freebsd on pi4b won't boot

[Mike Scott]

(This follows from the wireshark thread, but I've tried to move on)

I have a sparkling new rpi4B 4Gb. It booted raspbian (off the net)
happily, so I know that (a) the hardware works, and (b) I know how to
write the relevant sd card.

I've written the system
FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img
onto the sdcard, but all I get is the multicoloured screen that
indicates a problem. The green LED flickered irregularly on the way -
but hard to know which flickers are significant.

(I've used the same system in a pi3 - boots correctly)

I've also tried putting the same card in a USB reader (I gather from the
web that that ought to boot) - that gives a screenload of text moaning
about MSD command timeout plus other stuff. then seems to crash the pi
and goes back to the coloured screen.

In desperation I've tried writing the image to an HDD and connecting to
USB. That just goes to the coloured screen.


Can anyone help me get this going please? I really want to boot from HD
ultimately. Thanks.





--
Mike Scott
Harlow, England

[bob prohaska]

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi Mike Scott <usen...@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:
> (This follows from the wireshark thread, but I've tried to move on)
>
> I have a sparkling new rpi4B 4Gb. It booted raspbian (off the net)
> happily, so I know that (a) the hardware works, and (b) I know how to
> write the relevant sd card.
>

[snip]

> Can anyone help me get this going please? I really want to boot from HD
> ultimately. Thanks.

Best to take a look at the freebsd-arm mailing list archives at
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-arm/
While at it, subscribe to at least freebsd-arm. I've gotten vast
amounts of help there.

There are a few (many?) details to be worked through. I did it after
getting my RPI4, which is now working happily, proof positive that
it's a doable proposition with limited knowhow. As a first try, just
pick a different snapshot and try that. Older, newer, doesn't matter.
Start with SD card boot, then move to USB when you've got a good image.

I've put some random notes at
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-arm/
but there are better resources by now.

Hope this helps,

bob prohaska

[bob prohaska]

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi bob prohaska <b...@www.zefox.net> wrote:
>
> I've put some random notes at
> https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-arm/
> but there are better resources by now.

Sorry, didn't refresh the clipboard. My notes are at
http://www.zefox.net/~fbsd/
Alas, the disclaimer really does still apply.

Apologies for the confusion!

bob prohaska

[Mike Scott]

Thanks for the advice. After posting, I kept digging around, and came
up with a long thread at
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=255080

of which comment #15 gives a download link (sourceforge) for an updated
u-boot.bin which works fine for the sdcard boot.

However, booting from HD, it stalled after complaining 'mountroot:
waiting for device /dev/ufs/rootfs'.

Cranking up kern.cam.boot_delay to 10 sec, necessary for the pi3, has
mixed success here. Sometimes boots, sometimes not; sometimes tries the
network instead. I'll free up a spare disk, and see if that makes a
difference.

[Christoph Sold]

Mike Scott schrieb am Freitag, 24. September 2021 um 21:01:26 UTC+2:
> (This follows from the wireshark thread, but I've tried to move on)
>
> I have a sparkling new rpi4B 4Gb. It booted raspbian (off the net)
> happily, so I know that (a) the hardware works, and (b) I know how to
> write the relevant sd card.

Yep, that's to be expected out of the box.

> I've written the system
> FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img
> onto the sdcard, but all I get is the multicoloured screen that
> indicates a problem. The green LED flickered irregularly on the way -
> but hard to know which flickers are significant.
>
> (I've used the same system in a pi3 - boots correctly)

Pi 3 utilizes a different bootloader.

> […]

> Can anyone help me get this going please? I really want to boot from HD
> ultimately. Thanks.

Make sure you use an updated bootloader.
https://medium.com/swlh/freebsd-usb-boot-on-raspberry-pi-4-765cb6e75570

HTH
-Christoph

[Mike Scott]

On 25/09/2021 14:27, Christoph Sold wrote:
....

>
> Make sure you use an updated bootloader.
> https://medium.com/swlh/freebsd-usb-boot-on-raspberry-pi-4-765cb6e75570
>
> HTH
> -Christoph
>
>

Thanks, yes I did eventually find an update for u-boot.bin
(https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=255080, and use
comment #15 if anyone else needs it)

The HD situation was complicated by my picking the duff one of the 3
spare disks I had around - it seems to initialize too slowly for the pi.

I notice the fbsd 10 seconds boot countdown runs a factor about 6 slow
though. I guess I can live with a slow boot (I'm intending, all being
well, to replace a power-hungry i386 that runs 24/7 for months on end)

Thanks for replying.

