# SoCs packages or ports?



## silex (Jan 3, 2013)

Hello, this is my first post over here and my experience with FreeBSD is very limited and concentrated on encrypted file servers with native kernel support so I've never really installed a port in FreeBSD for as long as I remember having using it;  The good news is that I managed to install FreeBSD on both devices, and my question is about the preferred way how to install ports : is there precompiled packages available for the ARM platform or should I cross compile? if the latter stands, any advice on how to proceed? I was thinking to use an amd64 install on virtual box, will that do it?  Thank you!

PS. my BSD of choice wasn't ported to run on Raspberry Pi (because of blobs) and doesn't support BeagleBone so I'm left with no other option than run my second favorite OS which is FreeBSD on these SoCs. ï¿½e


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## SirDice (Jan 3, 2013)

I thought, because ARM is a Tier2 platform, that there weren't any packages for it. But it appears there are: http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/arm/packages-9-stable/


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## silex (Jan 3, 2013)

Thanks SirDice, I will check that out. Compiling on BeagleBone is not that bad, on Raspberry Pi is a bit more problematic.


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## andrew@ (Jan 4, 2013)

Because the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone are supported by the armv6 code base the above packages may not work. There are subtle changes made when adding support for ARMv6 and ARMv7 that may cause issued.

You could build your own, either on the BeagleBone, or by using the qemu support that has recently been committed. For the details on how to get a qemu image you can read gonzo@'s blog entry. If you decide to build the image yourself you longer need the patch.


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