Re: FreeBSD on Pinebook Pro?

Carl Johnson <carlj@peak.org> writes:

> Jesper Schmitz Mouridsen <jsm@FreeBSD.org> writes:
>
>> On 12.03.2023 01.16, Carl Johnson wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>> I recently bought a Pinebook Pro, but I haven't been able to get it
>>> to run FreeBSD reliably.  I can get it to boot, but usually the display
>>> loses sync shortly after the kernel starts booting.  The display is
>>> sometimes readable enough for text so I have experimented with it a
>>> little.  It seemed to run well enough for a while but I have had it lock
>>> up a couple of times.
>>> I have used the RockPro64 images with the u-boot-pinebookpro applied
>>> as
>>> directed.  I have tried FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE, 13.2-RC2, and 14.0-CURRENT
>>> and all of them have the same problem.  The Pinebook Pro works well with
>>> the supplied Manjaro and with an Armbian version of Xubuntu.  I also
>>> tried NetBSD, and that works but runs the battery down much too fast.
>>> I assume others have run it since there is a u-boot for it, but
>>> maybe
>>> recent versions are different than older versions.  Has anybody else
>>> gotten FreeBSD to work with recent versions of the Pinebook Pro?
>>> Thanks for any information.
>> Hi
>> I do not know if they changed anything to the hardware itself but:
>> https://freebsdfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/FreeBSD-on-the-Pinebook-Pro.pdf
>> ( A tiny bit outdated)
>> https://github.com/jsm222/drm-subtree/releases/tag/v0.2-947fcb84b77
>>
>> Panfrost tends to go out of memory and crash the system, but if you do
>> not enable it i.e by using not extra patched libdrm the display and
>> graphics still works okay.
>>
>> Regards
>> Jsm
>
> Thanks for the links, but something seems to have changed since those
> don't mention any problems.  I am downloading the image from the GitHub
> link and I will check to see if that is any difference.
>
> Thanks for your information.

That image does have a stable display although it stayed blank after one
boot.  In that case I was able to blind login and type shutdown -r now.
It looks like it is missing a number of things I would want for normal
use, but it certainly demonstrates that its display handling is much
better.

Thanks you!

-- 
Carl Johnson		carlj@peak.org