OpenBSD/sparc64

OpenBSD/sparc64 runs on the 64bit Sun UltraSPARC machines based on the UltraSPARC I and UltraSPARC II processors. The current port maintainer is Jason Wright (jason@openbsd.org). Others are welcome to contribute!

Table of contents

History:

The orginal port was made for NetBSD by Eduardo Horvath and released for the first time in January 1999. The porting to OpenBSD started in August 2001 and in the end of September the first binary snapshot was released. The porting was done mainly by Jason Wright and Artur Grabowski and was done on both SBUS and PCI machines so that a decently wide range of hardware support was ready even before the system could boot multiuser.

OpenBSD 3.0 was the first official release of OpenBSD/sparc64, and since that release support for many more devices has been added (including devices required for X11R6 support) and bugs exposed by the 64 bit big endian nature of UltraSPARC in many obscure places have been fixed. And work is continuing...

Current status:

Currently most of the hardware available to the developers boots multiuser and supports enough of the on-board devices to be generally useable. Since 3.0 shipped, hardware support has improved and X11R6 support has been added.

There hasn't yet been a need for a separate mailing list for OpenBSD/sparc64, so the OpenBSD/sparc mailing list is being used. To join the OpenBSD/sparc mailing list, send a message body of "subscribe sparc" to majordomo@OpenBSD.org. Please be sure to check our mailing list policy before subscribing.

X Window System:

XFree86 Version 4.2.1 is supported on most systems. Only the ATI graphics adapters are supported with the accelerated X server at the current time. It is possible to use X in framebuffer mode with either the SBus bwtwo, cgthree and cgsix cards, on-board ATI graphics or the UPA Creator, Creator 3D or Elite 3D at the boot resolution/depth using the wsfb(4) driver.

The directions on how to enable the accelerated and unaccelerated X server are present in the /usr/X11R6/README file on the installed system.

Projects (in no particular order):

Hardware documentation:

This list has been originally posted by Marcus Watts to the sparc mailing list.

Where to get it:

Install media:

A number of install options exist:

Use the method that works best for you.
Please note that booting from floppy might not work on your machine; also, Ultra 1, 1E and 2 systems might require a PROM update (they usually don't if they are able to boot Solaris in 64bit-mode); please refer to the installation notes for details.

Supported hardware:

OpenBSD/sparc64 has been tested on the following SUN UltraSPARC models:

Please note, some machines like the Ultra1, Ultra2 and Enterprise 220R may require upgrading the flashprom before OpenBSD can be successfully installed.

The following models are not supported at the moment:

Supported peripherals:

* support added after 3.0.
* support added after 3.1.
* support added after 3.2.

Unsupported devices:

  • SBUS and PCI cards other than those listed above.
    OpenBSD www@openbsd.org
    $OpenBSD: sparc64.html,v 1.74 2002/10/28 14:45:52 fgsch Exp $