FreeBSD RPI2 install in Windows QEMU

bsaidus

bsaidus

I have this image file downloaded on FreeBSD ftp server ( FreeBSD-12.0-RELEASE-arm-armv7-RPI2.img ).

Can someone help me on how to install it or make it work in QEMU ( the QEMU program under windows ).
I can't find any resources or documentation about doing it.
PS. I've bought Raspberry PI4 and installed it on SD card but not working.

Thank you in advence
 
eternal_noob said:
What have you tried, what did not work? Any error messages? Please elaborate.

This is no proper error message either.
Click to expand...
Thanks for feedback.
So, first what I did is to use win32diskimager to write the .img file into the SD card and plug it into the Raspberry, switch it on but nothing work. ( The Raspberry that I have has a mini screen attached with HDMI )
Nothing works mean that I do not see nothing in the screen ( unlike Slackware that works well ).

Concerning the QEMU, I know that this program can imulate raspberry but did not find any document or tentative from BSD hobbiers or expert on how to make functioning FreeBSD RPI2 on it.
 
bsaidus said:
So, first what I did is to use win32diskimager to write the .img file into the SD card
Click to expand...
The guys at Raspberry Foundation say that:
Raspberry Pi Imager is our recommended option for most users to write images to SD cards, so it is a good place to start. If you’re looking for an alternative on Windows, you can use balenaEtcher, Win32DiskImager or imgFlasher.
Click to expand...
www.raspberrypi.org

Raspberry Pi Documentation - Getting started

The official documentation for Raspberry Pi computers and microcontrollers
www.raspberrypi.org

Did you try the other imagers, most notably Raspberry Pi Imager and balenaEtcher?

Don't know about QEMU, sorry.
 
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bsaidus said:
Concerning the QEMU, I know that this program can imulate raspberry but did not find any document or tentative from BSD hobbiers or expert on how to make functioning FreeBSD RPI2 on it.
Click to expand...
I think QEMU can only emulate the Raspberry PI hardware by booting the Linux kernel directly (last time I looked at it ~5 years ago). I don't believe the same can be done for FreeBSD.

Also keep in mind, that qemu seems to be greatly memory constrained when emulating the Pi. I think you can't allocate more than 512MB. This reduces its usefulness somewhat as a build server, etc.

What I would recommend you do instead is use qemu-static and run FreeBSD in an arm64 jail instead. I tried this a while ago and it worked well:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/arm-or-sparc-in-freebsd-jail-on-amd64-host.65130/#post-381501

It runs impressively fast because it only uses dynamic translation for the userland programs. The kernel is still native and fast.
 
In regards to getting FreeBSD to boot on your RPI4: the older FreeBSD 12 images probably won't work with an RPI 4. Have you tried any of the 13 or 14 images? If memory serves, boot procedures for RPI4 changed; you can even get it to boot from a USB device, which I can confirm, I've got a 13 based RPI4 myself.
Booting from USB required flashing a new firmware by booting up Linux once. Don't know, if that is still a requirement. Newer hardware might already have that recent firmware installed.
 
Yes, I confirm that FreeBSD 13 works fine on RPI4.
I'm wondering what image is suitable for RPI3 !
Thanks.
 
Stick to the latest release, 13 and you should be ok.
I believe RPI3 and below suffer from a poor USB stack that polls instead of interrupts. So speed might be poor compared to Linux.
 
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