FreeBSD on RaspberryPi

[Stefan Esser]

Am 09.11.2012 05:44, schrieb Tim Kientzle:
>> On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 6:01 PM, Tim Kientzle <kientzle at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> WARNING:  This is still highly experimental and by no
>> means ready for "production use", ...
>>
>> To boot FreeBSD on your RaspberryPi, you'll need:
>>   1) A RaspberryPi.
>>   2) A serial cable similar to this one:  www.adafruit.com/products/954
> 
> 
> On Nov 8, 2012, at 9:13 AM, Sami Halabi wrote:
>>
>> why the console cable is needed ?
>>
> As far as I can tell, the code in FreeBSD-CURRENT
> does not yet support the video out.  So you need
> a serial console cable to interact with it.

All it takes to get the framebuffer working is that the hash chars are
removed. I.e. the following works:

device          sc
device          kbdmux
options         SC_DFLT_FONT    # compile font in
makeoptions     SC_DFLT_FONT=cp437

> You might be able to interact via SSH but
> that requires a little bit more setup (a root
> password needs to be set and you need to
> edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config to allow root logins).

I used SSH, and the framebuffer helps to see how far the boot process
has come. It takes about 60 seconds to generate the SSH host keys, for
example.

[The following points are not specific to the R-PI, and I'm sure you
know them, but I list them for others that may want to use their R-PI
without serial console.]

In order to use SSH I modified sshd_config to accept direct root logins.
The root password must be set (best method: "vipw -d /mnt/etc", else
you must remember to invoke "pwd_mkdb -d /mnt/etc" when you are done).

The host name and IP address should be set in rc.conf (or assigned via
DHCP).

If you do not want to enable direct root login, then a non-privileged
account in group wheel is required to be able to "su" to root.

That's all I remember ...

I used the build script from "http://kernelnomicon.org/?p=164" with
one slight modification (tar -x ... --no-same-owner ...).

My R-PI kernel contains MSDOSFS and NFS client support to allow it
to mount its boot partition and NFS exported /usr/src, /usr/obj,
/usr/ports and /usr/work (where I build ports). Most of them are
R/O mounts. I have not tried to build world on the R-PI (cross
building is so much faster ...). But ports can be build, if a swap
partition is available (e.g. on SD card or via NFS - I did not try
to mount a USB stick, but that might be another option).

Regards, STefan