Linux on PA-RISC¶

The PA-RISC project provides a native port of Linux to the PA-RISC architecture.
Linux on PA-RISC is stable and runs on most PA-RISC machines and in a virtual Qemu machine.
Check the PARISC FAQ and Hardware support if you have trouble installing Linux.

Linux distributions for PA-RISC machines¶

Debian Linux¶

PA-RISC is a non-release architecture in the Debian Ports project with more than 12,000 Debian packages available.
You may download the latest installation CD-ROM ISO image which has been tested from the PA-RISC FTP server. or untested images from the debian CD image server

Gentoo Linux¶

PA-RISC is a fully supported architecture of Gentoo Linux.
The Gentoo hppa team provides Gentoo Linux installation ISOs available for download and a Handbook on how to install Gentoo Linux for PA-RISC.

T2 System Development Environment¶

The T2 System Development Environment Linux distribution provides a port to PA-RISC which you may download here.

Our sponsors¶

OSUOSL - Oregon State University Open Source Lab
- Hosting and support for the physical parisc servers “parisc” (since 2014) and “panama” (since 2017)
- Hosting of a x86 virtual machine for the qemu-user based parisc build server “pasta” (since Jan 2021)
- Hosting of this website and documentation, Linux kernel and palo git trees and parisc mailing lists via kernel.org domain (since Jan 2014)
Cypress Technology Inc (Jesse Dougherty) sponsored a HP J6700 workstation with 2 x 750MHz PA8700 CPUs, 4GB RAM and a 72GB disc which is used as Debian buildd and Porterbox machine “parisc” (Oct 2022 - Dec 2025)
Roberto C. Sánchez sponsored a HP rp3410 server with one 800 MHz PA8900 CPU which is used as Debian buildd and Porterbox machine “panama” (May 2017)
GALL EDV-Systeme GmbH sponsored HP Visualize FX-2, FX-4 and FX-6 grahics cards (June 2023)
Mike Hosken sponsored two machines, both located and hosted in New Zealand:
- a HP ProLiant ML350p Gen8, used as debian buildd server pacific.parisc-linux.org (Sept 2021), and
- a HP ProLiant DL360 G7, used as debian buildd server panguru.parisc-linux.org (March 2026)

Note

If you want to sponsor HP physical machines, graphics-cards or other hardware, or hosting services for virtual (x86) or physical (parisc) machines, please contact me

PA-RISC Linux NEWS¶

June 2026¶

The QEMU SCSI TAPE project will sadly not be funded by Google this year. Emmanuel Ugwu nevertheless stepped up and wants to develop the SCSI TAPE driver. Lots of other fixes and new functions were added to the QEMU linux-user emulation.

May 2026¶

The virtual OS museum includes images of HP-UX runing in QEMU.

Mar 2026¶

Mike Hosken sponsored a HP ProLiant DL360 G7 with 64 GB RAM and 800 GB HDD which is being used as debian buildd server panguru.parisc-linux.org.

Feb 2026¶

The PA-RISC project participates in the GSOC 2026: SCSI TAPE device emulation. Goal is to allow installing MPE via SCSI tape on an emulated PA-RISC machine.

Jan 2026¶

Dave continues to make good progress on fixing 64-bit linker issues, e.g. this patch: hppa64: Improve relocation handling for local symbols and add gc_section support
Activated second CPU core in the panama build server (rp3410) and updated PDC, MP and BMC firmware.
Sven added some PA8800/PA8900 PIROM/SCRATCH eeprom documentation.

Dec 2025¶

Michael Lorenz started on a manual for programming the HCRX and PCI Visualize EG graphic cards
Qemu 10.2 was released.
The HP J6700 workstation which was sponsored by Cypress Technology Inc (Jesse Dougherty) and which was used as Debian buildd server “parisc” suddently broke after 3 years. We are now looking for a new sponsor to replace that machine.

Oct 2025¶

Peter Maydell posted a patch for QEMU to fix floating point exception flags.
Soumyajyotii Ssarkar finished his Google Summer of Code 2025 project and developed QEMU drivers for the LASI network and SCSI controller. His code will be merged soon upstream.
Sven Schnelle and Dave Anglin started fixing gcc, binutils and the Linux kernel to allow building 64-bit shared applications.
Gabriel Brookman posted a patch for QEMU to fix wrong emulation of fmpyadd.
Peter Maydell provided a fix for the emulation of the FP registers in QEMU.
SeaBIOS-hppa v19 with support for 715 machine released.

