FreeBSD 13-CURRENT on Rock Pi4

SleepWalker · May 15, 2021, 10:35pm

Check out this image.

FreeBSD-aarch64-13.0-RELEASE-Rock-Pi-4c-20210420.img.xz

I don’t have Rock-Pi-4c so I can’t guarantee, but NVMe should work.

Ashley_Mills · March 6, 2021, 8:25am

Thanks, yours is the original image I tried first off. It might just be my nvme card, but I notice this line in the dmesg of this thread, as well as the dmesg of my machine:

Is that the issue, what is that line? Does it pertain to this:

https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2019-10-2019-12/#RockChip-Support

“Known working devices are NVMe devices and PCIe cards that doesn’t utilize PCIe switching or bridge functionality.”

Is this something they can add or a hw limitation?

Have you tried using an NVME card on your 4a/4b?

Ashley_Mills · March 6, 2021, 9:00pm

I think I understand my mistake here. In my excitement to get going I accidentally ordered an M.2 SATA device instead of an M.2 NVMe… what a fool

Just tested it with a WDS500G2X0C and it works as expected. I have a bad habit of doing this, rushing to order things when I’m excited. haha, never mind I’ll use the other disk in another machine that has a slow sata.

philip · April 1, 2021, 1:28pm

Hi ,
I am eagerly awaiting my Rock Pi 4 E so this is a great help.
Have you pushed this up to FreeBSD?
If you agree, I can do this over the weekend. Of course I will give you full credit.
Philip

SleepWalker · April 4, 2021, 6:14pm

Hi Philip.
Bring this over to FreeBSD if you have some free time.
thanks

philip · April 5, 2021, 1:08pm

cool
if you want to appear on the commit, can you email me your name and email address so I can give you credit when I submit it.

SleepWalker · April 5, 2021, 8:07am

Hi Philip!

I am registered at https://reviews.freebsd.org/p/s199p.wa1k9r_gmail.com/
I would be glad if we can prepare good reviews together.
I’m bored doing it alone

SleepWalker · May 15, 2021, 10:33pm

New images!

FreeBSD-aarch64-13.0-RELEASE-Rock-Pi-4-20210420.img.xz

FreeBSD-aarch64-13.0-RELEASE-Rock-Pi-4c-20210420.img.xz

These images have U-boot, for SPI.
And you will be able to configure OS launch from NVMe directly.

SleepWalker · May 15, 2021, 10:23pm

That’s a Little Bonus - OPNsense 21.1 for RADXA SBCs!

ROCK-PI-E
OPNsense-21.1-OpenSSL-aarch64-ROCK-PI-E-20210417.img.xz

ROCK-PI-4C
OPNsense-21.1-OpenSSL-aarch64-ROCK-PI-4c-20210417.img.xz

MasterBacon · November 4, 2021, 12:13pm

How did you manage/what did you change from the default RockPro64 image so that your image is able to boot onto 4k monitors??

There is a current known issue on the default FreeBSD image for the RockPro64 that 4k monitors will make the boot halt due to framebuffer size.

I have a RockPro64 and a Rock Pi 4a, both of which I’ve been able to load/boot on 1080p monitors. But both hang at the boot sequence when they reach:

“masks 0x00ff0000, 0x0000ff00, 0x000000ff, 0xff000000”

But when I flash my Rock Pi 4a with your image, it works!

I’m just trying to learn more about all this stuff, so any insight/guidance would be much appreciated. Plus, seems like whatever you did would be a commit worthy fix to a known bug.

SleepWalker · November 12, 2021, 9:38am

Knowing about the 4K buffer size issue in FreeBSD.
I just tried to avoid these problems.
This is achieved by forcing the 1080p mode even if your monitor is 4K.
This mode is set to u-boot and FreeBSD sees 1080p efi fb.