[Bob Eager]

On Sat, 25 Sep 2021 16:39:26 +0100, Mike Scott wrote:

> I notice the fbsd 10 seconds boot countdown runs a factor about 6 slow
> though.

Create or edit /boot/loader.conf.local. Add:

autoboot_delay="5" # for example, to halve the default time


--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

[bob prohaska]

FWIW, here's the /boot/loader.conf for my Pi4:
# more /boot/loader.conf
# Configure USB OTG; see usb_template(4).
hw.usb.template=3
umodem_load="YES"
# Multiple console (serial+efi gop) enabled.
boot_multicons="YES"
boot_serial="YES"
# Disable the beastie menu and color
beastie_disable="YES"
loader_color="NO"
filemon_load="YES"
net.inet.tcp.tolerate_missing_ts="1"

In particular, I don't recall where the line
hw.usb.template=3
came from. If you don't have it that might be
worth a try. My HDD is a 1 TB Seagate in a
$10 USB-SATA case, both from Amazon, about as
cheap as it gets.

If you don't have a serial console set up
it might pay to acquire the usb-serial adapter
needed. FreeBSD still won't listen to the USB
keyboard in single-user mode. That makes it very
difficult to debug (and report) problems.

Glad you got it working thus far!

bob prohaska

[Mike Scott]

On 26/09/2021 01:58, bob prohaska wrote:
....

> Glad you got it working thus far!
>
> bob prohaska
>
>
>

Thanks for the info.

I've now had it running happily off either sdcard or booting from HD.
But I've hit another annoyance.

Basically, it won't run with two USB HDs attached. If I boot off sdcard,
then plug in the disks, the first is fine: the second produces a stack
of errors then crashes.

Messages start with
da0: .... destroyed
then it detaches the keyboard and mouse, then I get
usbd_req_re_enumerate: .... USB_ERR_IOERROR, ignored

and it's power cycle time. Ouch!

Anyone had two HD's working in at once?

The PSU is the rpi 15W standard issue, btw. Could that be an issue though?

[c...@nospam.com]

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi Mike Scott <usen...@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

> I've now had it running happily off either sdcard or booting from HD.
> But I've hit another annoyance.
>
> Basically, it won't run with two USB HDs attached. If I boot off sdcard,
> then plug in the disks, the first is fine: the second produces a stack
> of errors then crashes.
>
> Messages start with
> da0: .... destroyed
> then it detaches the keyboard and mouse, then I get
> usbd_req_re_enumerate: .... USB_ERR_IOERROR, ignored
>
> and it's power cycle time. Ouch!
>
> Anyone had two HD's working in at once?
>
> The PSU is the rpi 15W standard issue, btw. Could that be an issue though?

The pi internals cannot supply 2 HDs with power. Use an external USB C hub
with its own power.

--
http://www.netunix.com/

[David Higton]

In message <sis1fu$htm$1...@dont-email.me>

Mike Scott <usen...@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

> I've now had it running happily off either sdcard or booting from HD.
> But I've hit another annoyance.
>
> Basically, it won't run with two USB HDs attached. If I boot off sdcard,
> then plug in the disks, the first is fine: the second produces a stack of
> errors then crashes.
>
> Messages start with da0: .... destroyed then it detaches the keyboard and
> mouse, then I get usbd_req_re_enumerate: .... USB_ERR_IOERROR, ignored
>
> and it's power cycle time. Ouch!
>
> Anyone had two HD's working in at once?
>
> The PSU is the rpi 15W standard issue, btw. Could that be an issue though?

It's pretty much certain.

I do have a RasPi with two HDDs attached, but to make that work I had to
get a very powerful PSU (mine's rated at 8 amps, which is more than enough,
but it was not expensive), and, crucially, I had to jumper the main 5V
line to the USB power pins so as to avoid the current limiting circuitry
asspciated with USB within the Pi. This has my setup relying on the PSU's
current limiting.

Don't do this unless you know what you're doing.

The other advice, getting a powered USB hub, is wise.

This may be jumping ahead a bit; but, if you get a hub and want to run
both the Pi and the hub off the same PSU, beware of cheap power splitters
that don't have enough copper in them and thus drop too much voltage.

David

[Mike Scott]

On 27/09/2021 14:10, David Higton wrote:
....

