Booting a RPI 1 B+

[Martin Birgmeier]

I have prepared a (16 GB) micro SDHC card from
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/arm/armv6/ISO-IMAGES/10.2/FreeBSD-10.2-STABLE-arm-armv6-RPI-B-20151229-r292855.img.xz
(i.e., dd'd the 480 MB to the card).

I have a barebones RPI 1 B+ into which I insert the card. The only
available connection is via Ethernet, i.e., no monitor, no keyboard, no
serial.

After applying power something seems to happen in that after a while,
the Ethernet LEDs on the RPI blink in a way typical for Ethernet.
However, that's it, specifically my DHCP server never receives a
request, nor does the RPI in any way become accessible via Ethernet. In
fact, not a single Ethernet frame reaches the DHCP server (checked via
tcpdump).

After shutting down and doing a binary comparison of the card's contents
with the image, there are very few changes; mounting the image and the
card and then doing a diff -r shows no differences at all. The
filesystem on the card also has not been resized.

The RPI runs its original Linux fine.

Any pointers as to what is going on?

-- Martin