Re: Unable to boot Pi 3b+ SOLVED

On Aug 18, 2023, at 09:41, Peter G <list-freebsd-arm@box559.com> wrote:

> . . .
> 
> Okay, finally working!

Cool.

> I replaced start.elf and fixup.dat, and only those two files, in 13.2-RELEASE with the ones from 14.0-ALPHA1, and that boots (usually).

So the old *.dtb is still in use vs. the newer one
for using the pure 14.0-ALPHA* RPi* firmware. For
what you report, both with the releng/13.2 kernel.

At some point I'll generate the 2 *.dts's from
the *.dtb's in the sorted order and diff the
outputs. (This does not deal with live adjustments
that are also involved.)

Does 14.0-ALPHA* have a panic when not changed? In
essence the comparison/contrast checks the older
kernel ( releng/13.2 ) vs. the newer kernel for the
modern *.dtb case.

(Unfortunatey, you have the only known test context.
So I ask. But you may not want to be the tester for
such questions.)

> I say usually because sometimes the boot hangs indefinitely between loading the keyboard USB device and bringing up the network stuff (lo0, mue0, and ue0), but usually it just pauses there and then continues. When it does hang, ctrl-alt-del works to try again.

Interesting.

> As expected, once it's up there are no apparent problems. The wired ethernet works fine for ssh and freebsd-update. I haven't stressed the system much so far, but still looks good after half a day of uptime.

As you have the only known panic context, could you
gather the serial console output for a context that
leads to a panic(/reboot loop) when using just the
14.0-ALPHA* firmware (modern *.dtb) and then report
it someplace folks can have access to? Absent such
evidence, the FreeBSD kernel will stay broken for
your type of context using modern RPi* firmware and
FreeBSD's kernel. (Presuming the evidence points to
the kernel mishandling something badly to cause a
reboot loop.)


===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com