Re: RPi4+UEFI/ACPI---how to choose root partition?

[Paul Mather <bsd-lists%gromit.dlib.vt.edu@localhost>]

On Jul 8, 2020, at 5:50 PM, Jared McNeill <jmcneill%invisible.ca@localhost> wrote:

> Hi Paul --
> 
> Get a list of devices with the "dev" command, hopefully the FFS partition on your USB drive is present. Lets call it "hd1a:" for the example below.
> 
> On -current you can create a 'boot.cfg' file on the root of the FAT partition with the following contents:
> 
>  menu=Boot normally:boot hd1a:netbsd root=wedge:system
>  menu=Boot single user:boot hd1a:netbsd root=wedge:system -s
>  menu=Drop to boot prompt:prompt
>  timeout=5
>  default=1


Although I didn't mention it in my original post, I tried something like this based upon the example in the boot.cfg manual page.  It didn't work.  I figured maybe I got the syntax wrong, so I tried your version (substituting the appropriate devs and wedge names) but it still didn't work. :-(

Finally, when I copied the boot.cfg to the SD card FAT (EFI) partition, it worked!

That doesn't sound correct to me, but it's something I can work with for now. :-)

So, to summarise: boot.cfg in EFI partition on external drive = no boot menu; boot.cfg in EFI partition on SD card EFI partition = boot menu.

Many thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Paul.


> 
> Take care,
> Jared
> 
> On Wed, 8 Jul 2020, Paul Mather wrote:
> 
>> I have a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB model on which I have installed NetBSD/aarch64 -CURRENT.  I am using the UEFI/ACPI firmware at https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases/tag/v1.16 (i.e., RPI_EFI.fd) to boot rather than using the standard bootcode.bin.
>> 
>> Following a recent post by Mark Millard (https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-arm/2020/07/01/msg006833.html), I moved my NetBSD installation to an external USB3 SSD and wish to run from that.  I'm using the "stock RPi4 eeprom firmware" option described in Mark's message, with the https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases/tag/v1.16 related materials on the SD card.  This allows the UEFI/ACPI firmware to load and then boot NetBSD from the external USB3 SSD.
>> 
>> This MOSTLY works for me.  I've selected the EFI partition on the external USB3 SSD to boot from by default in the UEFI settings.  When it boots, I can see it loads the "netbsd.img" loader.  It then fails to load/boot the "netbsd" kernel itself (after trying all the various options, e.g., netbsd, netbsd.gz, onetbsd, onetbsd.gz, ..., etc.).  It appears this is because it is trying to load it (in my case) from hd1b: whereas my root file system is actually on hd1e:.  I am able to boot successfully by executing "boot hd1e:netbsd" from the loader prompt.
>> 
>> Is there any way of specifying which partition to boot "netbsd" from, or does it always look in "hd?b:"?
>> 
>> On a RPi3 system running NetBSD/aarch64 9-STABLE, I set "root=wedge:system" in cmdline.txt on the EFI partition to boot "netbsd" from my root partition (i.e., from the GPT partition labelled "system").  Is there something similar I can do with the UEFI/ACPI boot firmware?  (It appears to ignore "cmdline.txt".)
>> 
>> I don't have much familiarity/experience with UEFI booting/configuration, so apologies if the answer is something obvious. :-)
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Paul.
>> 
>