FreeBSD on Layerscape/QorIQ LX2160X

[Dan Kotowski]

After a solid 16hrs this weekend, I can confirm that the pre-built images do NOT "just work", at least not with SolidRun's HoneyComb version rev 1.4.

The 12.1 arm7 GENERICSD image fails to boot. The included EFI/BOOT/bootarm.efi fails to load. I dropped in a copy of EFI/BOOT/bootarm64.efi from the aarch64  image, but that failed to handoff the process properly. Tested with both u-boot and UEFI.

The 12.1 aarch64 memstick installer iamge fails out trying to mount the UFS partition and drops into the mountroot> shell with error 19. Listing GEOM managed disk devices returned an empty list.

My silicon is rev 1.4 so I have to use the SD slot for the firmware layer, which is a mild inconvenience because I can't use that slot for an OS iamge (https://github.com/SolidRun/lx2160a_build/issues/36#issuecomment-629865674).

Unfortunately that's where I ran out of time. I spent most of the time tracing and tweaking SolidRun's build scripts, testing various combinations of firmware builds and boot images, and learning my way through both the u-boot and UEFI implementations.

Barring other simple ideas, my next step is to make buildworld for TARGET=arm64 TARGET_ARCH=aarch64, drop that on an NVMe gumstick, and see if I can get that booted.

More in the coming days...

Dan Kotowski

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Saturday, May 16, 2020 5:12 AM, John-Mark Gurney <jmg at funkthat.com> wrote:

> myfreeweb wrote this message on Thu, May 14, 2020 at 15:48 +0000:
>
> > On May 14, 2020 3:32:13 PM UTC, Dan Kotowski dan.kotowski at a9development.com wrote:
> >
> > > I'm wondering if anybody knows of work being done to port FreeBSD to the Layerscape platforms?
> > > I happen to have a SolidRun HoneyComb LX2K workstation, based on NXP's Layerscape LX2160A, next to my desk running a custom-multistrapped Debian Jessie build, but would love to get FreeBSD running instead. I have only minimal experience working down in BSD driver/kernel land and no experience at all with Crochet, but would like to learn. And while I cannot afford to donate the actual hardware I'm happy to work with others to test builds.
> >
> > Do not even think about crochet or device trees or any of the embedded stuff on such a machine!! ;)
> > Just use the latest UEFI firmware in ACPI mode to boot generic FreeBSD.
> > Looking at their ACPI tables, they do finally have PCIe and USB3 as generic devices, though oddly not SATA: https://github.com/SolidRun/edk2-platforms/tree/master-lx2160a/Silicon/NXP/LX2160A/AcpiTables/Dsdt
>
> If this is the case, then the generic aarch64 images should boot on
> it... Not sure what will happen w/ the SATA though...
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> John-Mark Gurney Voice: +1 415 225 5579
>
> "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."