FreeBSD on OPENPOWER

[Nathan Whitehorn]

On 06/12/17 10:36, Luciano Mannucci wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Jun 2017 11:18:20 -0700
> Mark Millard <markmi at dsl-only.net> wrote:
>
>> There was:
>> http://freebsd-bugs.freebsd.narkive.com/xZOoCt9C/bug-210106-current-won-t-boot-on-ppc64-power8-under-ibm-kvm
>> about "[Bug 210106] Current won't boot on PPC64 Power8 under IBM KVM" and its
>> fix. I'll note list the material here.
>>
>> I'll stop searching with that. I do not know
>> current details. I've never had access to such
>> hardware.
> Well my Power8 runs now FreeBSD under IBM KVM and seems in good form.
> There are minor glitches that might be worth a glimpse (because of
> "sparse CPU allocation", some software [like htop] gets confused on
> which CPU it is running on), though the systems seem quite usable.
>
> I haven't tried to install FreeBSD on bare metal...
>
> Luciano.
We aren't *quite* at the point that bare metal works. There is a branch 
that boots in the simulator and nearly boots on hardware but I haven't 
been able to get around some unclearable faults generated by the PCI 
host bridge during PCI enumeration on real hardware. Especially for 
someone familiar with this hardware, or access to data sheets, it should 
be < 1 week of work to finish the port. Without that, I am currently 
stuck, however.
-Nathan