# Raspberry Pi 2 Current Stable Installation



## daBee (Feb 28, 2017)

Hi folks.

Spent the day wiping an 8 GB Kingston SD Card, and it simply will not install.  I've tried various versions of FBSD and I can't get anything to boot.  

Can someone recommend a working image that I should be using?  Any help appreciated.  

Cheers


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## Phishfry (Feb 28, 2017)

FreeBSD11-Release works as advertised on RPi2 including HDMI.

What specific method are you using to write your image to microSD?


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## daBee (Feb 28, 2017)

I was using `dd`, but it was not working at all.  So I mounted the image (MacOS) and copied in the Finder and now it says it `can't load the kernel`.  But it's a step closer.  I'll try `cp` now...didn't work either.  Same error, `can't load the kernel`.


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## Phishfry (Feb 28, 2017)

Here is my FreeBSD dd command for my crochet RPi2 image:
dd if=FreeBSD-armv6-11.0-RPI2-305354_308093M.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync

I think MacOS has a DD-GUI tool you can download as well.


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## SirDice (Feb 28, 2017)

daBee said:


> So I mounted the image (MacOS) and copied in the Finder and now it says it  can't load the kernel. But it's a step closer. I'll try  cp now...didn't work either. Same error,  can't load the kernel.


This only copies the files, not the partition table and, more importantly, the bootloader. Use dd(1).


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## daBee (Feb 28, 2017)

Yep, I've been using that.  Takes forever to wipe an SD card, but it's the safest from what I gather.  And you have to close the app for it to release the drive.  As of current, I can't find any combination of anything that will work.

Edited:

Tried `dd` to `rdisk5s1` and the write will work.  But no bootup at all.  No activity on the unit whatsoever.


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## Phishfry (Feb 28, 2017)

There is no way `dd` to a single slice will work. You must write the image to the whole drive.
All Arm images include 2 slices. MBR with uboot and UFS with the FreeBSD system.

```
root@rpi2:~ # gpart show
=>      63  15759297  mmcsd0  MBR  (7.5G)
        63    102375       1  !12  [active]  (50M)
    102438       986          - free -  (493K)
    103424  15649792       2  freebsd  (7.5G)
  15753216      6144          - free -  (3.0M)

=>       0  15649792  mmcsd0s2  BSD  (7.5G)
         0  15649792         1  freebsd-ufs  (7.5G)

root@rpi2:~ # ls /dev/mmcsd*
/dev/mmcsd0   /dev/mmcsd0s1   /dev/mmcsd0s2   /dev/mmcsd0s2a
```
I suppose you could call it 3 slices.
mmcsd0=whole drive
mmcsd0s1=MBR slice with uboot and bootloader
mmcsd0s2=BSD slice(No content like a placeholder)
mmcsd0s2a=UFS slice with FreeBSD


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## daBee (Mar 1, 2017)

Phishfry said:


> There is no way `dd` to a single slice will work. You must write the image to the whole drive.
> All Arm images include 2 slices. MBR with uboot and UFS with the FreeBSD system.



That was it.  Thank you for that.  Installed FreeBSD-11.0-STABLE-arm-armv6-RPI2-20170210-r313553.img.


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