This QEMU patch introduces irix/solaris userland emulation. It currently runs only under linux and macOS (though BSD support would probably be feasable).

compiling

Configure QEMU for irix/solaris userland emulation for linux and compile (see the original QEMU README for further instructions):

configure --target-list=irix-linux-user,irixn32-linux-user,irix64-linux-user,solaris-linux-user --disable-werror
make && make install

Or, configure QEMU for irix userland emulation for macOS

./configure --target-list=irix-darwin-user \
    --disable-werror \
    --disable-vnc \
    --disable-sdl \
    --disable-gtk \
    --disable-cocoa \
    --disable-opengl \
    --disable-capstone \
    --disable-hax \
    --disable-hvf \
    --disable-tools
make && make install

Note: only irix-darwin-user and irix64-darwin-user are allowed for building on macOS during succeeded workflows

Note: macOS 11 Big Sur and above no longer supports building qemu-irix during failure workflows (see at top of the repo page and click the red cross at the end of commit message)

using

I recommend using binfmt. I have prepared some scripts for this which you can obtain from my qemu-irix-helpers repository at github. Adapt the wrapper scripts to your setup and install them somewhere in your executable path. Activate them with the binfmt install scripts.

Now you should be able to directly execute irix/solaris binaries from the shell. As a rather simple test, try:

<target rootfs>/bin/ls

notes

IRIX threading uses a local TLS storage area named PRDA which is privately mapped into each thread at address 0x20000. qemu-irix will emulate this behaviour if QEMU_IRIXPRDA is set in the environment. You most probably need to do so for any IRIX software using multithreading. Be aware that this will noticably harm the performance of the emulation since every memory access is checked for PRDA access (AFAIK it isn't possible to emulate this directly on linux or BSD).

For conveniance I have also extended the handling of QEMU_LD_PREFIX to allow the specification of multiple paths separated by ':'. That way you can keep the target os root separate from additional software. Moreover, for a noticable speed gain at qemu startup, QEMU_LD_PREFIX is not pre-scanned anymore. Instead, it is now caching any directories accessed by the emulated program.

send bug reports, fixes etc to Kai-Uwe Bloem (derkub@gmail.com)