Re: RPI4 install trip report

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

adr <adr%sdf.org@localhost> writes:

> On Sat, 3 Feb 2024, Greg Troxel wrote:
>> While in earlier times I saw nothing in dhcpd logs, now I see an address
>> and I can ping it.
>
> That should be the raspberry pi firmware trying to configure the
> network interfaces for a network installation.

It was NetBSD, with broken authorized_keys.

> Search for the pi 4 here:
>
> https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/

heh.  While that might be useful for others, I've written/rototilled
most of it so it's usually vague on things I am unclear on!   But thank
you for commenting as this is leading to better understanding.

Do you mean

  UEFI

  \todo Explain UEFI on RPI4.

  One can use use UEFI on RPI3. \todo Explain the status of integrating this into upstream sources.

or do you mean

  RPI4 (using EDK2 UEFI firmware)

or this

  The Raspberry Pi 4 requires the UEFI firmware. Write the UEFI firmware to the SD card, and then insert an USB drive with the standard NetBSD arm64.img written to it. The Pi will then boot from USB.

in which case: is that really still true?  (I have just booted a RPI4
with only arm64.img written to uSD.)

it seems there are some things in the HOWTO which are wrong/confused and
it would be good to fix them.

> I recomend to unzip the uefi firmware into the dos partition of
> the sd card after "dding" it. Don't worry about overwriting files.
> Once the ufei screen is loading hit the key shown to enter the
> setup. Disable the 3GB memory limit and be sure that the boot order
> has the sd card on top, if not you can think the system is locked
> when it is trying a pxe boot.  If you want to make a usb installation,
> use sysinst, this way you'll have control of the disk layout. But
> don't forget to copy the dos partition (or extract again the uefi
> firmware) and check the memory limit and the boot order.

I don't precisely follow.

  - Where is "the uefi firmware"?  Is the above link still valid?

  - Is the uefi firmware missing or outdated from the msdos partition of
    arm64.img?
    . If so why?
    . If not, why is the recommendation not to use /boot from arm64.img,
      or seomthing else from releasedir or the sources?

  - Does 'uefi screen' imply that one needs a kbd/display for this step?
    . Are there really no tools to set these from NetBSD?

  - Is there really a 3 GB memory limit on an 8G RPI4?  My system shows
      total memory = 8034 MB
      avail memory = 7744 MB
    which looks more or less as expected.