While many tend to fixate on OpenVMS' First Boot on Intel x86-64, there are actually a number of key milestones, or proof points, before we achieve First Boot.
We want to share our excitement about the significant engineering progress we have made to date, by listing the status of some of the significant Proof Points on the way to the First Boot of OpenVMS on Intel x86-64.
This page replaces the "State of the Port" powerpoint slides that we used to release on a quarterly basis in the past. Archival links to these "State of the Port" presentations are also listed in the Side Bar below.
After First Boot, we will provide the status of Proof Points for our next major porting milestone: the first Early Adapters Kit (EAK 1). We look forward to inviting select customers to provide input on the architecture and field tests for this EAK 1 release.
Proof Points to x86-64 First Boot
Proof Point Snapshot
• Proof Point 1 - |
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Stop at end-of-SYSBOOT breakpoint & issue “;L” to XDELTA |
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• Proof Point 2 - |
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Transition to the Runtime Environment |
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• Proof Point 3 - |
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Executed first system service call |
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• Proof Point 4 - |
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Display early loaded image list |
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• Proof Point 5 - |
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Display VSI welcome banner |
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• Proof Point 6 - |
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Display complete loaded image list |
History of the Port
The following are links to past State of the Port PDF downloads of quarterly State of the Port reports.
Display the complete loaded image list after completing system initialization.
Display welcome banner: "VMS Software, Inc. OpenVMS (TM) x86_64 Operating System"
Display the early loaded image list, after transitioning execution from the boot environment to running in system space.
Calling a system service involves proper setup of dispatch tables, initializing the x86 SYSCALL mechanism, and successfully returning from the call. Much of this operation is new code for x86 integrated with the existing VMS system service interface.
We achieved our second Proof Point on June 29, 2018, by successfully making the transition from executing in the boot environment to executing a routine running in the runtime environment. This requires successfully switching to system context.
This proof point represents work in the compiler, the linker, the loader, and the executive code which manages context switching. Also, the XDELTA debugger was a necessary component for verifying the result. An underlying facilitator of this accomplishment is the calling of a routine in another image which, in and of itself, is a significant milestone.
Proof Point #1 is defined as – stopping at the end-of-SYSBOOT breakpoint and issuing “;L” to XDELTA to get the list of images, including their image sections, SYSBOOT has loaded.
On 29-May-2018 we demonstrated ";L" at the end of SYSBOOT. Its output is at the end of this posting. Everything is not perfect yet but the current result is as expected. It shows many things have been accomplished and the overall underpinnings for the next step are in place.
The following work remains in order to make things complete at this point in the boot process.
- There are four more exec images to be loaded: ERRORLOG.EXE, SYSTEM_SYNCHRONIZATION.EXE, SYS$PLATFORM_SUPPORT.EXE, and SYSTEM_PRIMITIVES_0.EXE. The first two will be picked up within the next week. The latter two require more compiler and memory management work.
- We need to read the parameter file X86_64VMSSYS.PAR and populate system data cells with the appropriate values.
- XDELTA needs to update its “;L” output formatting as some values are 64b that are 32b on Alpha and IA64.
Boot Path Output
Click here to see the full boot path from BOOTMGR> BOOT to ;L. The linked PDF is the output from a captured terminal session from a network boot of the memory disk file, which was created on our development cluster.