OpenBSD/loongson

OpenBSD/loongson is a port intended to run on systems based upon the Loongson (also known as Godson) 2E and 2F MIPS-compatible processors, using the PMON firmware and boot loader.

Table of contents

• History of the port
• Supported hardware
• Current status
• Getting and installing OpenBSD/loongson

History:

The idea of an OpenBSD/loongson started when the EMTEC Gdium Liberty netbook was announced. Unfortunately, the general availability of these machines kept being delayed. Because of this, focus switched to the Lemote Yeeloong netbook instead. After procrastinating for months, serious work started in August 2009, and the kernel work was completed by the end of November 2009.

Unfortunately, most of the Loongson 2F-based hardware available at that time suffers from serious problems in the processor's branch prediction logic, causing the system to freeze, for which errata information only exists in the Chinese documentation (chapter 15, missing from the English translation), the only English language information being an e-mail on a toolchain mailing-list.

After a rush of adding silicon problems workarounds, the port to the Lemote Yeeloong was completed and self hosting by the end of January 2010.

This solid foundation allowed for support for other designs to be added pretty quickly, over the next couple of weeks.

And work continues...

Supported hardware:

The OpenBSD/loongson kernel has generic support for systems built with either Loongson 2E processors and Algorithmics Bonito64 PCI and memory controller, or Loongson 2F processors with their integrated PCI/PCI-X and memory controller. Specific hardware support is then written on a design-by-design basis.

At the moment, the following machines are supported:

• Lemote Fuloong 2F mini-PC
  All on-board devices are supported, but the framebuffer is currently limited to the 640x400x8 video mode set up by the firmware.
• Lemote Lynloong all-in-one-PC
  All on-board devices are supported, but the framebuffer is currently limited to the 1360x768x16 video mode set up by the firmware.
• Lemote Yeeloong netbook
  Both the 8.9" and 10.1" models are supported. All on-board devices are supported.
• EMTEC Gdium Liberty 1000 netbook
  All on-board devices but the audio controller are supported.

Current status:

All supported systems run multiuser, and a currently unaccelerated X server is available.

Getting and installing OpenBSD/loongson:

The latest supported OpenBSD/loongson release is OpenBSD 5.4. Here are the OpenBSD/loongson 5.4 installation instructions .

Snapshots are made available from time to time, in this location as well as in a few mirrors. Here are the OpenBSD/loongson snapshot installation instructions as well.