Solved Installing FreebSD on Raspberry PI 4 B

mikkol said:
I dded the image to an SSD and booted up with that. Sure, it's not installed by me but it loads and it automatically resized the UFS slice to the remaining disk size. Beats using a card and I reckon I can modify the environment sufficiently for my needs. I will mark this as solved, although it's not solved, so that it will not attract further attention.
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And, after bakul's perfectly valid response, which I had not thought about, I dded the image to a microSD card, booted from that, connected the SSD on USB and am running bsdinstall. This will accomplish even ZFS. Looks like this actually solves my issue.
 
mikkol said:
And, after bakul's perfectly valid response, which I had not thought about, I dded the image to a microSD card, booted from that, connected the SSD on USB and am running bsdinstall. This will accomplish even ZFS. Looks like this actually solves my issue.
Click to expand...
That didn't work. However, I now do have a working method. Steps:

  1. dd a copy of the uncompressed https://download.freebsd.org/releas...FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img.xz to a microSD card.
  2. Power off the RPi 4 B.
  3. Disconnect external storage media from the RPi 4 B.
  4. Put the microSD card in the RPi 4 B.
  5. Power on the RPi 4 B to boot from the microSD card.
  6. Connect the desired storage medium to the RPi 4 B (in my case, a Kingston SSD using an Axagon USB–SATA adapter).
  7. In the environment the microSD card boots to, run bsdinstall to install FreeBSD to the storage medium connected in the previous step.
  8. Complete the installation and shut down the system.
  9. The installation creates an EFI bootloader, which the RPi 4 B does not boot to. Visit https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases to download an UEFI firmware for the RPi 4 B.
  10. Disconnect the target medium from the RPi and connect it to a functional system.
  11. Using that other system, copy the contents of the zip file (currently https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases/download/v1.33/RPi4_UEFI_Firmware_v1.33.zip) to the root of the EFI partition bsdinstall created.
  12. Disconnect the target medium from the other system and connect it back to the RPi 4 B.
  13. Power on the RPi 4 B.
  14. Enjoy your installed FreeBSD loading the UEFI firmware from the EFI partition, then booting the EFI bootloader and loading FreeBSD.
 
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=343233 forums.raspberrypi.com Post I created. If there is some error, I would like to create an answer so the next guy can follow your post above and have a working Raspberry Pi Desktop on the 4B or 400. Share back what the EEPROM boot number is on your RasPi hardware. 0xF541 or 0XF51 or 0xF41. Happy if you comment over there and keep the forum post from being a locked post.

https://ghostbsd-arm64.blogspot.com/2022/09/freebsd-140-compiling-kernel-for.html Here is my Blog post where you can follow and find more information on using FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT as a desktop machine. Notice that I patched the kernel with the KERNCONF=GENERIC-VCHIQ patch to support HDMI Audio so you can watch YouTube videos on the screen from a MATE or XFCE desktop. Learn more about FreeBSD by watching the couple videos below.

Working to support Uart2, Uart3, Uart4, Uart5 Raspberry Pi 4B serial ports in the FreeBSD Kernel code. Not done or implemented just yet.

Robonuggie has great videos about installing / using FreeBSD on the Raspberry Pi 400. Install FreeBSD to a Raspberry Pi 400
Quick OverView of Using FreeBSD on Raspberry Pi 400
 
mikkol said:
I don't need anything custom. I want the FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-memstick.img or FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-mini-memstick.img to boot. They are readily available on download.freebsd.org.
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https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...fter-u-boot-bin-is-replaced.87835/post-597843 I tested booting from the freebsd.org/where memstick image. The first time something failed. The second DD write image to USB flash drive worked and booted up correctly. I think you have to set the EEPROM number to 0xF41 or 0xF51 or 0xF541. Yes, I did the "bsdinstall" with ethernet cable connected to install FreeBSD into a pre-made Partition on an external USB SSD partition of 92+ GB in a 500GB drive. I set bsdinstall to use that partition that was formated with UFS (or maybe the install formated the partition as UFS). Would be nice if you document how to use UEFI booting from a ZFS partition with the gbootzfs.efi aarch64 file. gpart -s GPT daY
Also use the gpart -i X -a 4k -t freebsd-ufs -l "Arm64_FreeBSD" daY X being the partition number, Y being the drive number as in /dev/daY or /dev/da1 or /dev/da2

Appreciate any to post details here or on my blog site https://ghostbsd-arm64.blogspot.com

https://forums.FreeBSD.org/threads/...fter-u-boot-bin-is-replaced.87835/post-598186 Solved, I used a different than mini-memstick image. I used
curl -o https://download.freebsd.org/releases/arm64/aarch64/ISO-IMAGES/13.1/FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img.xz
xz -decompress FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img.xz

Raspberry Pi 4B, change the EEPROM configuration number to 0xF41, 0xF51, 0xF541 to select the boot device, in this case the USB Flash Disk Drive or external USB SSD drive. I wonder if the 0xF5 is for an external USB Mass storage device. FreeBSD uses something different to boot from a NVMe, ext4fuse utility to read and write to a NVMe mass storage device.

Arm System Developer details for Raspberry Pi A good read and shares details of using Environment Variables and the UEFI Shell.

FreeBSD install XFCE4.16 to VMware. Useful list for FreeBSD install to Raspberry Pi 4B Can be used as check list.
FreeBSD for Radxa RK3568 Rock Pi 3, Useful for SleepWalker and Tiano EDK2 stuff
 
I have 2 RPi 4B with 8g Ram, attached to a Geekworm Raspberry Pi 4 SATA Storage board, they run PIOS (Debian). It connects to through a USB dongle. I also have run the PI with a USB SATA cable. If the new SSD shows up I'll give it a whirly to see if it works. And then I found this...
forums.freebsd.org

Solved - Raspberry Pi 4

Hi. Searched the forum and found a lot of topics about the RPi4 and similar devices, but none with this specific issue mentioned, which really surprised me. Installed to a microsd card the RPI3 img from here: https://www.freebsd.org/where/ More specifically, the 12.2-RELEASE version. Tried...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org
 
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/installing-freebsd-on-raspberry-pi-4-b.87284/page-2#post-589959 My replies to some FreeBSD RasPi forum posts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/v4b5oj/freebsd_on_zfs_on_raspberry_pi/ Script I am following to install https://freebsd.org/where 13.2 or 14.0 snapshot

https://gist.github.com/jwatzman/8a53dcdd3084d595c6d5918f4a2a0527 dd.sh zfs.sh zfs_install_on_d1.sh modified file arm64pool for zpi Download shell script files from here.
https://highperformancecomputingina...figuration-and-operating-system-installation/ Has a good setup description for headless Raspi 4B.

Patrick at raspberrytips.com does a good job.
 
Alain De Vos said:
The thing is all my trying did not worked. With external USB it would just not boot. Maybe I missed something. But it would be nice to know what & why ?
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rapi-config EEPROM 0xF14 or 0xF41 your choice of boot order Raspberry Pi 4B BCM2711 USB Boot setting
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documen...ecific-bootloader-properties-chosenbootloader
https://ghostbsd-arm64.blogspot.com/2022/09/freebsd-140-compiling-kernel-for.html My blog about booting from USB Flash drive image from freebsd.org/where aarch64 snapshot Freebsd 13.2 https://download.freebsd.org/releases/arm64/aarch64/ISO-IMAGES/13.2/ Look for aarch64 RPI version which works on 3 and 4
 
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