NanoPi R4S official images not yet available

I know PersonalBSD.org (I came across it with a DDG search). But unfortunately it's not official.

Who is behind PersonalBSD.org? How well known is the project and the developer in the FreeBSD community? Please give me some background info, I am new to the FreeBSD world.

For security reasons I only want to flash official images, so the question about the status of the announcement from Wiki.

Screenshot 2023-11-26 at 07.48.34.png
 
if you want an official image then you are in for a long wait
in general there is one sometimes maybe two "official" image per soc and there are lots of sbcs for the same soc
there are NO manufacturer official images afaik and official freebsd support is see above
but usually if you run a generic arm64 image over mfgs u-boot+efi you are 90% there

afaik personal bsd is mostly u-boot or edk2 + some minor kernel patches from various public sources
so if you don't want to deal with u-boot and dtb mess you may pick a personal bsd image
 
SleepWalker is behind PersonalBSD and he is well known. I have used his images and his stand alone u-boot work.

I agree with covacat.. The structure is too rigid for multiple platforms. PersonalBSD is a good approach.
Usually I hate forks because it drains. In this case it enhances. Look at all the RK3588 images he just put up.
That is very nice.

Do I trust the work. Yes. I have no choice. I can't do it myself. Do I run a diff to see whats going on? No.
 
covacat said:
afaik personal bsd is mostly u-boot or edk2 + some minor kernel patches from various public sources
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What would be good is if they submit these as pull requests to freebsd on github. These patches may or may not get accepted but at least interested people can make use of them.

What would be even better is if freebsd build can be modified to make building images for such boards easier.

Phishfry said:
Do I trust the work. Yes. I have no choice.
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The date in dmesg on the site shows Moscow time. One must be aware of such things in the current political climate.
 
I agree you can't have blind trust. One thing that brought me around was seeing personal photos on his website.
Sure it could all be a ruse but it is an elaborate one if that. Perpetrated before the current hostilities existed.

The nice thing about the RK3399 is that it has been around for a while. So support has been able to build with time.
u-boot support is mature. A PCIe rockchip driver exists on FreeBSD.
 
Phishfry said:
I agree you can't have blind trust. One thing that brought me around was seeing personal photos on his website.
Sure it could all be a ruse but it is an elaborate one if that. Perpetrated before the current hostilities existed.
Click to expand...
It may not matter for your personal projects but if you take them to work and put them on the work network to show off, you may get in trouble! These days it is hard to know where is the line between precaution and paranoia!
 
share my experience installing freebsd on nanopi-r4s

1、Download U-boot for r4s and install the command for later use
pkg install u-boot-nanopi-r4s
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pkg install wget
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2、Download the FreeBSD rockpro64 image
wget https://download.freebsd.org/releas...D-13.3-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-ROCKPRO64.img.xz
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unxz FreeBSD-13.3-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-ROCKPRO64.img.xz
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3、Burn to SD card
Need to confirm the sd card path
dd if=dd if=FreeBSD-13.3-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-ROCKPRO64.img.xz of=/dev/da0 bs=1M of=/dev/da0 bs=1M
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dd if=/usr/local/share/u-boot/u-boot-nanopi-r4s/idbloader.img of=/dev/da0 seek=64 bs=512 conv=sync
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dd if=/usr/local/share/u-boot/u-boot-nanopi-r4s/u-boot.itb of=/dev/da0 seek=16384 bs=512 conv=sync
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Then you can start it

Currently, it has many problems, such as being unable to generate a mac address (the enterprise version may not have this problem)
 
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