Re: SGI O2 unable to boot NetBSD 9.0 through 10.0

[Frank Scheiner <frank.scheiner%web.de@localhost>]

Dear Mike,

On 23.06.24 20:45, Mike Shields wrote:
> Hello port-mips folks.
> I've been trying to get NetBSD running on a Silicon Graphics O2. I have a
> few of these machines, with various complements of memory and CPU. I've
> tested on an R5k 180MHz, an R5k 200MHz, and an R12k 400MHz. All the
> machines work flawlessly in IRIX and OpenBSD 6.9

Nice to hear about your interest in this platform. I am also very much
interested in keeping something open as NetBSD or OpenBSD working on
these iconic machines, so my involvement is more in the latter because
it supports most of my SGI machines.

You write that you tested OpenBSD 6.9 on your O2s. Say, have you already
tried newer versions of OpenBSD/sgi on them?

I maintain OpenBSD/sgi out of tree since end of 2022 and have functional
kernels up to 7.5 and sgi userlands up to 7.2 available. I am currently
working on and off on creating a 7.3 userland (mainly hindered by the
time it takes to create this on my dual 300 MHz R12K Octane (12 + 10
hours) and other involvements). But as you can run these machines also
with octeon userlands it's not a pressing issue.

Check maybe [1] for an introduction and [2] for the releases so far.

[1]: https://github.com/the-machine-hall/openbsd-src

[2]: https://github.com/the-machine-hall/openbsd-src/releases

You can find logs of successful boots on the machines I have available
for testing on [3] (also linked from [2]).

[3]: https://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=index&fts=johnny+mnemonic

I myself have O2s with 180 and 200 MHz R5Ks, but no O2 with R12K to
test. So if you like to test the IP32 kernel of OpenBSD 7.5 (and/or
other versions) on your R12K O2 and report your results back, I'd very
much appreciate that.

Cheers,
Frank