Re: USB-serial adapter suggestions needed

On Jan 12, 2024, at 09:25, bob prohaska <fbsd@www.zefox.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 09, 2024 at 05:03:42PM -0800, Mark Millard wrote:
>> 
>> www.zefox.org is the aarch64 that is not configured in config.txt
>> in the normal aarch64 manor. As I've requested before, please test
>> using a config.txt that instead has:
>> 
>> QUOTE
>> [all]
>> arm_64bit=1
>> dtparam=audio=on,i2c_arm=on,spi=on
>> dtoverlay=mmc
>> dtoverlay=disable-bt
>> device_tree_address=0x4000
>> kernel=u-boot.bin
>> 
>> [pi4]
>> hdmi_safe=1
>> armstub=armstub8-gic.bin
>> 
>> # Local addition:
>> [all]
>> force_mac_address=b8:27:eb:71:46:4f
>> END QUOTE
>> 
>> Please do not use a configuration based in part on armv7 FreeBSD
>> config.txt material any more for the testing activity: Just use
>> the FreeBSD normal aarch64 configuration with the force_mac_address
>> related material added at the end.
>> 
> 
> Just tried it now. The boot seems _extremely_ slow and invited 
> at least some intervention (manually typing run bootcmd_usb0
> at the u-boot prompt) but it did come up multi-user.

The above seems odd to me. What version of U-Boot is in use?
2023.10 tries TFTP before USB in U-Boot and the timeout sequence
totals to minutes. One can escape to the U-Boot> prompt early on
and:

U-Boot> bootefi bootmgr

in order to avoid the TFTP attempt if you are using 2023.10 .
I've not yet figured out how to have TFTP be tried only after
USB by default.

2023.10 does this for both forms of config.txt .

> It is able
> to function as a terminal server to nemesis.zefox.com, so I'll
> just watch it for a while. The netmap has been updated to reflect
> the change to config.txt.
> 
> An aside, none of the seven hosts has dropped a tip session over
> the past day or so, except when taken down intentionally. 
> 
>> I want to know if this also fails when powerd is not in
>> use anywhere.
>> 
> 
> For now powerd is off on all FreeBSD hosts, the Pi4 workstation
> is running something called upowerd as always. I'm thinking to
> eventualy re-start powerd on only a subset of hosts in hope that 
> will make behavioral differences more obvious.





===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com