This is a guide on how to install Windows Server 2008 guest on HP Integrity VM. Yes, Itanium and HP-UX are involved. Unlike installing HP-UX or OpenVMS guests, this procedure is not widely documented (or at all) and rather an obscure process. I suppose Windows on HP-UX was never popular in first place and only maybe saw some use in the enterprise. Mid 2000, HP offered virtual labs where one could spawn their very own Win2k8 IA64 guest, but that is now long gone.

Lets say you have a HP Integrity server like rx1600, rx2600 or higher. You have HP-UX 11.31 installed on it and want to setup a Windows guest VM just for fun…

Firstly, if you have already installed Integrity VM from a recent Apps DVD, you will likely have 6.x version. This absolutely does not support Windows guests. You will need to downgrade to 4.x. To do that, start by removing the packages. You will need to uninstall the main HP VM package, as well as several others: Guest/Host AVIO, VMGuest*, VMKernel and VMProvider. You will also need to delete folders /opt/hpvm and /var/opt/hpvm. Otherwise you will run in to remains of some 6.x configs and databases that are unreadable to the older version.

Then you will need to install earlier version, for example 4.2.5, which is the last version that officially supports Windows guests. However HP VM 4.3 also works pretty well and has an added benefit of a “Virtual iLO” (but don’t get your hopes for a graphical console. Virtual iLO or not, all you get is a serial console to the guest. In case of Windows – SAC. (In practice ViLO only really provides telnet access to hpvmconsole) You can download earlier HP VM versions from here. The install is pretty straight forward, just unpack the tarball and point swinstall -s /path \* at it. I did encounter a small issue with 4.3 HPVM_1105. You need to create swlock file inside catalog directory of the extracted package to get past a lock error. Reboot and run this this to verify:

hpvminfo -S
hpvmstatus

If all good, the next step is to create a virtual switch and boot it up:

hpvmnet -c -S switch1 -n 0
hpvmnet -S switch1 -b
hpvmnet -v 

In this case -n 0 indicates lan0 interface from ifconfig.

Then you create a blank disk image, like so:

hpvmdevmgmt -A -S 20G /vm/windows.fd

Finally you create a VM and attach all the goodies:

hpvmcreate -P win64 -O windows -c 1 -r 2048
hpvmmodify -P win64 -a disk:scsi::file:/vm/windows.fd
hpvmmodify -P win64 -a dvd:scsi::file:/vm/w2k8.iso
hpvmmodify -P win64 -a network:lan::vswitch:switch1
hpvmmodify -P win64 -K x.x.x.x -L 255.255.255.0

The last bit with -K and -L is virtual iLO, only available in 4.3 and above. If using earlier version skip that part. The IP address can be on the same segment as vswitch / lan0.

Also FYI VMs are stored in /var/opt/hpvm/guests/

Before you boot it up, I will remind you again that THERE IS NO GRAPHICAL CONSOLE. You can’t boot to the setup and click through the setup screen.

HP offers 3 types of text only mode installation:

Option A.
Using something called HP Smart Setup Media from HP Integrity Essentials Foundation Pack for Windows. I miraculously found it on HP Support Website and archived here. Insert this .iso image instead of w2k8.iso above:

hpvmmodify -P win64 -a dvd:scsi::file:/vm/smartcd.iso

If you ever need to remove it, the command is:

hpvmdevmgmt -d gdev:/path/file.iso

Then boot it up:

hpvmstart -P win64
hpvmconsole -P win64
CO

If you have virtual iLO you can also telnet to the IP address of the virtual iLO configured earlier with -K.

In the EFI console you open shell, then navigate to fs0: and efi\boot folder then launch bootia64.efi file.

You will be presented with this lovely screen:

Pick the Express Setup option:

After few screens later you will be see this somewhat familiar form:

You will be asked to swap the iso image in to a Windows 2008 IA64 Install CD:

hpvmmodify -P win64 -m dvd:scsi:0,0,1:file:/vm/w2k8.iso

Once it loads up, you need to type some magic spells. Wait till you see a message that says “The CMD command is now available”, type cmd, enter, then press ESC+TAB to switch to it. Then navigate to drive C: and run install. This is the information screen for reference:

The install process takes quite a while. Fortunately you can play SimCity on HP-UX IA64 while you wait!

Eventually the VM will reboot and auto load to SAC prompt again. Repeat the process where you see cmd is available, launch it then switch using ESC+TAB. You will be able to login to Windows IA64 Guest VM!

Hurray we have Windows IA64 VM Running!

Next simply run ipconfig to get the IP address and you can RDP to it:

You can also get the IP address from SAC> by running i command

Option B
Using Windows RTM media + unattend.xml file. The HP VM admin guide provides a sample unattend.xml file in an appendix. I have extracted and archived it here.

