Re: FreeBSD on PowerVM LPARs (powerpc64le) — LibrePower PoC

Hi Adrian, Justin,

Thank you very much for your prompt feedback, and apologies for my
late reply. 

Everything is available here:

	* https://librepower.org/platforms/freebsd/ — our public website,
which lists what currently works out of the box. An OVA for PowerVS*
is already available, along with two installer ISOs. The ISOs have
only been booted under qemu so far; testing them on real
POWER9/POWER10/POWER11 LPARs is next.

note: it is an honour to share this here first, before announcing it.
This community deserves nothing less :)

	* https://gitlab.com/librepower/freebsd-powervm — the repository
containing 21 patches against main at a257e2dc9c6e, arranged in
application order, with one logical change per patch and the
corresponding READMEs and changelog.

That said, this is still a work in progress. I am continuing to
measure and validate it, so please treat the code and numbers as
provisional: the overall shape of the work is more settled than some
of the details. I am also rerunning the build checks against that
exact base revision and will correct anything that does not pass.

Please note that on PowerVS* the boot disk is exposed via virtual
Fibre Channel, whose driver is maintained separately in the same
repository. The published image already includes it.

Rather than fill this email with the technical challenges you asked
about, I have documented them here and will keep the page current:

https://gitlab.com/librepower/freebsd-powervm/-/blob/main/docs/technical-summary.md

There are currently fourteen items, divided between issues that I
believe should be fixed in FreeBSD and platform behaviours worth
documenting before someone loses a day debugging what turns out to be
byte order, interrupt handling, or RTAS behaviour.
Regarding packages, I have been building a powerpc64le package set
because none was available. It currently contains 168 packages,
including Rust:

https://librepower.org/freebsd/FreeBSD:15:powerpc64le/latest

Go also builds using the FreeBSD/ppc64le port maintained by Raptor
Engineering, although I have not packaged it yet. If official
ppc64le/ppc64 packages for 15 and 16 are something you want to get
going, I would be glad to help with the legwork.

Regarding upstreaming, I have no previous FreeBSD or Phabricator
experience, so I would much rather follow your lead than make
assumptions about the preferred process. Please let me know which
parts you consider worth landing and in what order. I will then submit
them as Differentials—or in whatever form creates the least work for
you. I am in no hurry and would rather send three patches you want
than an entire series you have to triage.

@Javi, regarding endianness: big-endian would not have booted as-is
either. FreeBSD’s pseries support was never validated against PHYP
in either endianness, so a big-endian LPAR requires much the same
work. Since the work had to be done either way, ppc64le makes more
sense—it is what Linux on Power ships by default.

I am happy to expand on any of this—or to be told that I have got
the wrong end of the stick.

Thank you again and best regards,

Hugo

* You can try it on PowerVS for free
- https://community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/val-besong/2026/01/13/powervs2500-try-ibm-power-virtual-server-free-for 

Le 2026-08-05T19:21:42.000+02:00, Javi Hotmail
<[email protected]> a écrit :

> Hello Hugo,
> 
> Really interesting, also as a Spaniard myself I'm surprise that I
> didn't know about this initiative, absolutely fantastic.
> 
> Any possibility that you guys can give also to powerpc64 (big
> endian)? I still run with PPC970 and 7400 around here, and it would
> be terrible if IBM keeps this trend of pushing only for powerpc64le.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Javi.
> 
> On 8/4/26 20:09, LibrePower wrote:
> 
>>  Hello everyone,
>>  
>>  First, thank you to everyone who has kept FreeBSD on PowerPC alive
>>  over the years.
>>  
>>  I have just joined the list and wanted to briefly introduce some
>>  work we have been doing at LibrePower.
>>  
>>  Over the past few months, we have been working on running FreeBSD
>>  as a native PowerVM LPAR on IBM POWER9/10/11. We now have an early
>>  PoC with virtual networking and NPIV-backed storage working,
>>  currently tested on IBM Power Virtual Server.
>>  
>>  This is still an early and limited system. We have also started
>>  building a small powerpc64le package repository to make the system
>>  more usable.
>>  
>>  Some parts of the implementation, including the NPIV work, have
>>  been AI-assisted. We understand the review concerns this may
>>  raise, so our intention is to submit small, documented patches
>>  that can be independently reviewed and tested.
>>  
>>  Before proceeding, we would appreciate your guidance:
>>  
>>       *
>>  Is PowerVM LPAR support of interest to the project?
>>  
>>       *
>>  Where should we publish the current work and start submitting
>>  patches?
>>  
>>       *
>>  Would a short technical summary of the blockers, changes and test
>>  results be a useful first step?
>>  
>>  We would be glad to contribute the work upstream and follow the
>>  project’s preferred review process.
>>  
>>  Best regards 
>>  
>>  -- 
>>  
>>  Hugo
>>  
>>   LIBREPOWER — OPEN SOURCE FOR IBM POWER SYSTEMS
>>  http://librepower.org/

 
		 

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