Definitely not the first person doing this. In fact this has been quite widely documented, in particular by astr0baby and openpa.net. Just my personal observations and tweaks.

Install

ISOs from 2006 MCOE work just fine

qemu-img create -f qcow2 hpux.img 20G

qemu-system-hppa \
-machine B160L \
-smp cpus=4 \
-accel tcg,thread=multi \
-boot d \
-drive if=scsi,bus=0,index=6,file=hpux.img,format=qcow2 \
-m 512 \
-d nochain \
-cdrom mcoe.1_5.iso \
-net nic,model=tulip \
-net user

I installed mostly the defaults, removed Java spyware and Web based management.

I recommend using advanced mode and editing File Systems to your desired size or just leaving /stand and / and deleting everything else. Otherwise, if you do defaults, you will be facing resizing them in single user mode later.

Forget any serial console, telnet stdio or forwarding X over SSH nonsense. Graphical console now works fully end to end without any issues, except for nsswitch.conf.

When trying to login via CDE you will get an error about unable to start desktop messaging system. Login either via text console or failsafe session. Copy /etc/nsswitch.files to /etc/nsswitch.conf. Also make sure that your hostname can resolve via /etc/hosts.

Once this is done you should be able to login via CDE:

If you left filesystem defaults, you will be facing this:

To fix this, add -boot menu=on to qemu parameters, run boot pri then answer yes to interact with IPL and then type hpux -is.

This will land you in single user mode where you can extend volumes like so:

# cat /etc/fstab
....
lvextend -L 4096 /dev/vg00/lvol7
extendfs /dev/vg00/lvol7
....

But ideally this should be done ahead of time during install in File Systems tabs (advanced mode).

I like to disable some slow starting and unnecessary services on startup, to do so go to /etc/rc.config.d and edit bunch of files changing value from =1 to =0. I typically disable SNMP, CIM and Mailserver, Webadmin, Diagnostics, EMS, nettl, icod, etc at minimum. Also some stubborn services need to be disabled by renaming or removing them from /sbin/rcX.d …

Software Install

Note that this emulates PA-RISC 1.1 (32bit) and software built for PA-RISC 2.0 (64bit) will not work. Very little software is marked which platform is it for, so your mileage will vary. You will encounter errors and crashes. To avoid confusion check the binary with file(1) utility.

I have a bunch of handy tools like bash/gmake/gzip/gtar/ncftp bundled up here. There is GCC 4.0.2 here as a depot and here as a tarball. I also installed a bunch of tools and enhancements from Soft Pack and Apps cdroms.

Most importantly SimCity!

More games can be found here. However this emulated HP-UX doesn’t have working OpenGL so don’t expect much.

Finally, to shut down the os:

reboot -h

The ready to run image is available here. It works with QEMU 10.1. It has bash & gcc pre-installed. Login as root/root.

https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Qemu

Being the unfair person I am, I thought I’d try NeXTSTEP to see how far it gets.

Processor   Speed            State           Coprocessor State  Cache Size
---------  --------   ---------------------  -----------------  ----------
0      250 MHz    Active                 Functional            0 KB

Available memory: 512 MB
Good memory required: 16 MB

Primary boot path: FWSCSI.6.0
Alternate boot path: LAN.0.0.0.0.0.0
Console path: SERIAL_1.9600.8.none
Keyboard path: PS2

Available boot devices:
1. DVD/CD [lsi 00:00.0 2:0 Drive QEMU QEMU CD-ROM 2.5+]
2. lsi 00:00.0 0:0 Drive QEMU QEMU HARDDISK 2.5+

Booting from lsi 00:00.0 0:0 Drive QEMU QEMU HARDDISK 2.5+

Booting...
Boot IO Dependent Code (IODC) revision 153

HARD Booted.
Can't determine I/O subsystem type

NEXTSTEP boot v3.3.4.17
524288 memory

NEXTSTEP will start up in 10 seconds, or you can:
Type -v and press Return to start up NEXTSTEP with diagnostic messages
Type ? and press Return to learn about advanced startup options
Type any other character to stop NEXTSTEP from starting up automatically

boot:

And amazingly the bootloader works, although that is about it. Trying to boot up OpenBSD gets about this far:

PDC_CHASSIS: Initialize (3), CHASSIS  cec0
>> OpenBSD/hppa CDBOOT 0.2
booting dk0a:/bsd.rd: 2703360+851960+2675712+547840=0x8631f0


SeaBIOS: Unimplemented PDC_CACHE function 1 8ddad0 1 1 1

I found on Windows though that the Debian 8 CD’s work the best, as the earlier ones lock up after loading a kernel, and the later one doesn’t fully initialize.  I’ve been using this one: debian-8.0-hppa-NETINST-1.iso  Serial console interaction is the way to go, so I ran Qemu like this:

qemu-system-hppa.exe -L . -serial telnet:127.0.0.1:4444,server,wait -boot d -cdrom debian-8.0-hppa-NETINST-1.iso -hda Deiban8HPPA.vmdk

So this way I can get get the install kicked off.  Although I should probably have just downloaded debian-8.0-hppa-CD-1.iso

Linux on HPPA

Otherwise, yeah, it’s Linux, on HPPA

And for anyone who is interested, the only version of HP-UX I have hanging around, HP-UX 10.20 [HP9000 S700] gives me the following:

HP-UX 10.20 on Qemu