# FreeBSD 12 on Raspberry Pi 3B .... questions



## cwf-ml (Nov 4, 2018)

So I installed the BETA3 image on a new Pi 3B (no plus). It left a number of questions

Console speed was 115200  - the wiki says 9600. Is that a 3B only thing?
File system layout is an msdosfs for /boot/msdos, and a ufs for /. Nothing else. The root fs did NOT have noatime set. Is that on purpose?
Does that system *anything* to accomodate the fact that it runs on some crappy flash card? If so, what? If not - what can I do?
If I wanted to change the layout to one with a separate / and /usr - can I just put the flash card into another BSD system, tar the file systems, wipe the card, create my new layout, restore the files from tar (including device files I guess) and adjust fstab as needed ?  Or are there hidden traps I have to expect?  What about those strange device files for the volumes - will they come up automatically, or do I have to create them?
my display keeps eating most of the leftmost character in each line.  I tried the solution given elsewhere around here with setting the oversacn variables in config.txt, but that does not seem to have any effect. Ideas?


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## Phishfry (Nov 4, 2018)

cwf-ml said:


> Is that a 3B only thing?


No FreeBSD now uses 115200 as the default console baud across the board.



cwf-ml said:


> Does that system *anything* to accomodate the fact that it runs on some crappy flash card?


Checkout fstab for tmpfs. It moves /tmp to a memory disk to help prevent premature card wear.



cwf-ml said:


> If I wanted to change the layout to one with a separate / and /usr - can I just put the flash card into another BSD system


When I compile a kernel on ARM I move the entire /usr/src and usc/obj to a USB drive. Simply partition USB drive and run newfs, create directories and move it over. Then I make a fstab entry so the system knows where to find it.
Yes you can do the copying on another machine with the proper permissions.


cwf-ml said:


> What about those strange device files for the volumes - will they come up automatically, or do I have to create them?


I don't know what this is. All device files live in /dev and you shouldn't move those.
This script helped me understand what needs copying. It copies an install from microSD card to the eMMC onboard the BBB.
https://github.com/freebsd/crochet/blob/master/board/BeagleBone/overlay/root/copy-to-emmc.sh



cwf-ml said:


> my display keeps eating most of the leftmost character in each line. I tried the solution given elsewhere around here with setting the oversacn variables in config.txt, but that does not seem to have any effect. Ideas?


No I am facing that right now on an Intel board. So its not unique to ARM.


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## cwf-ml (Nov 4, 2018)

Hello,



Phishfry said:


> Checkout fstab for tmpfs. It moves /tmp to a memory disk to help prevent premature card wear.


Yep, I saw that.  What about the missing NOATIME? Is there a reason for that? Without it every single read on a file generates an update to its inode - with certain popular files a guranteed way to wear out that SD card...



Phishfry said:


> (... on the strange device files ...)
> I don't know what this is. All device files live in /dev and you shouldn't move those.


I am used to volume devices looking like /dev/sda0s1a, or /dev/ada0p3
Now we suddenly have device files like
     /dev/ufs/rootfs
    /dev/msdosfs/MSDOSBOOT

And I checked these - they are not just hard links to /dev/mmcsd0s2a and /dev/mmcsd0s1 respectively. They have different device numbers. So - what is that? And how would another filesystem I would use look like?



Phishfry said:


> ( ... on the non-fitting display ...)
> No I am facing that right now on an Intel board. So its not unique to ARM.


Yeah, but the Raspberry guys provide a fix for it in config.txt. Question is, why does that fix not work and what can I do to make that fix work?

(Edit - that question is now kinda moot because that 10'' display diesd after eight hard hours of showing a Pi console and is on its way back to Jeff Bezos. We'll see what the next one does...)


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## Phishfry (Nov 4, 2018)

cwf-ml said:


> What about the missing NOATIME? Is there a reason for that?


https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arm/2016-March/013516.html
Personal choice.

I use Apacer Industrial Cards that cost as much as the Pi itself. My disk problems disappeared.
You buy a camera card and get what you pay for. It's not made to run an OS although it can.


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