Re: porting Linux onto HP-PA workstations

[Dr A V Le Blanc <nospam [at] mcc.ac.uk>]

On Sun, Mar 12, 2000 at 04:06:56PM -0000, Patrick Barber wrote:
> I have seen and posted a enquiry to a newsgroup for LINUX
> ports(linux.ports.hp-pa), but I have had no response from it yet.
> 
> Has any body heard, or even better ported LINUX onto a HP9000 715/100XC PA
> RISC workstation? If so what was the procedure?
> 
> I am currently running SuSe 6.1. And if I could get LINUX running on the HP
> m/c I think it would make an excellent server(SAMBA, APACHE, and mail
> server(SMTP, MAPI and POP3), for use on my home network.

I unsubscribed from the newsgroup, because it was rather too busy.
There was a port some while back for MK-Linux; that is, Linux
running under Mach, but this was allowed to wither away; I don't
think the support for X ever got properly going.

A later project was started by The Puffin Group, which is being
paid by HP to port Linux to the PA-RISC family.

     http://thepuffingroup.com/parisc/

They have been getting a lot of help and encouragement from HP.
As of June, the kernel would boot but had no shell or ability to
read file systems.  In October, some shell support and file system
support was available.  In February it was announced that the
stand-alone shell sash now works completely.  (Formerly I remember
there being problems with a few little syscalls, like open and
close.  As long as you didn't need to use files, you were OK.)
Development is currently based around kernel 2.3.42 with a 64-bit
kernel.  There's a weekly status report on the web site, and a lot
of information, including source and binaries.  Don't expect a
stable system or an easy installation.  The kernel does not yet
support ELF, which is needed to get most of the libraries and
applications going.  Last I checked, a lot of hardware is not
yet supported.  You might want to check the hardware database
to see whether your stuff is currently supported.

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc [at] mcc.ac.uk
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