Re: RPI4 usb, external ssd

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

gdt%lexort.com@localhost (Greg Troxel) writes:

>I have written arm64.img from the netbsd-10 build.sh release to a uSD
>(from RC3, but I see no changes since), and have done nothing further
>with the boot process.  I have until now not grasped that doing this is
>not an ok approach -- it had seemed like one could boot NetBSD directly
>from the eeprom/start4.elf with dtbs, and that was reasonable.


The GENERIC64 kernel assumes that xhci directly attaches to ACPI
which hides the PCI controller that has been set up by UEFI. That's
fine for an RPI4 as the only PCI device is xhci.

If you don't use UEFI/ACPI, then the kernel needs a PCI driver
and attach xhci to the PCI bus itself. The PCI driver is in tree,
but not included in the GENERIC64 configuration. It also requests
the xhci firmware upload so that the device is found.


>By UEFI code, do you mean that I have to install "UEFI firmware",
>specifically "RPI_EFI.fd", the included modified config.txt, and basically the rest
>of the stuff in the zip one downloads from
>https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases/tag/v1.35 ?

Can't say if that's the right version, but yes.


>Is this just "rsync -av . /boot" after unzipping in a dir, or is it
>trickier?

Copying to the boot partition should be enough. UEFI is loaded like
a kernel.


>I also found that the HDMI didn't seem to work when using native
>netbsd-10 booting.  I am guessing that this will also get fixed with
>UEFI firmware boot.

A regular kernel without UEFI should use the console specified on
in cmdline.txt and default to keyboard/display. The RPI4 has two
HDMI ports, we only support one (the left).