Re: Update boot partition on a Pi - necessary? How?

Van: "Patrick M. Hausen" <pmh@hausen.com>
Datum: donderdag, 4 juli 2024 09:02
Aan: FreeBSD ARM List <freebsd-arm@freebsd.org>
Onderwerp: Update boot partition on a Pi - necessary? How?
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> my first release upgrade on the Pi platform - 14.0 --> 14.1.
> Smooth as usual. Special thanks to ronald@ for the
> smsc(4) improvements.
> 
> Now I wonder how to do what I regularly do on amd64,
> namely update either the legacy boot partition or the
> EFI boot loader?
> 
> What *are* all these files on that FAT partition, anyway?
> Is there any documentation on this?
> 
> Thanks for pointers.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Patrick
>  
> 
> 
> 


Hi,

Thanks :-)

The files in the FAT partition are a combination of
https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/rpi-firmware/
and
https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/u-boot-rpi4/

But we also have https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/u-boot-rpi-arm64/ and I don't know what the difference is.

You can install the rpi-firmware and u-boot-rpi4 ports/pkgs and copy the content to the FAT partition. Unfortunately I don't know an automated way to do this and if it will overwrite config files.

Another solution:

What I usually do is
- download the https://download.freebsd.org/releases/arm64/aarch64/ISO-IMAGES/14.1/FreeBSD-14.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img.xz release file
- mount it using mdconfig
- backup and empty the current FAT partition
- copy the content of the FAT partition from the mounted img
- diff the config files with my backup.
At least than I know I have all the files which were also in the release and hopefully tested by some people.

A mdconfig+mount example can be found here: https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi#Boot_Loader_Issues although they copy files into the image instead of the other way around.

Regards,
Ronald.