Installing Solaris 10 on VIA EPIA PE10000G mobo + VIA C3 Nehemiah processor

Question

Hello,
I was wondering if anyone could help me out. I recently purchased a VIA EPIA PE10000G motherboard with a VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.0GHz EBGA processor (http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainboards/motherboards.jsp?motherboard_id=451).
I am trying to install Solaris 10 08/07 and running into problems with the processor being recognized. In my research, I've found some posts, but alas, I seem to have come to a dead end. Here's what I've done:
Downloaded Solaris, fired up the installation. When the kernel starts booting I get:
"486 processor detected this processor not supported by solaris"
After searching on this error, I conculded that by doing the following, I should be able to get around this problem:
perl -pi -e 's#GenuineIntel#CentaurHauls#g' solaris_cd_1.iso
in order to swap out the vendor string for the processor.
Next, I booted with b -kv to see what would happen. While it seems that I got further along, I now get the following:
"processor does not support cmpxchg8b instruction"
and I get dropped into the kernel debugger which I am not familiar with.
I looked for an exact match for this error in Google and came up with this page as the only hit:
http://fxr.watson.org/fxr/source/i86pc/vm/hat_i86.c?v=OPENSOLARIS
Even though it says OPENSOLARIS in the URL, I bet it's the same piece of code that I'm hitting when I try to install Solaris 10:
if ((x86_feature & X86_CX8) == 0)
panic("Processor does not support cmpxchg8b instruction");
So my guess is that either x86_feature or X86_CX8 is false, I'm figuring it's the latter since the error message has looks similar to that variable.
Furthermore, I see that the error message exists in several places on the original installation CD:
strings solaris_cd_1.iso |grep cmpxchg8b
Processor does not support cmpxchg8b instruction
Processor does not support cmpxchg8b instruction
Processor does not support cmpxchg8b instruction
Processor does not support cmpxchg8b instruction
cmpxchg8b
cmpxchg8b
cmpxchg8b
cmpxchg8b
I'd really like to get Solaris 10 on this motherboard because I'd like to use it as a small firewall where space is at a premium.
Might anyone have some further suggestions as to what I can do to get this to work? From what I've seen, I think it is possible, it's just a matter of changing something more to the disk image.
thanks,
Geoprge

Answer 1

I did some more research and found a pdf on my processor and here's what I came up with:
0 = The CPUID instruction does not report the presence of the CMPXCHG8B instruction
(CX8 = 0). The instruction actually exists and operates correctly, however.
1 = The CPUID instruction reports that the CMPXCHG8B instruction is supported
(CX8 = 1).
From what I read here http://www.via.com.tw/download/mainboards/6/13/VIA_C3_EBGA%20datasheet110.pdf it would seem that the default is CX8=0 and I'm guessing that if it were 1, then I'd at least get past this error message.
Maybe there's a way to trick the installation image by changing the code that checks for this value similar to what I did for the vendor processor ID string? Seems to me that if I find where it checks for the CX8 value and reverse the logic, the installation would continue...