On Mon, Jul 21, 2025 at 06:11:37PM +0200, Ramiro Aceves wrote:
El 18/7/25 a las 10:10, Ramiro Aceves escribió:
Hi Steve,
Thank you so much for sharing the results of your experiments and
findings with the RPi4 and the UEFI firmware! It has been very helpful
for me to better understand the subject.
I think it would be great to include this kind of information on the WEB
for new users who want to install NetBSD on the RPi4. A dedicated
chapter just for the RPi4—covering all the installation methods, with
sample commands—would be excellent. It could also include details about
what works, what doesn’t, and other useful notes.
https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/
I don't necessarily agree that my experiments and poking around with
NetBSD on rpi4 are a great addition to the wiki.
I had several mis-steps and dead-ends which don't really add value to
documentation; fortunately others were able to chime in with explanation
and guidance. After re-reviewing that particular wiki page in hindsight,
I see in several cases there were at least cursory notes about things
where I stumbled, or incorrectly assumed about some aspect of the
install media.
My impression is the wiki is(?) kind of a quick and dirty place for
developers to put info and notes, likely targeted at other devs or at
least experienced users, who can research and fiddle with things.
Whereas I view the INSTALL docs as more of a procedure guide, which
someone could ideally follow and use to turn a supported machine with
blank disk into a running NetBSD system. Again, just my impression.
So I started with the evbarm INSTALL guide rather than the wiki. I could
be wrong, but my guess is other folks do too.
I do agree that installation docs could be better. I mentioned in
port-arm@ (also the previous Subject: about HDMI) I think there are
possible additions to the evbarm INSTALL doc which might have helped me
avoid some wrong paths.
That is, I ended up at evbarm/ and raspberry_pi/ wiki pages after HDMI
didn't "just work" on my rpi4b, essentially because I hadn't installed
the full UEFI 3rd party zip bundle. I believe if INSTALL had at least
mentioned the UEFI git zip as an option / addition, I might have avoided
some of my subsequent mis-steps.
On that note: how are suggested changes submitted for INSTALL guides?
Would that be a NetBSD send-pr bug for the appropriate port-* system
type, or maybe in the install category? Other?
Cheers,
sr.