Trouble installing FreeBSD onto sg-1000

nguser · Oct 19, 2020, 8:20 PM

Hello,

I own a netgate SG-1000 device that I would like to load FreeBSD 12.1 (not pfsense) onto.

This seems simple ... I just need to short the "SD Boot" jumper on the board and insert a bootable microSD card.

So I did that ... I created a microSD on my Mac using diskutil on the command line, eventually running:

dd if=./FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img of=/dev/disk7 bs=1024000 conv=sync

But when I power on the device, I immediately get:

CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

... repeating forever.

The device works fine, however - if I remove the jumper and boot from the original device it powers on and boots to pfsense just fine.

So, either I am using the wrong FreeBSD image (I tried both arm64 and armv7) or I am not formatting the SD card properly or ... ?

Thank you.

kiokoman · Oct 19, 2020, 11:11 PM

i don't own a sg device but
cccccc is printed when it is unable to find the files to boot
wrong img, unaligned partition or something..
TI AM3352 ARM Cortex-A8 should be armv7 compliant

nguser · Oct 19, 2020, 11:17 PM

Thank you.

Yes, I think the:

FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img

image is the correct boot image to be using here.

I think my 'dd' command in OP is correct also. I am not sure what other factors are in play here that I might be doing incorrectly ...

I am using a 32GB microSD card - any issues there ?

kiokoman · Oct 19, 2020, 11:19 PM

are you able to mount the partition after writing it on the mac ?
i think there should be a msdosfs and a ufs partition that you should be able to mount from terminal

nguser · Oct 20, 2020, 3:27 PM

When I insert this microSD card into the mac OSX system, it comes up as a MSDOSBOOT volume and it contains three items:

dtb (directory)
EFI (directory)
ubldr.bin (regular file)

When I insert it into the mac, it just automounts the volume and names it "MSDOSBOOT".

Is that what you would expect ?

stephenw10 · Oct 21, 2020, 5:38 PM

The cccc output like that means it cannot find a bootloader and it waiting for you to upload something via serial.
Unlike the other ARM devices SG-1000 does not have any storage for uboot, it's on the boot media. Hence it can only boot USB if uboot is still present on the eMMC.

So you will either need to have uboot still present on the eMMC or on the SD card you are trying to boot.

It's been a while but I believe the Beagle Bone Black image will boot on the SG-1000 but does not 'see' the NICs as the switch code is not present.

See: https://github.com/Netgate/u-boot-sg1000
And: https://github.com/Netgate/meta-ubmc

Steve

nguser · Oct 22, 2020, 4:20 PM

Thank you.

I am happy to place the bootloader on the SD card which is one of the options you list.

How does one do that ? If I 'dd' a FreeBSD bootable image to the card, that's it - that's what is on there.

How do I add the bootloader after the fact ?

OR ...

The device still properly boots from the factory installed pfsense load that is on it - is there any way to interrupt that boot process before it loads pfsense and tell it to boot the SD card instead ?

That is a manual process that requires human intervention, but at least it would get me started ...

stephenw10 · Oct 22, 2020, 9:03 PM

I would install pfSense onto the eMMC, so you have uboot on there, then boot FreeBSD from SD card.
It will boot the SD card (mmc 0) by default if a fat partition exists on it. You can see that if you interrupt uboot and check the envs:

Trying to boot from MMC
Card doesn't support part_switch
MMC partition switch failed
*** Warning - MMC partition switch failed, using default environment

reading u-boot.img
reading u-boot.img


U-Boot 2016.03 (May 30 2018 - 12:13:49 -0400)

       Watchdog enabled
I2C:   ready
DRAM:  512 MiB
MMC:   OMAP SD/MMC: 0, OMAP SD/MMC: 1
reading u-boot.env

** Unable to read "u-boot.env" from mmc0:1 **
Using default environment

Net:   <ethaddr> not set. Validating first E-fuse MAC
cpsw, usb_ether
starting USB...
USB0:   Port not available.
** Bad device usb 0 **
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
=> printenv
Fatboot=env exists loaderdev || env set loaderdev ${fatdev}; env exists UserFatboot && run UserFatboot; env exists trynetboot && env exists Netboot && run Netboot; echo Booting from: ${fatdev} ${bootfile}; fatload ${fatdev} ${loadaddr} ${bootfile} && go ${loadaddr};
Netboot=env exists loaderdev || env set loaderdev net; env exists UserNetboot && run UserNetboot; echo Booting from: DHCP; dhcp ${loadaddr} ${bootfile} && go ${loadaddr};
Preboot=env exists bootfile || bootfile=ubldr.bin; env exists SetupFdtfile && run SetupFdtfile; env exists SetupSpiboot && run SetupSpiboot; env exists SetupFatdev && run SetupFatdev; env exists UserPreboot && run UserPreboot;
SetupFatdev=env exists fatdev || usb start && fatdev='usb 0'; fatsize ${fatdev} ${bootfile} || fatdev='mmc 0'; fatsize ${fatdev} ${bootfile} || fatdev='mmc 1'; fatsize ${fatdev} ${bootfile} || env set trynetboot 1;
SetupFdtfile=if test ${board_name} = A335uBMC; then env set fdt_file ubmc.dtb; elif test ${board_name} = A335uFW; then env set fdt_file ufw.dtb; fi;
SetupSpiboot=env set ubldroff 0xe0000;env set ubldrsize 0x80000;
Spiboot=sf probe; sf read ${loadaddr} ${ubldroff} ${ubldrsize}; go ${loadaddr};
api_address=9ef3bb58
arch=arm
baudrate=115200
board=am335x
board_name=A335uFW
board_rev=G00
bootcmd=run Fatboot
bootcount=1
bootdelay=2
cpu=armv7
eth1addr=0c:b2:b7:af:2f:51
ethact=cpsw
ethaddr=0c:b2:b7:af:2f:4f
fdt_file=ufw.dtb
filesize=37d28
loadaddr=88000000
preboot=run Preboot
soc=am33xx
stderr=ns16550_serial
stdin=ns16550_serial
stdout=ns16550_serial
ubldroff=0xe0000
ubldrsize=0x80000
usbnet_devaddr=0c:b2:b7:af:2f:51
vendor=ti
ver=U-Boot 2016.03 (May 30 2018 - 12:13:49 -0400)

Environment size: 1732/131067 bytes
=>

Steve

nguser · Oct 22, 2020, 11:45 PM

Steve,

Thank you - I appear to have this working.

I did not do anything but remove the "SD BOOT" jumper.

So, tell me if I understand correctly - if I want to actually boot from an SD card, I need to enable the "SD BOOT" jumper, but I also need to have a uboot bootloader on my sd card.

OR, I can just put a normal, bootable sd card in the system without setting the "SD BOOT" jumper and the eMMC uboot will automatically boot from that instead of the built-in OS ...

Do I have that right ?

stephenw10 · Oct 22, 2020, 11:51 PM

Yup, both those things are true.

The jumper is there in case you end up with a damaged uboot image on the eMMC, you can force it to ignore that and load from SD to recover. If the eMMC is complete blank it should try to load from SD anyway without the jumper.

Steve