>> Anyone had two HD's working in at once?
>>
>> The PSU is the rpi 15W standard issue, btw. Could that be an issue though?
>
> It's pretty much certain.
>
> I do have a RasPi with two HDDs attached, but to make that work I had to
> get a very powerful PSU (mine's rated at 8 amps, which is more than enough,
> but it was not expensive), and, crucially, I had to jumper the main 5V
> line to the USB power pins so as to avoid the current limiting circuitry
> asspciated with USB within the Pi. This has my setup relying on the PSU's
> current limiting.
>
> Don't do this unless you know what you're doing.
>
> The other advice, getting a powered USB hub, is wise.
>
> This may be jumping ahead a bit; but, if you get a hub and want to run
> both the Pi and the hub off the same PSU, beware of cheap power splitters
> that don't have enough copper in them and thus drop too much voltage.
>
> David
>

OK, thanks - I get the picture. NCD, as my old maths teacher used to say.

The immediate reason for doing this is that the root partition resizes
to fill the disk. I can't work out a way of making it resize to what I
want -- hence a desire to copy between disks. But my knowledge of
partitions is ATM clearly too limited :-{

Longer term is that this would prevent my current offline backup scheme
(plug in backup disk, rsync, unplug disk) from working. I'll have to
think a bit before proceeding.

Thanks again (to all, for your answers and patience).

[Martin Gregorie]

On Mon, 27 Sep 2021 16:29:50 +0100, Mike Scott wrote:

> Longer term is that this would prevent my current offline backup scheme
> (plug in backup disk, rsync, unplug disk) from working. I'll have to
> think a bit before proceeding.
>

Don't forget that rsync can backup to a disk attached to a different
machine on your LAN - when this is running there's a copy of rsync
running on each machine: they talk to each other to transfer the data
being backed up so, if the disk receiving backed up files is attached to
a host other than the RPi, you don't need to attach more than one HDD to
it.

I've been using this backup system for several years now. I'm backing up
one RPi and three other Linux systems onto the same USB-connected HDD
which, like you're planning to do, is kept offline in a firesafe when not
receiving backups. Actually I have two backup disks, which are used in
rotation, so there is always one in the firesafe with the door closed.


--
--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. The tradeoffs between a usb connected drive and a usb connected
gigabit ethernet are worth exploring, if you have, or feel like
building, a NAS type solution


--
WOKE is an acronym... Without Originality, Knowledge or Education.

[Mike Scott]

Thanks to both for the comments.

FWIW my main backup strategy is dump running daily, networking the
output to my desktop machine. So if the server dies nastily and kills
its disks, the data is safe elsewhere (although restore is /very/
messy!). That's kept for a couple of weeks. The 'rsync' backup is done
occasionally, mainly to have a hot standby that's "not too out-of-date".

I'll review matters when the pi is running to my satisfaction.

[Martin Gregorie]

Backup frequency:

I do the backups I described on a weekly basis, immediately before
running software updates on all systems. That's a dnf update on the
Fedora-based systems and apt update on RPis.

One of the Fedora machines is also my 'house server', which means it
holds much more data, (mail archive, git repositories for locally
developed software, etc.) so it additionally gets backed up overnight
using rsnapshot, with the backups held on a USB drive that sits alongside
the machine it backs up.

As this is primarily a sort of 'finger-trouble' protection I accept that
its not proof against power spikes, fire, etc. Using a USB drive is a
deliberate choice: each night a cron job mounts it, runs the rsnapshot
backup and unmounts it, so it should should be fairly safe against
malicious software because its invisible when unmounted. The backup run
normally takes just under 10 minutes.

[bob prohaska]

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi Mike Scott <usen...@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:
>

> The immediate reason for doing this is that the root partition resizes
> to fill the disk. I can't work out a way of making it resize to what I
> want -- hence a desire to copy between disks. But my knowledge of
> partitions is ATM clearly too limited :-{

Not trivial, but doable if you can afford a few do-overs 8-)

Here are some notes that might help:
http://www.zefox.net/~fbsd/freebsd_on_raspberrypi
My procedure supposes single-user mode. You can suppress
the filesystem resize by mouting the unbooted image media
elsewhere and renaming or deleting an empty file in the
FreeBSD root directory named firstboot.

HTH,

bob prohaska

[NoOne]

On Mon, 27 Sep 2021 10:37:49 +0000, crn wrote:

> The pi internals cannot supply 2 HDs with power. Use an external USB C hub
> with its own power.

...or a USB drive which has it's own power skt and PSU.