Re: Newbie Questions

["Henry B (Hank) Hotz, CISSP" <hbhotz%oxy.edu@localhost>]

> On Jun 18, 2017, at 9:39 PM, Alan Corey <alan01346%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
> 
> Well, there's Net, Free and OpenBSD and at least 3 Linux
> distributions.  

Yes, but this is Net'. ;-)

> The machines themselves?    I'd go for price first. I
> have a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero doing useful work, admittedly after I
> spent a bunch on adapters.  The flagship model 3B is only $35 list.
> Non-expandable RAM though, everybody gets 1 GB.  Even the wired
> ethernet is actually implemented through USB, which is USB 2.  Some
> are 64 bit, some aren't, a sign of the times.  I haven't spent a lot
> of time studying the higher priced machines.  

Me neither, but I already have a BBB.

The PI3 uses more than double the power of the BBB (>2A@5V vice <1A@5V) and I was thinking of setting up some service on the Internet with it rather than renting a VPS.

> I think the Beaglebone
> is relatively low price from TI.  The size of the userbase could be a
> factor, there had been 8 million Pis sold a couple years ago.
> Raspbian is slick, almost everything works.  A couple clicks and it's
> downloaded and installed.  For free, somewhere over 40k applications.
> 
> Installation is mostly done by writing an image file to an SD card and
> booting it up.  If you're lucky you'll have working video.  On the Pi
> video modes are controlled by /boot/config.txt but you could edit that
> with even Windows Notepad by putting the SD card in a reader.  That
> partition is FAT16, nothing challenging.  The Pi's EDID stuff doesn't
> work well with older monitors so you may have to fiddle to get a
> working video mode, but on newer monitors it will come up at the
> monitor's native resolution automatically.  You can use dd under unix
> or win32diskimager under Windows to install the image file, then you
> install the applications you need once it's booted.  The SD card
> doesn't need to be big or expensive, you can keep a few around loaded
> with different operating systems and switch.  I just had one fail
> after a year though, buy good ones.

Thanks for the advice.

> Serial console?  Are you thinking of openwrt?  You could connect a
> console to your toaster (maybe) with that.

If you want access to the u-boot console and boot messages to debug an installation, it looks necessary. The HDMI works with my TV once it’s fully booted to Debian, and you’re way past u-boot at that point.

The BBB wants to boot from the on-board eMMC unless you hold the boot button down during startup. The off-the-shelf SD images all self-write to eMMC these days. You can’t run from them. Also the eMMC is supposed to be faster.

So where I’m at is finding a way to turn the non-boot eMMC partition into an ffs and loading NetBSD onto it. I think I’ve got three options that don’t require setting up a cross-compile environment or mucking with u-boot configurations:
A) 
  1) Copy a FreeBSD version of MLO and u-boot.img to the boot partition by mounting the BBB to my Mac (I don’t do Windows). 
  2) Create a ffs-format SD card with NetBSD (the armv7hf port?) on it. I think it will go there automatically if the FreeBSD versions of u-boot don’t understand the ext partition on eMMC. If not, then go to option B).
  3) Manually reformat the non-boot eMMC partition as ffs and copy everything over. Edit config files. Reboot. Go do real stuff.

B) More like what John Klos described.
  1) Format an SD card on another NetBSD machine with a FAT partition and an ffs partition.
  2) Copy MLO and u-boot.img to the FAT partition, and NetBSD to the ffs partition.
  3) Move SD card to BBB and start up with the boot button down.
  4) Proceed as in A) 3).

More options depend on whether it makes sense to use ext file system support in the NetBSD kernel. (Is that enabled in the standard config? I’ll have to check.) If we don’t need to replace the "factory" u-boot stuff, then NetBSD could install more like the other OSs on the BBB.

> On 6/17/17, Henry B (Hank) Hotz, CISSP <hbhotz%oxy.edu@localhost> wrote:
>> What distinguishes all the different arm ports? (Is that written up
>> anywhere?) I see the Beaglebone is referenced in three of them, but what’s
>> the difference?
>> 
>> Also, it sounds like an initial install isn’t feasible without having a
>> serial connection to the console. Fair enough, but would it work if I added
>> a USB keyboard and an HDMI display? (Maybe I’ll just get a cable from Fry’s
>> and try it anyway.)
>> 
>> Apologies to the port maintainer for emailing him before posting to the
>> list.
>> 
>> Personal email.  hbhotz%oxy.edu@localhost
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -------------
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