Re: FreeBSD on Nanopi R4S(E)

>  ---- On Sat, 15 Jun 2024 00:11:14 +0200  Nenhum_de_Nos  wrote ---
>  > Hello,
>  >
>  > I amd trying to install FreeBSD 14.1 on this arm64 board and, despite
>  > booting fine till the booting process needs to mount the root
> partition.
>  > It just finds none. I am using sd card on it, but tried also having a
> copy
>  > on the USB stick. I finds none, and the boot process won't continue.
>  >
>  > Have anyone done this? I know there are images for FreeBSD 13.x for it,
>  > but I cannot find any clues so far on how to make it boot.
>  >
>  > I am using the guide on
>  > https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/nanopi-r4s-official-images-not-yet-available.91167/post-651057
>
> Hi Matheus,
>
> i'm glad you asked for NanoPi R4S support but you are actually a bit late
> to the show. I worked on it in 2021 and well I hope it still works but
> there
> has not been much interest in it actually.
>
> Since my backup R4S board broke (RAM chip defect) in 2022 I do not have
> a spare one around to play with but I still have some notes and one
> running
> in production

Hi Bernhard, I saw the party is gone, but I just got to have one late 2023
:( And they use really less power then the boxes I have. Great option to
have. I also have R5S, I am working (really slow) to get opnsense for
them, but my coding skills are limited.

> --
> Bernhard Froehlich
> https://www.bluelife.at/
> with OpenWRT :(.
>
> To build your own release image you can roughly follow the outdated
> instructions from the wiki:
>
> https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Build_image_using_release_building_infrastructure
>
> it should be a bit more like:
>
> * make sure you have the 14.1-RELEASE sources checked out in /usr/src
> * make sure sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-r4s port is installed
> * copy NANOPI-R4S.conf from https://reviews.freebsd.org/D31134 to
> /usr/src/release/arm64/
>
> cd /usr/src/release
> sh release.sh -c arm64/NANOPI-R4S.conf

Ok, by that I guess I can use amd64 box to run this, right? My previous
tries using crosscompiling were not that good. Just early last year using
crochet it was fine. I am not using that anymore from a long time. Used
the code from yrzr's git repo, he is also close to opnsense.


> Since in the forum thread you asked about PersonalBSD images I can
> only say that I personally do not trust any 3rd party images which I can't
> verify in any production environment. But I also tested his R4S images
> from
> 2021 and they were actually working fine in most regards. He always used a
> patched and outdated u-boot which can be a pain (but usually also newer
> u-boot can be pain) and applied his own sauce to some configs and stuff
> which might not be what you expect in some details.

I get you here, but I had few to no options for the R5S I bought first.
The R4SE has a bit more resources, but for opnsense again not much.
PersonalBSD or yrzr. The first has that sauce you said, but was the only
one for a great amount of time that wouln't freeze the box under high
network load. Images from yrzr's site would freeze, but I got to build
from yrzr's git newer imags and it was fine (till the day the box quit
using vlan's, no clue so fat what happened, will look for this in future).
Now I want to have vanilla FreeBSD 14.1R on R4S to use it as a build
machine for arm64 here. My Rpi4 kind of died last week.

> His u-boot sources can be found here:
>
> https://github.com/S199pWa1k9r/ports/tree/master/sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-r4s-2020.07
>
>
> Some notes from 2021 that might help you:
>
> * They use a special hack to store their MAC address (on older models) so
> your re0 interface might not have a MAC. This can be easily solved by like
> this:
>
> ifconfig re0 link 12:89:BB:YY:XX:AA
>
> * NanoPI R4S 1GB model might not work with official u-boot because
> only the 4GB model was upstreamed (might have changed in the meantime)
>
> * re0 device only visible when cable is connected at boot (make sure it
> is)

Really thanks for all this information, will sure be helpful here. My
searches failed badly for not finding this info.

matheus


> --
> Bernhard Fröhlich
> https://www.bluelife.at/
>
>
>