Sep 2025¶

Maintenance update of palo version 2.28 released.

July 2025¶

Dave fixed a kernel bug which allowed the kernel to access read-protected memory. This bug was found due to a testcase failure in the libunwind package.

May 2025¶

Dave was able to fix some bugs in libunwind
Helge fixed a kernel bug which led to SIGFPE crashes and the relevant parts in QEMU

Apr 2025¶

Qemu v10 was released
PA-RISC Linux project participates in the Google Summer of Code (GSOC) 2025 project with one QEMU project aiming to fully support the LASI network card and NCR 710 SCSI controller: https://wiki.qemu.org/Google_Summer_of_Code_2025

Mar 2025¶

With glibc 2.41, any package with a shared library that may be dlopen’d must be rebuilt with gcc-14 or later. Otherwise you may get error messages like: “cannot enable executable stack as shared object requires: Invalid argument”.

Feb 2025¶

Dave fixed another long-standing glibc floating-point bug: Miscompilation of sysdeps/ieee754/dbl-64/s_fma.c
The PA-RISC project participates in the GSOC 2025: Implement LASI network or SCSI controller in qemu

Jan 2025¶

A new Debian installation CD-ROM image is available. Please read HPPA specific installation notes.
Maintenance update of palo version 2.26 released.
Dave fixed a glibc bug: pthread_attr_getstacksize/pthread_attr_getstack return incorrect main stack size
Various updates to the debian-installer

1998-2024¶

See PA-RISC_Linux_Project_History for older news.

Resources¶

External Resources¶

http://www.debian.org/ports/hppa/ - Debian HPPA port page
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-hppa.xml - Gentoo Linux Installation
http://www.openpa.net/index.html - The OpenPA Project
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/HP_9000 and http://www.wikiwand.com/en/PA-RISC - Good overview of PA-RISC, HP-UX, CDE, …
http://web.archive.org/web/20040202003152/http://www.cpus.hp.com/technical_references/parisc.shtml - Historic PA-RISC Documentation from HP.com (2004)
https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1987-03.pdf - technical documentattion of first PA-RISC processors
http://www.3kranger.com/HP3000/mpeix/hard.shtm#PA-RISC - PA-RISC arch & HP3000 docs
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-hppa.xml - Gentoo HPPA Handbook
http://www.hpmuseum.net/collection_document.php - HP Computer Museum
https://virtualosmuseum.org/ - The virtual OS museum
http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/dev/hp9000_840/ - Uni Stuttgart Computermuseum - HP 9000/840 (first PA-RISC machine)
http://www.robelle.com/library/smugbook/welcome.html - The HP Server Encyclopedia: Robelle’s tips for users of HP 3000 (MPE) and HP-UX servers
http://tenox.pdp-11.ru/hpux/ - HP/UX ressources
https://fsck.technology/software/HP/ - HP/UX ressources
http://psg.skinforum.org/hpux.html - Tin Ho’s “Sys Admin Pocket Survival Guide - HP-UX”
http://www.mach-linux.org/ - OSF Mach-Linux
http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/hp_unix.html - UnixNerds/HPUX
https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/awesome-cpus - All CPUs documented
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/deller/parisc-linux.git - Helge’s PARISC Linux Kernel git tree
https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-parisc/list - PARISC Linux Patchwork
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/deller/palo.git - PALO boot loader source code
http://hpe.com/info/hpuxservermatrix - HP-UX Server and OS Support matrix. Includes support end dates and information which servers can run which HP-UX version.

Archived historical webpages¶

https://web.archive.org/web/20240917210505/https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page - Snapshot of former PA-RISC Wiki on kernel.org (2014-2024)
http://www.parisc-linux.org/index.html - The former and now historical PA-RISC/Linux website (2004 until 2014)
http://pateam.parisc-linux.org - The PA/Linux ESIEE Team (former www.pateam.org webpage until 2014)