Re: install attempt on olimex a64 sd card

[Tobias Nygren <tnn%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Tue, 7 Apr 2026 14:30:42 +0000
nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost> wrote:

> First of all, I picked the "generic" image from armbsd.org
> and wrote it to an SD card.
> 
> Then I tried writing the u-boot image specific to the board.
> dd complains about /dev/rsd0 being an invalid argument, but
> seems to write to it anyway which, is ... weird - bug in
> -current? So I wrote it to the on-filesystem image instead.

This happens when dding to the raw device and the firmware
not being a multiple of the block size used for dd.
I think we recommend using installboot(8) with the plist
hints that pkgsrc ships with the firmware. You'll avoid this
problem and any manual SoC-specific offset calculations.

> Plug in the board with HDMI connected to a DVI adapter.
> u-boot shows its display then loads the NetBSD boot loader.
> Everything seems fine. Then the NetBSD boot loader disappears
> and the screen turns off, never turning back on.
> 
> What's going on? I have console=fb set, NetBSD should be
> using the framebuffer.

Most likely it is using serial console but the reason
will be difficult to determine without hooking up the serial
console. It could be an issue with the device tree for example.