SBC & BSD

NO CHANCE!!

It flies by far too fast on my 1.5GHz processor!

(I spent a couple of hours this morning rebooting & trying to stop it.)


I even booted FuguIta live on a PC, to see if I could alter /etc/boot.conf, but it must be coded in BSD.RD itself.

The stuff flying by fast is the kernel in it's "What have we here?" phase, IME.

Even BSD should have /etc/inittab. If you look at the first script run, back it up, and then stick in 'echo' commands in all capitals followed by a 'sleep 5' command, the boot will keep pausing at your comments to let you see where it is. Then, if that's ok, just delete it and copy back the original. Try it.

BSD.RD is a combined kernel/initrd/distro installer, it isn't like Linux.

One could possibly extract it all, alter what's needed, then put it all back together again, but that would be a heck of a job, (& beyond my capabilities, I expect).

I expect they have only put it together for 'commercial interests' who probably will install it over a network; just a shame that a 'desktop user' can't install from their image.

As for NetBSD, I can never get it to connect to the internet, so that one's out too.

I guess I'll just have to keep using Devuan.

Originally Posted by fatmac NO CHANCE!! It flies by far too fast on my 1.5GHz processor! (I spent a couple of hours this morning rebooting & trying to stop it.)

Originally Posted by fatmac BSD.RD is a combined kernel/initrd/distro installer, it isn't like Linux. One could possibly extract it all, alter what's needed, then put it all back together again, but that would be a heck of a job, (& beyond my capabilities, I expect).

I think you're getting close if you're seeing stuff fly by fast, but you shouldn't need to extract it all etc., and shouldn't need to stop anything. If it gets to the point of displaying the "boot>" prompt, it's supposed wait there for a few seconds (not many, I would guess 3-5 sec). That's the point that you type in

set tty fb0

(then ENTER) to continue sending your output to your HDMI monitor (don't hesitate - you really only have a few seconds before it keeps going.)

Did you get that far?

And as the instructions said, you only need to type in "set tty fb0" the first time, if you follow up with

echo "set tty fb0" >> /etc/boot.conf

after you first log in.

If you take a photo of what's on screen as it's flying by fast, preferably close to the last thing you see on screen, maybe I can compare to mine and see how far you've made it, and give you hints on what to do next, if you're interested.

Originally Posted by fatmac I expect they have only put it together for 'commercial interests' who probably will install it over a network; just a shame that a 'desktop user' can't install from their image.

Not true that it's only for commercial interests. A desktop user can install it from their image, and I did - and I'm just a tinkerer, not a programmer or software developer (my day job has nothing to do with IT except as a consumer of it.)

I actually found U-boot took more getting used to in order to set it up correctly than did installing and running OpenBSD, since I've installed OpenBSD on x86_64 a few times but this was my first time with U-boot.

Posting from OpenBSD 7.0 Aarch on a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB, with only the following installed on top of the base install:
evince light
firefox-esr
iridium
lynx
nano
xfce-4.16
xfce-extras-4.16

OK, "only" might be a bit misleading, since xfce and xfce-extras is quite a bit.

TKS

OK, thanks TKS, I do get to the boot> prompt, but I was just trying to enter those random letters, which didn't stop it - I'll give it a go just with the 'set' command.

(My 'extras' will be Fluxbox, Firefox, & at least mc with mpg123; but mplayer would be good too. )

fatmac, good to hear. You are close.

I should clarify that you only have a few seconds to *start* typing at the boot> prompt.

Once you start typing, the countdown timer stops (don’t know for how long; maybe forever) and then it waits for your input and to hit enter.

You don’t need to type nonsense characters as that suggestion instructs. That was just a suggestion of one way to stop the timer. If you’re quick to type in the first “s” of the command “set tty fb0”, then you can take your time typing the rest of it.

TKS

Still no luck - even with my fingers on the keys ready to press!

It just won't pause for me!

This is OpenBSD 7.0, maybe something has changed since your installation(?).

I've been trying from both pendrive & SD card, but it just continues to boot to the serial console.

(There's less than half a second before it continues, maybe less.)


I think I'll just have to write this off as a no go, but thanks for trying to help, appreciated.

Odd that you don’t get the full pause at the boot> prompt. Too bad since you’re so close, but I’m out of suggestions.

Nothing to do with 7.0, as that’s what I’m running now.

Enjoy Devuan on your RPi, and if you get the urge to try OpenBSD again (7.1 is coming in April ;-) ), let us know how it goes.

You could try over on http://daemonforums.org/ if you’re interested in taking another shot at it some time, although I don’t think there are many people running a BSD on ARM over there.

TKS