OpenBSD/hppa

OpenBSD/hppa runs on a large set of the 32-bit Hewlett Packard Precision Architecture workstations and servers (HP PA-RISC).

A mailing list dedicated to the OpenBSD/hppa port is available at hppa@openbsd.org. To join the OpenBSD/hppa mailing list, send a message body of "subscribe hppa" to majordomo@openbsd.org. Please be sure to check our mailing list policy before subscribing.

The current port maintainer is Michael Shalayeff. Others are definitely welcome to contribute!

Table of contents

• History of the port
• Current status
• Project list
• Supported hardware list
• Hardware documentation
• Getting and installing OpenBSD/hppa
• Netbooting OpenBSD/hppa
• Cross-compiling kernels

History:

This project was started in those days when the only open source operating systems for HP PA-RISC computers were Lites and MkLinux. These two sources were a major supply of information and code for initial development of the OpenBSD/hppa port. HPBSD is encumbered by HP proprietary code and USL licensing and is not publicly available. One of the major direct benefits from previous porting efforts (besides the code, of course) was support for HP PA-RISC in GCC and binutils, which allowed quick building of a cross-tools environment for development.

Later on, Hewlett-Packard decided to sponsor a Linux port to the PA-RISC family, which actually resulted in some proprietary documentation being released, even though their target was a different class of 9000 machines back then.

Current status:

Although there have been no official releases of this port yet, the supported systems boot to multi-user and full snapshots are made periodically.

Projects (in no particular order):

• Improve overall stability
• Support the NCR53C700 SCSI controller
• Support the NCR53C720 SCSI controller
• Installation procedures
• Improve port-specific documentation
• Support booting from tape and cdrom
• Support for 7300LC and 8x00 cpus
• Support for 7000 cpus (the "original snakes" machines)
• HP-UX emulation
• PARISC/Linux emulation
• Shared libraries
• X11 support

Supported hardware:

Supported models

• PA7100-based: 715/33, 715/50, 715/75, 725/50, 725/75, 735/100, 755/100
• PA7100LC-based: 712, 715/64, 715/80, 715/100, 715/100XC, 725/64, 725/100
• PA7150-based: 735/125, 755/125
• PA7200-based: J200, J210, J210XC, C100, C110

Supported peripherals

The list of supported hardware below is not meant to be exhaustive. Hardware is needed for developers, to further help development and testing. Please see our "Wanted List" (contact mickey).

• Bus/IO controllers
  • Phantom PseudoBC GSC+ Port (phantomas)
  • GSC (gsc): LASI (lasi), ASP (asp)
• SGC/GSC graphics (sti)
  • Artist (as found on 712)
  • CRX-8, CRX-24, HCRX-8, HCRX-24
• Serial ports
  • On-board ns16550 and compatibles (com)
• Parallel ports
  • On-board parallel port (lpt)
• SCSI controllers
  • NCR53C710 SCSI I/O Processors (osiop)
• Ethernet
  • On-board Intel i82596 ethernet (ie)
• Audio devices
  • On-board harmony CS4215/AD1849 (harmony)
• Input devices
  • HIL keyboards (hilkbd)
  • PS/2 keyboards (gsckbd)
• Miscellaneous devices
  • Battery-backed real time clock

Unsupported models

The following systems may eventually work:

• PA7000-based machines: 705, 710, 720, 730, 750
• PA2.0 systems (in 32-bit mode)
• HP 9000 836, 844, 845, 846
• HP 9000 E23, E25, E35, E45, E55
• HP 3000 908, 918, 928, 938
• Hitachi VQ200, VQ210, and some other non-HP workstations
• Precision Book from RDI Computer Corporation (well, unlikely)
• HP VME and VXI single board systems (requires VME at least)

These systems will, probably, never be supported by this port since they are of 1.0 PA-RISC architecture, which is substantially inferiour to the 1.1:

• HP 9000 600, 635, 645
• HP 9000 800, 808, 815, 822, 825, 832, 834, 835, 840, 842, 845, 850, 852, 855, 860, 865, 870, 890
• HP 9000 900

Unsupported peripherals

This list is not meant to be exhaustive either, but sums up the most commonly encountered devices on hppa machines.

• Bus/IO controllers
  • EISA bus
  • PCI bus
• SCSI controllers
  • NCR53C720 SCSI I/O Processors (siop)
• Input devices
  • PS/2 mouse
  • HIL mouse
• On-board floppy controller

Hardware documentation:

Most of the following documents have been released by Hewlett-Packard for the PA-RISC Linux project.

1. HP PA-RISC CPUs
   1. PA7100LC CPU ERS
   2. PA7300LC CPU ERS
2. Processor Dependent Code/I/O Dependent Code Interface
   (selected chapters from "PA-RISC I/O Architecture Specification")
   1. PDC 1.1
   2. IODC 1.1
   3. Version and Identification Number Allocation
   4. Memory Data Formats 2.0
   5. PDC Procedures 2.0
   6. PDC Entry Points 2.0
   7. OS Interface 2.0
3. Bus controllers/bridges/adaptors
   1. ASP
   2. LASI Core Bus Adapter (including lan, scsi, serial, lpt controllers)
   3. Dino PCI bridge, and Errata
   4. Elroy ERS (Edited for Open Source)
   5. Astro Overview, Error handling,R2I Operations, Registers Map, Runway Interface, System Mamory Map
4. Stinger graphics
5. NCR 53C700/710/720 SCSI I/O Processors (the doc is actually for 770, which is claimed as compatible)
6. Intel i82596DX/SX and i82596CA Ethernet Controllers

Of course, no hppa page, be it OpenBSD or not, could pretend to be serious without linking to the essential OpenPA reference website.

