The OpenBSD 5.8 on SIMH VAX saga: Part 1 - kernel panic when building ports

OpenBSD/vax 5.8 Kernel Panic and Crash

I installed OpenBSD 5.8 for VAX (the final OpenBSD release for the VAX architecture before OpenBSD stopped supporting VAX) on a SIMH 4 VAX 3900. Booting from the distribution CD-ROM ISO and using "netinstall" went fine. OpenBSD/VAX 5.8 booted up and seemed to work.

Trouble started when I tried to build packages from the OpenBSD ports collection. My first build attempt for shells/bash caused a kernel panic and crash, a very rare occurrence in all of my forays into classic BSD and Unix varieties for different architectures.

I tried various things, like falling back to the "classic" SIMH version 3.9 and disabling the swap space on the second disk. The kernel panic is persistent, and I will have to come back to this and spend more time researching it. Part-2 of this saga will be posted some day.

The kernel panic and crash is consistent:

panic: rmpage: pg 0x80635ad8 br 0x88044300
Stopped at      rmpage+0xc7:    cmpl    8(r6), r2
RUN AT LEAST 'trace' AND 'ps' AND INCLUDE OUTPUT WHEN REPORTING THIS PANIC!
DO NOT EVEN BOTHER REPORTING THIS WITHOUT INCLUDING THAT INFORMATION!
ddb>

The basic environment is:

OpenBSD 5.8 (GENERIC) #117: Sun Aug 16 06:42:12 MDT 2015
    deraadt@vax.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/vax/compile/GENERIC
MicroVAX 3800/3900 [0A000006 01530302]
cpu: KA655, CVAX microcode rev 6 Firmware rev 83

SIMH INI file

;

; Set the CPU type and memory size for this hardware configuration:

;

set CPU 512M 

;set CPU IDLE=OPENBSDOLD

set CPU IDLE=OPENBSD

set ROM NODELAY 

;set cpu simhalt

set CPU CONHALT 

attach nvr ../data/nvram.bin

load -r ../data/ka655x.bin 

; Line printer - uncomment if you want to enable.

set lpt enable

attach lpt ../data/openbsd-vax-line-printer-output.txt

;

; Disable devices we won't be needing (for now)

;

; Device DHQ11 Terminal Multiplexor (VH) 

set VH disable 

; Device UQSSP Tape Controller 0 

set TQ disable 

; Device TSV11/TSV05 Tape Controller 

set TS disable 

; Device RLV12 Controller 0 

set RL disable 

; Device Serial Adapter 16 Lines 

set DZ disable 

; Device UQSSP Disk Controller 1 

set RQB disable 

; Device UQSSP Disk Controller 2 

set RQC disable 

; Device UQSSP Disk Controller 3 

set RQD disable 

;

; Device RQ (DUAn disks) is automatically enabled in the

; simulator. Attach the data files to be used as the disks.

;

set rq enable

;ra92 disk capacity is 1.5GB

set rq0 ra92

attach rq0 ../data/openbsd-vax.ra92-1.5gb.disk0.dsk

set rq1 ra92

attach rq1 ../data/openbsd-vax.ra92-1.5gb.disk1.dsk

; OpenBSD CD ROM 

set rq2 rrd40

attach -r rq2 ../data/install58.iso

set rq3 disable

; Ethernet adapter for TCP/IP

set xq enable

; MAC OUI 58-9C-FC Vendor is FreeBSD Foundation (closest to OpenBSD)

; IP - 10.42.2.28

set xq mac=58-9C-FC-B5-11-E4

attach xq vde:/tmp/vde-ip.ctl

; DECnet adapter - DECnet is not available for OpenBSD (this is just a placeholder)

set xqb enable

;set xqb mac=AA-00-04-00-.....

set xqb mac=58-9C-FC-B5-11-E5

attach xqb vde:/tmp/vde-dnet.ctl

;

boot cpu

exit

Initial install log

Adding a disk and trying to build ports (causes kernel panic)