Re: NetBSD on Raspberry PI5

[John Klos <john%klos.com@localhost>]

Hi,

> > "Running" is a strong word - the uSD slot does not work when booting
> > NetBSD via rpi5-uefi, all I did was (successfully) boot a kernel in
> > this way and observed dmesg output.  To actually *do* something you
> > need userland on something connected via USB.

I plan to run a USB attached SSD, and since booting directly from SSD is 
already an option, this isn't a big issue.

> > This is with arm64mbr.img.gz from around 3 weeks ago and
> > RPi5_UEFI_Release_v0.3.zip unpacked onto the FAT partition and a rpi5
> > UART cable.

Since the rpi5-uefi project says it supports framebuffers, I assumed I'd 
get something on one of the HDMI outputs.

Then I reread what you wrote and thought to try the serial console, only 
to realize the serial console requires that special, tiny connector :P

Now that I have a serial console wired, I can see UEFI booting (although I 
can't use any menus, but that's a UEFI issue) and I can see NetBSD's 
bootloader menu and the kernel booting :)

> I realized I only somewhat implicitly stated the firmware version.
> This is what came on with that image, i.e., the files in
> src/external/broadcom/rpi-firmware/dist .

I was wondering about this bootloader:

NOTICE:  BL31: v2.6(release):v2.6-239-g2a9ede0bd
NOTICE:  BL31: Built : 14:26:57, Jun 22 2023

But even though Raspberry Pi OS, rpi-config and rpi-eeprom-update refer to 
bootloader firmware, what they're talking about isn't this, apparently. No 
matter - rpi5-uefi does load and boot over serial.

However, even though I'm using GENERIC64, my dmesg has 8 megabytes more 
total / avail memory and no genfb0. It could be relates to the fact that 
if I leave HDMI connected, UEFI stops booting right after the "loading 
/var/db/entropy-file" line, before the kernel loads. Not really a concern 
for me, but interesting.

I thought ethernet worked, until I realized that your dmesg shows you have 
an axen0 device attached. Ethernet would make this a usable machine, so I 
hope someone can figure that out soon :)

In any case, it's a start. Thanks!

John