Getting and installing OpenBSD/hppa:

Snapshots are made available from time to time, in this location as well as in a few mirrors. Here are the OpenBSD/hppa snapshot installation instructions as well.

Netbooting OpenBSD/hppa:

The boot.lif file contains both a bootloader and a kernel. To boot it from the network, a server machine has to be setup so as to let the hppa machine retrieve it:

1. Server setup
   • For older machines (705, 7[1235]0, old 715) rbootd must be setup and started.
     • /etc/rbootd.conf contains a single line per machine needing to boot from the server. Each line contains the ethernet address of the client hppa machine, and the filename to be loaded from the tftp server (relative to /usr/mdec/rbootd). For example:

       	8:0:9:70:c4:11    boot.lif    # 9000/720
       	8:0:9:19:fb:a0    boot.lif    # 9000/725
       	

   • Recent machines (712, newer 715, 725) will not look for rbootd at all, but instead require a bootp setup.
     • /etc/bootptab contains an information block for each machine. For example:

       	# 9000/715
       	boron:\
               	ha=0800095f5a6e:\
               	bf=boot.lif:\
               	hd=:\
               	ht=ethernet:\
               	ip=10.0.1.143:\
               	rp=/usr/local/exports/boron/root:\
               	sm=255.255.255.0:\
               	td=/tftpboot:
       	

     • Create directory /tftpboot and put the boot.lif file in it.
       
     • Write an entry for the hppa in /etc/ethers:

       	08:00:09:5f:5a:6e	boron
       	

     • Write another entry for it in /etc/hosts:

       	10.0.1.143	boron
       	

     • Create directory /usr/local/exports/boron/root and unpack at least base32.tgz and etc32.tgz in it.
     • After the sets are unpacked, create device nodes in dev/ by running MAKEDEV and alter the configuration files in /etc (refer to the installation notes for details).
     • Finally, add an entry to /etc/exports in order to export the root directory to the client:

       	/usr/local/exports/boron/root boron
       	

       You might want to also create and export a swap area.
     • The last step is to enable the necessary daemons for all of this to work. bootpd and tftpd are usually run from inetd, so /etc/inetd.conf has to be modified and inetd restarted.
     • For proper NFS server operation, portmap, mountd and nfsd need to be enabled, as well as rarpd and rpc.bootparamsd in rc.conf.
   • For further reading on server setup for network booting in general, please refer to the diskless(8) manual page.

2. Client Network Boot
   • BOOT_ADMIN
     In order to get to the BOOT_ADMIN prompt, hit the <esc> key as the machine is coming up. Once it has probed bootable devices, a menu will be displayed; if the prompt is not BOOT_ADMIN, it will be necessary to type ``a'' to access it.
   • Network boot command
     Once at the 'BOOT_ADMIN' prompt, the command

     	BOOT_ADMIN> boot lan isl
     

     will proceed to the bootstrap of boot.lif.

Cross-compiling kernels:

The OpenBSD source tree provides some cross-compilation facilities. First, a set of hppa cross tools (cross compiler, cross binutils, etc) must be created:

# cd /usr/src
# make TARGET=hppa cross-includes cross-binutils cross-gcc

Building boot.lif using cross-tools

• Building mkboot

  mkboot is the only specific host tool needed for the boot.lif build.

  $ cd /usr/src/sys/arch/hppa/stand/mkboot
  $ env MACHINE=hppa make obj
  $ env MACHINE=hppa make depend all
    

• Building the kernel

  The kernel can be configured as usual, and then built using the cross-tools.

  $ cd /usr/src/sys/arch/hppa/conf
  $ config GENERIC
  $ cd /usr/src/sys/arch/hppa/compile/GENERIC
  $ export CROSS=/usr/cross/hppa/usr/bin
  $ env MACHINE=hppa MACHINE_ARCH=hppa \
    AR=$CROSS/ar AS=$CROSS/as CC=$CROSS/cc CPP=$CROSS/cpp LD=$CROSS/ld \
    NM=$CROSS/nm RANLIB=$CROSS/ranlib SIZE=$CROSS/size STRIP=$CROSS/strip \
    make depend bsd
    

• Build boot.lif

  With the kernel compiled, the boot loader can now be compiled and the lif file generated.

  $ cd /usr/src/sys/arch/hppa/stand
  $ export CROSS=/usr/cross/hppa/usr/bin
  $ env MACHINE=hppa make SKIPDIR=mkboot obj
  $ env MACHINE=hppa MACHINE_ARCH=hppa \
    AR=$CROSS/ar AS=$CROSS/as CC=$CROSS/cc CPP=$CROSS/cpp LD=$CROSS/ld \
    NM=$CROSS/nm RANLIB=$CROSS/ranlib SIZE=$CROSS/size STRIP=$CROSS/strip \
    make SKIPDIR=mkboot depend all