FreeBSD Desktop for RK3399 SBC

Hi SleepWalker ,

1st: Congratulations! IMHO ARM should be a 1st tier architecture on FreeBSD, the trend goes up consistently for >decade now and will continue to do so.

Could you give a short status review of FreeBSD@RockPro, or else point me to where I can read some?
I'm tempted to choose a Pine64 RockPro SBC to build a small low-power SOHO NAS, see this thread. Successfully getting a desktop up & running is a good indicator that the most basic issues are solved. How about ZFS? Any issues with that? Naturally, bhyve is not available, are there any alternatives on ARM? IIRC, the RockPro has hardware support for virtualization, correct? Likewise: hardware crypto. The chip has it, does FreeBSD support it? Any other pitfalls?

I know choosing a x86 (fanless) mini-server for that is currently much safer, but I'm curious enough to at least try my 1st steps on ARM w/ such a (small? maybe not) personal project. If it fails, I have a desktop or playground for ARM development, which any nerd should have ;)
 
Hi Mjollnir.

FreeBSD for ARM is growing fast enough.
Key issues are discussed here. Mail List

Building a NAS on an ARM platform with ZFS support is real.
I am currently porting FreeNAS to aarch64 and use Khadas EDGE-V
as a prototype, simply because it’s easier for me to get it than Pine64 ROCKPro64. They are both built on the Rockchip RK3399.

For myself, as a NAS, I chose Helios64 from Kobol Team also on Rockchip RK3399. He has 4G RAM, two Eth 1G & 2,5G, 5 SATA.

I highly recommend take note to this complete solution.
And it already almost runs FreeBSD.

Here is the boot log
https://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=5555

I am sure that I will finish porting FreeNAS to it in the near future.
 
Are the two A72 not used? From your dmesg:
Code:
cpu4: <Open Firmware CPU> on cpulist0
cpu4: Nominal frequency 600Mhz
cpufreq_dt4: <Generic cpufreq driver> on cpu4
cpufreq_dt4: Not attaching as cpu is not present
device_attach: cpufreq_dt4 attach returned 6
You could save some mem by disabling 2/3 of # virtual consoles, but I guess you have more important issues to solve.
I highly recommend take note to this complete solution.
And it already almost runs FreeBSD.
What I like about this board: it has two ethernet NICs and plenty of SATA ports. This justifies the higher price compared to the Pine64. And this makes sense: the case has a UPS built in! I found only one existing commercial vendor who has that, Buffalo. How much is the case + PSU + add. items (cables etc.)? I guess the total is outside of my budget; but taking into account e.g. the UPS, I might have to re-evaluate my calculations when comparing to refurbished or home-grown x86-based solutions (thought of buying an old laptop and connect a small array - laptops have a built-in UPS, too).
I'm a little bit disappointed on the idle power consumption. Decent x86 solutions are not worse, but (currently) offer more flexibility, e.g. virtualization.
 
I'm downloading the pinebook pro image right now! Thank you so much!!

Edit:

Wrote it to a micro sd card and it is inserted. However I get a green blinking power light and nothing on the screen. Are there steps to get it working?
 
Hello to all !

Updated links to boot images.
Added test bootable image for PineBook Pro.
Added Google CROME!

Just tried your helios64 image, seems to work pretty well. Did you build that off the FreeBSD source tree or is there more to it? I'm guessing you have some custom config / device trees - if so is it visible somewhere? I'm kinda curious as to how you built this.
 
I would like to verify when I tried it, it wasn't booting because of something i did i shouldn't have on my end - the pinebook pro image im guessing works fine because of what other people are reporting. I'm in the process of fixing my pinebook pro because i found out you can't dd an image to the machine itself, you are supposed to only boot from microsd if you want a different OS, and i ended up breaking my micro sd reader because i replaced the original os it came with.

Sorry for the false alarm.
 
Just tried your helios64 image, seems to work pretty well. Did you build that off the FreeBSD source tree or is there more to it? I'm guessing you have some custom config / device trees - if so is it visible somewhere? I'm kinda curious as to how you built this.
To build images, I use modified crochet tools.
 
For people interested in or considering taking part in the 2nd production-batch of the Helios64:
Alex, co-host on the "Self-Hosted" podcast made a review in their episode 33 (~2 min. in). He touches on production quality, small HW-issues, SW-support (mostly linux and a brief mention of ZFS) and at the end a small performance-review (~20 min. in) - spoiler alert: It's no speed demon ;-) and (at that time) lacked support for HW-encoding/-decoding. - But ~30W power-consumption at full tilt :)

This video from SleepWalker's blog (though not Helios64 - only one NIC) is probably very indicative of the (lacking) speed...
 
Hi Mjollnir.

FreeBSD for ARM is growing fast enough.
Key issues are discussed here. Mail List

Building a NAS on an ARM platform with ZFS support is real.
I am currently porting FreeNAS to aarch64 and use Khadas EDGE-V
as a prototype, simply because it’s easier for me to get it than Pine64 ROCKPro64. They are both built on the Rockchip RK3399.

For myself, as a NAS, I chose Helios64 from Kobol Team also on Rockchip RK3399. He has 4G RAM, two Eth 1G & 2,5G, 5 SATA.

I highly recommend take note to this complete solution.
And it already almost runs FreeBSD.

Here is the boot log
https://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=5555

I am sure that I will finish porting FreeNAS to it in the near future.


SleepWalker
How did the FreeNAS (or even better TrueNAS) build turn out?

I was just about to embark with my RockPi 4c before discovering your post. Would love to know what came of it. Hopefully get a clone of the project files to build it myself as well.

Thanks!
 
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