FreeBSD embedded on Routerboard?

alissonx · #1 March 30th, 2012, 14:16

Hi!

I'm trying to run FreeBSD 9.0 on RouterBoard Arch powerpc, but it isn't working. I've installed FreeBSD 9.0, updated the src, compiled the kernel, and built the world. So I tried to cross-compile the kernel from amd64 to powerpc with the command:

make world KERNCONF=KERNEL ARCH_TARGET=powerpc DESTDR=/usr/powerpc

I somebody sing ~~Freebsd~~ FreeBSD on Routerboard?

Thank you!

**SirDice** · #2 March 30th, 2012, 14:43

http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html#hardware

http://wiki.freebsd.org/powerpc

alissonx · #3 March 30th, 2012, 15:31

OK. And routerboard arch MIPS with ~~freebsd~~ FreeBSD. Is it possible?

**SirDice** · #4 March 30th, 2012, 15:33

MIPS is a Tier 3 platform (PPC is Tier 2). Which means there's even less support.

http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/mips.html

alissonx · #5 March 30th, 2012, 16:02

But, how can I do a cross compile and put the files on the MIPS?

By flash card or micro SD?

sossego · #6 March 30th, 2012, 16:27

You will need to work closely with the the maintainers of the port of the board that you have. This means joining the mailing list for architecture blahblah.

loos · #7 July 14th, 2012, 13:25

Generally speaking, you can't copy the cross compiled files to a USB stick and use it on MIPS, at least not for the RouterBoard (MIPS) case which are all big endian (while your i386/amd64 is little endian).

So the boot strap process usually goes thru netbooting the board and then populate your SD/USB stick from it.

You can also use the makefs(8) to create a big endian file system from a little endian host, but it has some limitations as its primary use is to build RO (or very simple) images - eg. you have to manually specify the number of free inodes on file system and so on.

All the MIPS RB are quite well supported, the only show stopper right now is the missing NAND drivers (as the FreeBSD NAND Framework is alredy in tree). This is kind of my fault, since i've these drivers for some time time but never found the time to finish, clean and push it to -head. I hope i can get over it soon =)

The MIPS port have evolved a lot recently and i don't think it is really a tier 3 arch anymore... The port is stable (yes, i'm a daily user of it) and reliable.

At this moment, AFAIK, there is only a limited support for PPC RBs, you can netboot some of then, but no NAND, no CF and (not sure about this, but looks like) no pci/pcie.

Code:

rspro-01# uptime
 9:10AM  up 25 days,  5:05, 1 user, load averages: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01
rspro-01# uname -a
FreeBSD rspro-01 9.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 9.0-CURRENT #135 r223874+2c57285-dirty: Thu Jul 14 16:46:47 BRT 2011
     root@devel.network.int.br:/data/git/mips-gpio/obj/mips.mipseb/data/git/mips-gpio/freebsd/sys/RSPRO  mips

As you can see i'm using a quite old -head on a RSPRO which is very close to the RB450G (the RB has more memory).

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