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 ISO here or here.

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)

• 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)

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

Oct 2024

• The PA-RISC Wiki has been replaced by a ReadTheDocs static website and is now hosted at https://parisc.docs.kernel.org. The website source code is available at https://github.com/hdeller/parisc-website

• Dave Anglin works on switching gcc to use LRA

• Dmitry Sibirtsev added support for the HPPA/PA-RISC architecture to the Capstone disassembly/disassembler framework. Capstone is used by by QEMU and other projects.

Sep 2024

• Qemu v9.1.0 released. Needs at least one patch for system-mode and one patch for user-mode to run stable with 64-bit CPUs.

• Some patches for Linux kernel to fix 64-bit userspace issues.

Jul 2024

• The Debian 64-bit time_t transition has finished and stability of PA-Linux has improved greatly. Important next milestones will be to port rust to hppa, and maybe to add a LLVM backend for parisc.

Jun 2024

• Dave Anglin contributed a patch which prevents the random segfaults we faced on PA8800 and PA8900 CPU machines. It is included in kernel 6.6.35, 6.9.6, and 6.10.0 (and higher).

• Work has started to add clock_gettime() syscalls in kernel vDSO.

Apr 2024

• The Debian 64-bit time_t transition is going very well. Upgrades were broken until now, but since end of april 2024 it’s possible again to upgrade most existing debian hppa installations to the new binaries from the debian-ports archive. Since now 64-bit time_t is enabled by default, and since the LFS64 filesystem calls are enabled by default as well, we expect much lesss problems running debian hppa.

• Qemu 9.0 was released. Note that the 64-bit hppa emulation is still incomplete and may work with Linux guests only.

Mar 2024

• Improving 64-bit CPU emulation in Qemu, e.g. with CPU fixes from Richard and HP-UX 11 64-bit support fixes from Sven.

• The Offline_Diagnostic_Environment_(ODE) CD-ROM is helpful to verify quality of Qemu CPU emulation.

• Debian 64-bit time transition is ongoing. Lots of hppa packages have to be bootstrapped again.

Jan 2024

• Initial rust libc support for hppa was added (and temporarily removed again).

Nov 2023

• Upcoming Qemu v8.2 will support booting a 64-bit Linux kernel.

Sep 2023

• Kernel 6.6 and Qemu 8.2 with SeaBIOS-hppa v9 supports Block-TLBs (BTLB) on 32-bit kernels.

• Kernel 6.6 includes native eBPF JIT compiler for 32- and 64-bit kernels.

• Dave fixed glibc v2.38 to prevent ``unaligned access to 0xf7ebadcd at ip 0xf5f7e307` syslog warnings <https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30750>`__

• Development to support 64-bit PA-RISC CPU emulation and Astro/Elroy PCI-Bridge emulated device in QEMU started. Goal is to (hopefully) allow booting a 64-bit Linux kernel and HP/UX 11 with 64-bit support in QEMU.

• The T2 System Development Environment Linux distribution added support for 32- and 64-bit PA-RISC.

Aug 2023

• Qemu 8.1.0 released.

• Found a 10-year old bug (since kernel 3.11) which affected 32-bit parisc kernels.

• Many kernel bugs fixed in aio, …

Jul 2023

• Qemu 8.0.3 released with many parisc fixes (SMP CPU fixes, graphics fixes).

Jun 2023

• Work started to implement native eBPF for Linux kernel.

May 2023

• palo version 2.24 released.

• STI text console support on 64-bit machines, e.g. this allows using all original HP graphics cards in text-mode on C8000 workstations.

• Fix palo to speed up printing the IPL menu on C8000 workstations.

Apr 2023

• Debian-12 (Bookworm) preparations, with more than 13,000 pre-built packages.

• Progress on an upcoming Visualize-FX5 fbdev graphics driver.

Mar 2023

• More than 12,900 pre-built Debian packages available.

Jan 2023

• Availability of a new HP J6700 dual-core debian porterbox parisc.debian.net, sponsored by Cypress Technology Inc. This machines was upgraded to 8 GB RAM and 2 x 300GB discs with parts of the former “parisc” HP A500-44 server.

1998-2022

• See PA-RISC_Linux_Project_History for older news.

Resources

• FAQ
  • Hardware support
  • PA-RISC LINUX FAQ
  • HOW TO REPORT A PARISC-LINUX KERNEL PROBLEM
  • Mailing lists
  • Graphics cards with PA-RISC Linux
  • Building the kernel
  • Installation of PA-RISC Linux
  • Debian Buildpackages
  • How to create Debian unstable iso images
  • HP part numbers
• Documentation
  • GLOSSARY
  • Information on HP9000 Servers and Workstations
  • Technical Documentation
  • PA-RISC Linux Kernel
  • Known Issues with the PA-RISC Linux Kernel
  • Test Cases
  • Running HP-UX 9.0 on virtual HP9000/370 with MAME
  • Hidden B/C/J Class Manufacturer and DEBUG commands
  • Repairing a non-starting C240/C360 Power supply
  • C8000 Debug connector
  • Offline Diagnostic Environment (ODE)
  • KGDB
  • Registers Dump
  • Processor Limitations and Known Bugs
  • Documentation WishList
  • TODO
  • AD1889 Driver
  • Artist graphics registers (used in HP9000/712)
  • Baseboard Management Controller (BMC)
  • Cache and TLB on PA8800
  • Console Types
  • Debian install guide
  • Debian/gnu Parisc Linux
  • Manual steps to install PA-RISC Linux
  • The PA-RISC Device Model
  • Discontiguous Memory Support
  • Early Development
  • The Implementation of Futexes on PA-RISC
  • Gccgo for hppa
  • GSC
  • GSP Notes
  • GSP (Guardian Service Processor) Firmware Update
  • Guardian Service Processor
  • Hall of Fame
  • Harmony Audio
  • The HIL bus and HIL drivers
  • HP3000
  • HP Product Numbers
  • HPUX-9
  • Installing Debian on hp workstation c8000
  • Interrupts
  • The PA-RISC/Linux Project
  • IO-MMU
  • IO-SAPIC
  • Kernel Profiling
  • Locks
  • Notes on porting Mono
  • NGLE
  • OLS PARISC BOF 2006
  • PA-RISC Linux Project History
  • INSTALLING PA-RISC Linux
  • PA-RISC PCI Support
  • PDC CHASSIS
  • PDC Chassis Log
  • PDC Stable Storage
  • Processor Dependent Code
  • Puffinfest Fort Collins
  • Qemu
  • Random Reverse Engineering Notes
  • PA-RISC Linux Register Conventions
  • PA-RISC Processor Registers
  • rp3410 PA-RISC server
  • Saying
  • PA-RISC Space Registers and How to use them
  • Sparse
  • Stack Unwinding
  • Thread Local Storage
  • Implementing High Precision Timers
  • Time64
  • vDSO
  • Virtual Memory
  • HP Visualize FX
  • Developments in Progress
  • Interwiki Links
• Toolchain
  • GCC - GNU Compiler Collection
  • binutils
  • GlibC
  • GDB - The GNU Debugger
  • 64-bit Userspace TODO
  • PA-RISC Linux Runtime Conventions
  • Cross compiler toolchain

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

• http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/dev/hp9000_840/ - Uni Stuttgart Computermuseum - HP 9000/840 (first PA-RISC machine)

• http://tenox.pdp-11.ru/hpux/ - 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)