Here is an example of a patch.

github.com

S199pWa1k9r/ports/blob/master/sysutils/u-boot-rock-pi-4-2020.07/files/patch-drivers_video_rockchip_rk__vop.c

--- drivers/video/rockchip/rk_vop.c.orig
+++ drivers/video/rockchip/rk_vop.c
@@ -299,9 +299,20 @@ static int rk_display_init(struct udevice *dev, ulong fbbase, ofnode ep_node)
 	}
 
 	ret = display_read_timing(disp, &timing);
-	if (ret) {
-		debug("%s: Failed to read timings\n", __func__);
-		return ret;
+
+	if (ret || timing.hactive.typ > 1920 ) {
+	    debug("%s: try failsave - full hd mode timing\n", __func__);
+	    timing.pixelclock.typ = 148500000;
+	    timing.hactive.typ = 1920;
+	    timing.hfront_porch.typ = 88;
+	    timing.hback_porch.typ = 148;
+	    timing.hsync_len.typ = 44;
+	    timing.vactive.typ = 1080;
+	    timing.vfront_porch.typ = 4;
+	    timing.vback_porch.typ = 36;

This file has been truncated. show original

Dan_MacDonald · February 13, 2022, 9:03pm

I have tried to boot FreeBSD-aarch64-13.0-RELEASE-Rock-Pi-4C-20211031.img on my RPi4c from eMMC, uSD and NVME but I don’t get a picture on my 4K HDMI display so it appears not to boot.

Turns out my USB serial cable isn’t fast enough to be used with the 4c so I’ll have to order another one before I can report any errors.

Has anyone got FreeBSD-aarch64-13.0-RELEASE-Rock-Pi-4C-20211031.img to boot?

HappyRock · February 18, 2022, 7:35pm

About to buy an NVME SSD to be connected to my soon to arrive Rock PI 4. Wondering whether there are still issues with some brands/types. Planning to run FreeBSD (of course) and run it directly from the SSD. Having good experience with Samsung 980 (500GB or 1TB) hence that would be the fist choice.

Any experience or other feedback?

spikerguy · February 18, 2022, 8:14pm

Yes Samsung is very reputed and have stable support in open source drivers.

Ignore lexar or pny and unbranded ones. Kingston A4000 had issues but should be fine.

HappyRock · February 18, 2022, 8:20pm

@spykerguy, reason fo asking was the following comment on Radxa’s forum:

Known working under Linux kernel but not directly in bootloader(uSD/eMMC + NVMe booting)* Samsung EVO series( M key, NVMe ), work well on ROCK Pi 4, fast speed <-- Warning nvme boot via SPI is not possible (970 EVO Plus)

Could also imagine this issue has been solved by now.

spikerguy · February 18, 2022, 8:42pm

That’s completed different issue.
Not able to boot from nvme has not much to do with nvme drive support instead it nvme interface support in uboot.

It is good point to consider all this buying buying indeed.

HappyRock · February 22, 2022, 2:23pm

OK, received my Rock PI 4 yesterday and trying to boot FreeBSD-13 (on SD card) but failing so far. Flashed U-Boot in SPI (Radxa instruction) hence U-Boot starts but has difficulties in loading the kernel.

Was thinking that FreeBSD requires a specific U-Boot version to be flashed in the SPI to make this work. Any suggestion ?

spikerguy · February 22, 2022, 6:13pm

FreeBSD image have its own uboot on the image.

Which uboot did you flash on SPI ?

Do you have any logs from uart debug port ?

HappyRock · February 22, 2022, 8:53pm

This one https://dl.radxa.com/rockpi/images/loader/spi/rockpi4b-uboot-trust-spi_2017.09-2692-gdf20631bd8_20200824.img as I couldn’t find any newer. Would welcome a link in case a more recent version is available

In the console getting error messages related to partition not being valid.

spikerguy · February 22, 2022, 9:42pm

Sounds like the uboot does not have support for partition type used by bsd or its a vendor uboot mostly used for android ?

Someone from Radxa team can advice on the latest spi uboot image.