STICKY: Installing FreeBSD

[rp3]

Im having problems trying to install FreeBSD on my rbp3.
Im getting the rainbow screen but it doesnt boot.

I have formatted the ssd card with the recommended SDFormatter program before applying the freebsd image onto the empty ssd card, but nothing works. Ive even tried the Fat32Formatter.exe program.

Nothing gets me any further then to rainbow screen.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Im having problems trying to install FreeBSD on my rbp3.
Im getting the rainbow screen but it doesnt boot.

Did you get it here?

[rp3]

I got the image directly from their website.....hmmm
http://www.freebsd.org/where.html

[MarkHaysHarris777]

I got the image directly from their website.....hmmm
http://www.freebsd.org/where.html

That is very cool... I was not aware that freeBSD was even available for the PI ! ~very nice!

Anyway, I'm assuming there is a corruption of some kind in the SD card... reseat the card and retry; more likely than not you're going to have to make the card again... maybe get a new card. Do the freeBSD for PI people have a forum?

[fruitoftheloom]

Im having problems trying to install FreeBSD on my rbp3.
Im getting the rainbow screen but it doesnt boot.

I have formatted the ssd card with the recommended SDFormatter program before applying the freebsd image onto the empty ssd card, but nothing works. Ive even tried the Fat32Formatter.exe program.

Nothing gets me any further then to rainbow screen.

Would netBSD suffice ?

viewtopic.php?f=86&t=149328

Or freeBSD

viewtopic.php?f=85&t=90613

[jahboater]

I have formatted the ssd card with the recommended SDFormatter program before applying the freebsd image onto the empty ssd card, but nothing works. Ive even tried the Fat32Formatter.exe program.

It looks like these are ".img" image files in which case you need "dd" or Win32DiskImager.
The formatting is 100% pointless as it will be overwritten.

[RishabhPilani]

Hi all

I am trying to install FreeBSD 11 RPI2 IMG file in my raspberry pi 2 model B.

But it did not working. Nothing could be seen on display. It shows colourful screen, which generally happens when hardware could not detect the os/ kernel.

Whereas with raspbian my board is working fine. That means no hardware issue.

Please help in resolving this

[pi-anazazi]

Hi!

The 10.3-based release for Raspi is supporting ARM 6, i.e. Raspi 1, while Raspi 2 and 3 are ARM 7 and ARM 8, respectively. So apparently no way to install to the newer Raspis at the moment.

[Offsecindia]

Hi ,
Is there any persistent image for freebsd for rpi3 model B? Please include the link.

[grzesyou]

I've managed to install raspbsd on RPI2B

% uname -a
FreeBSD rpi3 12.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT #0 r313109M: Thu Feb 2 16:16:39 MST 2017 raspberry@hive.raspbsd.org:/usr/home/brd/rpi3/crochet/work/obj/arm64.aarch64/usr/src/sys/GENERIC arm64

I've used SDFormatter and dd (with sync) image form my bsd desktop.
Additionally I've replaced boot.bin start.elf and overlay directory from noobs zip
(I seen this method in 'FreeBSD image won't boot' this forum's thread)

then followed
http://www.onemansanthology.com/blog/fr ... pberry-pi/
(copy of commands from the website):

Here is the commands I used in case any body just wants to copy and paste

hytekblue@raspberry-pi:/home/pi # gpart show mmcsd0

hytekblue@raspberry-pi:/home/pi # gpart resize -i 2 mmcsd0

hytekblue@raspberry-pi:/home/pi # gpart show mmcsd0

hytekblue@raspberry-pi:/home/pi # reboot

[ After reboot ]

hytekblue@raspberry-pi:/home/pi # gpart show

hytekblue@raspberry-pi:/home/pi # gpart resize -i 1 mmcsd0s2

hytekblue@raspberry-pi:/home/pi # gpart show mmcsd0s2

hytekblue@raspberry-pi:/home/pi # growfs /

hytekblue@raspberry-pi:/home/pi # reboot
--
grzesyou

[grzesyou]

I have to give more details about this method. Recently I had to repeat procedure and I figured out that the files copied from noobs image to msdos partition of RaspBSD were:
bootcode.bin
recovery.cmdline
recovery.elf
recovery.img
recovery.rfs
recovery7.img
riscos-boot.bin
bcm2708-rpi-0-w.dtb
bcm2708-rpi-b-plus.dtb
bcm2708-rpi-b.dtb
bcm2708-rpi-cm.dtb
bcm2709-rpi-2-b.dtb
bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb
bcm2710-rpi-cm3.dtb

and directory
overlays

[balanga]

I tried various images from:-

http://download.raspbsd.org/

Found one that worked on my RPiB and one on my RPi2. They are running FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT.

[cjspiteri]

I have just recently got FreeBSD working on my Pi. I have been using Raspbian Jessie lite (headless) with a TP LINK wifi adapter. The adapter is running flawlessly on that OS. I wanted to get the adapter work on FreeBSD so I can start learning more about it. I only have the Pi as a unix/linux machine to work with (other than the notebook I am working on which I use for work, so I can't really play around with things on here).

Any suggestions on how to get the adapter working. When I run ifconfig it does not show the adapter at all.

any help is appreciated.

[balanga]

Check the output from dmesg to see if the adapter has been recognised...

Also check if FreeBSD supports the card

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/hardware.html

There is also the FreeBSD forum which is very helpful:-

https://forums.freebsd.org/

[tarjei99]

Free BSD + hardened BSD v 12 downloads for Raspberry PI 3 (RPI3)

I have used Etcher (free software) to transfer the images to the micro SD cards.

I don't think any of these can use the internal wifi. But there should be no problem attaching a wifi button to a USB Port.

https://hardenedbsd.org/~shawn/rpi3/ # hardened FreeBSD user/passwd hbsd/hbsd
http://download.raspbsd.org/ # user/passwd : raspberry/raspberry
https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapsh ... AGES/12.0/ # Not tried yet. Try freebsd/freebsd

some have root without password. For the rest it is root/root

##
## rambling notes below which may or may not be of interest
##

For official FreeBSD, be aware that you may have to install pkg from ports and modify /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf

avoid installing ports from the bsdconfig gui.

Select keyboard mapping with the command : kbdkeymap

To get ntpd to set clock use the command "ntpd -n -g -g" break out of program when it has set the time.

open ntpd will set the time of the rpi without help.

To extend the disk automatically use the command below. It will extend the last partition on the disk. Make sure that it is not something like swap. Use a swap file instead.

extend file system : "service growfs onestart"

make swap filel (2048 = 2GB, 4096 = 4GB)

dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1m count=4096

/etc/fstab :
md99 none swap sw,file=/usr/swap0,late 0 0

Command “swapon -aL“ to start using swap file.

[balanga]

I just discovered today that FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE for RPi2 has been available for a couple of months...

https://www.freebsd.org/where.html

https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releas ... PI2.img.xz

It installed without any problem....

I'm wondering what I can do with it now.... Any ideas?

[i486]

Maybe silly question but is FreeBSD port working stable on RPi? It seems Pi is mainly used with Raspbian but if FreeBSD works without problems, I think it can be real alternative. I guess most people don't know about it or use the OS which is used by others.

[grzesyou]

I have my RPi2 B v1.2 running image FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE r341666 GENERIC arm64.
In order to run I had to replace some files in boot on FreeBSD image with files from boot on current Raspbian image:
all files in overlays
bootcode.bin
and all start* files

It's nice that RELEASE have all pkg precompiled.
Can't tell anything about GPIO support, I haven't tested it.
g