This is the original instruction:

The above is complete bullshit as you need an existing VM to perform this. Starting from scratch this is no go. I have opted out to just adding the unattend.xml to the original iso image using PowerISO. Simple and easy.

The rest of the procedure is quite similar to option A.

hpvmstart -P win64
hpvmconsole -P win64
CO

If you have virtual iLO you can also telnet to the IP address configured earlier with -K.

In the EFI console you open shell, then navigate to fs0: and efi\boot folder then launch bootia64.efi file.

Then at some point you will get to the SAC prompt where you will have to type cmd then press ESC+TAB to switch to it. Then in cmd.exe prompt you launch setup /unattend:d:\unattend.xml. and wait for it to do it’s job.

Once the system reboots, you will have to do the cmd esc+tab thing again, but this time you will get a login prompt. Login as administrator with the password from unattend.xml.

You will need to enable remote desktop:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server" /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

and allow it through the firewall:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="remote desktop" new enable=yes

The Smart Setup CD does this automatically.

Option C
PXE+RIS etc. Which is not covered here.

Post Install Steps

You basically get the IP address either SAC> i, by running ipconfig in cmd.exe of SAC or simply from your DHCP server. Then RDP to the VM. Login in as administrator with password you set either in unattend.xml or EFI install tool.

The Smart Setup CD has some drivers and components that can be installed on a VM.

What can you run on this?

Not much. From the “big apps” there’s MS SQL server, SAP, Oracle and whatnot. 7zip and bunch of utilities from Sysinternals to C-Kermit. You can port more apps by installing Platform SDK and Visual Studio Tools. The latest known is Windows 7.1 SDK for IA64. It requires .NET 4.x to be installed. All archived here.

From lesser known items there’s Services For Unix, aka Interix, which has a cc wrapper around cl.exe and can be used to port posix apps:

Updates:

• If the HP VM throws error “Integrity VM Unsupported Evaluation Version has expired” just move time back with date command and everything will work just fine.

• To activate 2008 Server VM use GVLK key 4DWFP-JF3DJ-B7DTH-78FJB-PDRHK published on this Microsoft website.

slmgr /ipk 4DWFP-JF3DJ-B7DTH-78FJB-PDRHK
slmgr /skms public.kms.server
slmgr /ato

• You may want to run some NT Games from here, also there is now port of SimCity (WinTown) to IA64 Windows – here

• Have Fun with Virtualization!

• If you find or port some cool software for Windows IA64 let us know!

So forever ago I had done a super bare port of Quake to NeXTSTEP.  It was based on a copy of UAE 0.6.0 source code that included hooks for NeXTSTEP.  So seizing on this I built a shaky framework and amazingly got it to work.  Well work enough I had trouble with the mouse part, and never did get around to fixing it, but I kicked it out into the world.  And amazingly the HPPA cross compiled version that I compiled but never tested runs!

My whole misadventure is on nextcomputers.org, and blakespot has a blog about finding the gecko and it’s 32bit video modes here.

Oh noes!

I had just found out that the Oregon Trail game is a LOT older than the Apple II version that infested schools in the 1980’s and gave us the infamous broken axle. As a matter of fact it was first written for the HP 2100, in BASIC.

Yes the computer was the size of a wagon!

There is a most excellent blog, The Digital Antiquarian that goes over the restoration of this old gem.  Even better they managed to get it loaded up onto a timesharing image, on the internet so you can play it! (it’s been since taken offline. sorry).

You can download the source here/mirror, along with a revised 1978 version.

Directions from the site:

1. Telnet to mickey.ath.cx. (Telnet, mind you. None of that newfangled SSH!)
2. Slowly alternate CTL-J and CTL-M until you see a “PLEASE LOG IN” message.
3. Enter “HEL-T001,HP2000,1″. Without the quotes, of course — and note that those are zeroes. Oh, and the system isnâ€t case-sensitive, but for the authentic experience you might want to have your caps lock on.
4. Enter “GET-OREGON” to load the 1975 version, “GET-ORE2″ to load the 1978 version.
5. “LIST” the program if you like, or just “RUN” it.

You can download a working disk for the SIMH HP-2100 emulator(mirror) here/mirror.  This comes pre-loaded with the 1978 version.

HP-2100 menu

Select option J and away you go.

It seems easier then I recall as a kid, not to mention I won the first time I played it!

Victory!

Don't you love days like this?

So here I was installing OpenBSD 4.5 amd64 on some HP DL386’s with.. AMD Opterons, and during the install it crashed out with the error message:

fatal machine check in supervisor mode
trap type 18 code 0 rip……….

And odds are if you may be here for the same thing, as google came up with 0 hits on fatal machine check in supervisor mode.

Nothing.

Nill.

But I’ve got a crash screen to prove it.

Now here is a kicker, I found in the bios if you turn off the “Page directory cache”, for “older Linux kernels”, you can complete your install!!

The downside, is that a dmesg causes a kernel fault.

Sigh.

So annoying.