# Raspberry Pi



## ansarm (Aug 5, 2014)

Hello all,

I have been having varying degrees of success with running FreeBSD on Raspberry Pi. I am running a "B" board and Debian, Rasbmc and openELEC all run flawlessly. 

I have followed the following procedure:
Download the FreeBSD RasberryPi image located here: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/arm/armv6/ISO-IMAGES/10.0/.
Extract the .BZ2 file with 7Zip.
Use Win32 Disk Imager http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ to write the image to an SD Card (I tried both 16 GB and 32 GB).
Apply keyboard, video and power.

What happens:
First boot: no video but the lights flash (I can ping the box and SSH is alive if I wait long enough).
Second boot: no video and lights flashing (I can ping the box and SSH is alive if I wait long enough).
Third boot is either: FreeBSD Pi complains of a dirty shutdown and I boot into FreeBSD Pi or I get video, but the FreeBSD bootloader cant find the kernel.
Fourth boot: no video.

I have tried this entire process at least four times with different sized SD cards. Any suggestions as to what I am doing wrong?


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## balanga (Aug 6, 2014)

I have a Pi, but have not tried to install FreeBSD on it yet, so I will take note of any progress you make. I did spot this link which may be useful to you: http://www.onemansanthology.com/blog/freebsd-on-raspberry-pi/


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## SirDice (Aug 6, 2014)

I have built several 10-STABLE and 11-CURRENT images using these instructions: http://ogris.de/howtos/freebsd-raspberry.html


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## balanga (Aug 6, 2014)

I would give this a try, but I don't know how to mount an SDHC card. I know, it's probably somewhere on this forum.


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## SirDice (Aug 7, 2014)

balanga said:
			
		

> I would give this a try, but I don't know how to mount an SDHC card....


The same way as a USB stick, using the mount(8) command. An SDHC card works pretty much the same as an external harddisk or memory stick. But you do need an SDHC card reader.


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## ansarm (Aug 8, 2014)

SirDice said:
			
		

> I have built several 10-STABLE and 11-CURRENT images using these instructions: http://ogris.de/howtos/freebsd-raspberry.html



Understood. But what is the point of the binary distributions then? Are they broken or do they expect a certain size of SD Cards?


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## SirDice (Aug 8, 2014)

I would try a different brand of SDHC card. The Raspberry Pi is quite sensitive and doesn't work properly with some cards. Size shouldn't matter much, I have several working 16 GB cards.

Also keep in mind that ARM is still a Tier 2 architecture so it doesn't get as much attention as i386 or AMD64.


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## ansarm (Aug 8, 2014)

SirDice said:
			
		

> I would try a different brand of SDHC card. The Raspberry Pi is quite sensitive and doesn't work properly with some cards. Size shouldn't matter much, I have several working 16 GB cards.



Thanks for the suggestion. I tried two cards that worked with Rasbian but no dice.

Has anyone gotten the binary distributions to work?


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## acheron (Aug 8, 2014)

You can try to put hw.bcm2835.sdhci.hs=0 in /boot/loader.conf.


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## balanga (Aug 21, 2014)

ansarm said:
			
		

> SirDice said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I tried a few images but managed to have some success with this one: http://www.onemansanthology.com/blog/freebsd-on-raspberry-pi/. I'm using a 64 GB microSD card in an adapter and it seems to boot up OK. I'm just trying a few things mentioned on that web page to find my way around the system.

So far, I am unable to use useradd - Command not found.

I guess I'll try installing ports now...


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## balanga (Aug 21, 2014)

useradd should of course have been adduser.

I was simply blindly following instructions here: http://idontwatch.tv/blog/2014/02/27/freebsd-10-on-a-raspberry-pi-notes/.


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## a59303 (Nov 6, 2014)

ansarm said:


> Apply keyboard, video and power.



Hi,

What type of video, HDMI or yellow RCA (SVGA cable I think), or other? Also what type of video - that is TV (HD, analog) or other screen?

I am successfully running FreeBSD 10.0 from, ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/arm/armv6/ISO-IMAGES/10.0/  which is FreeBSD-10.0-RELEASE-arm-armv6-RPI-B-20140131-r260789.img.bz2 on a 4 GB SanDisk SD chip with an adapter.  I used A Targus Card Reader/Writer to transfer the img to the chip via USB.  I have used`portsnap fetch` and `portsnap extract` and installed ports. I have looked around a lot because I have a very frustrating issue with the video (SVGA, also called composite, I think) on a old television, with complementary inputs.  The text runs off the screen. I have found quite a few sources of reference.  But I say with confidence that I am getting a signal, through the yellow jack, with no modifications to the img or configuration.

Good Luck,

a5'


Raspberry Pi B revision 2 (512 MB RAM)
USB keyboard
Phone charger power supply
Ethernet
Yellow RCA cable


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