Re: A suitable installer image for an 8G rPI4?

On Mar 26, 2023, at 14:44, Joseph Koshy <jkoshy@freebsd.org> wrote:

> Could you recommend a boot image version for an 8G rpi4?
> 
> I tried both -CURRENT
> (FreeBSD-14.0-CURRENT-arm64-aarch64-RPI-20230316-cee09bda03c8-261544.img.xz)

FreeBSD-14.0-CURRENT-arm64-aarch64-RPI-20230316-cee09bda03c8-261544.img
probably is using U-Boot 2023.01, which is broken for 8 GiByte RPi4B's.
If so, it does not even load the FreeBSD loader, much less start it.

Replacing u-boot.bin in the msdosfs file system with a copy of the
older one from FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img should avoid
that issue. (No claim such is the only issue around.)

> and the 13.1 release (FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img.xz).

I just copied:

FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img

to a USB3 NVMe boot media and use it to boot a 8 GiByte "C0T"
RPi4B with a monitor attached. It worked fine.

However, only the video connection closer to the USB3
power connection gets a login prompt. The other one just
displays the RPi* rainbow screen. I had to move the
cable to be plugged in to the connector closer to the USB3
power connection.

I knew it had booted all the way to the login prompt
because the login prompt showed up on the serial console
that I have set up. (Analyzing early boot problems
without a serial console setup is itself problematical.)

One known issue relative to monitor use is size problems
from the config.txt line:

hdmi_safe=1

That can be commented out or set to 0 instead to see if
things improve on reboot.

(It is rare that I have a monitor connected: serial console
and ssh over Ethernet use normally.)

> With both these boot images the boot process does not get to the
> FreeBSD boot loader -- the process stops at the initial color splash
> screen.

My guess: you plugged the monitor cable into the connector
that is farther away from the USB3 power connector.

> Is this a known issue?  Any recommerndations on how to debug the boot process?
> 

I do recommend having a serial console set up and operating
generally.


FYI for FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img 
content:

# strings /boot/msdos/u-boot.bin | grep "U-Boot 20"
U-Boot 2021.07 (May 12 2022 - 07:00:33 +0000)


Back to recent 14.0-CURRENT (a.k.a. main) as a context:

Some recent work temporarily lead to RPi4B's not rebooting
for the likes of "shutdown -r now". That has been addressed
but I'm not sure which main [so: 14] snapshot would be the
first with the fix.


===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com