Re: RPI4 install trip report

[adr <adr%sdf.org@localhost>]

On Sun, 4 Feb 2024, Greg Troxel wrote:
> > Search for the pi 4 here:
> >
> > https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/
>
> heh.  While that might be useful for others, I've written/rototilled
> most of it

That's funny, obviously I didn't know you wrote that.

> or do you mean
>
>  RPI4 (using EDK2 UEFI firmware)
>
> or this
>
>  The Raspberry Pi 4 requires the UEFI firmware. Write the UEFI firmware to the SD card, and then insert an USB drive with the standard NetBSD arm64.img written to it. The Pi will then boot from USB.
>
> in which case: is that really still true?  (I have just booted a RPI4
> with only arm64.img written to uSD.)

I couldn't boot the RPI4 without edk2 uefi in the past. The wiki
still states that you need that. If this is not true any more,
please delete it. But first, do you have all the hardware working
ok?

> > I recomend to unzip the uefi firmware into the dos partition of
> > the sd card after "dding" it. Don't worry about overwriting files.
> > Once the ufei screen is loading hit the key shown to enter the
> > setup. Disable the 3GB memory limit and be sure that the boot order
> > has the sd card on top, if not you can think the system is locked
> > when it is trying a pxe boot.  If you want to make a usb installation,
> > use sysinst, this way you'll have control of the disk layout. But
> > don't forget to copy the dos partition (or extract again the uefi
> > firmware) and check the memory limit and the boot order.
>
> I don't precisely follow.

The uefi firmware is not included with the sd card image. This is
a third party project (builds from tianocore ready to use). I always
use the last release.

>  - Does 'uefi screen' imply that one needs a kbd/display for this step?

Yes, it uses the framebuffer that is going to be presented to
netbsd. Don't you need a monitor to change your bios|uefi settings
in a common PC?

>    . Are there really no tools to set these from NetBSD?

Are there tools to modify the bios settings in netbsd?

>  - Is there really a 3 GB memory limit on an 8G RPI4?  My system shows
>      total memory = 8034 MB
>      avail memory = 7744 MB
>    which looks more or less as expected.

The limit was added to the firmware to make operating systems that
don't deal with a bug in the hardware (dma access, iirc), work ok.
You are not booting from uefi, so you don't see that limit (netbsd
knows how to deal with that).

I think that you are a little confused about the operating system's
uefi bootloader, and the uefi system (like the bios) in the machine's
firmware. The EDK2 project makes the raspberry pi "offer" a uefi
environment (interface) to the operating system.

If I'm the one confused and the netbsd team wrote a replacement of
the edk2 firmware wich is include in the sd images, please let me
know.

At least I know now that the aarch64 kernel can be booted directly
by the rpi4 firmware. Jun Ebihara is also still using uefi. Could
the rpi4 users in the list that don't use uefi share their experience?

It's all the hardware working ok?. (I mean at least as with uefi
of course.)

adr