when almost all x86 machines are
64bits-capable and have large address space not easily accessible
in 32bit mode?

Thanks,

/mjt
#817209#15
Date:
2016-03-09 11:41:50 UTC
From:
To:
Run the first stage of debootstrap, then try running 'ls' using QEMU.
 It usually shows an empty directory list.

That's your choice to make, but please don't ship broken binaries.

Ben.
#817209#20
Date:
2025-08-11 08:21:28 UTC
From:
To:
Version: 1:10.0.0+ds-1
This issue has been definitely fixed in 10.0 version by
removing all 64bit targets on 32bit hosts, so there's
no ppc64 emulation on i386 anymore.

And even before that, it looks like the reported combination
actually worked.

Thanks,

/mjt