keeping up-to-date on RPi2/FreeBSD11

[Tim Kientzle]

> On Sep 5, 2015, at 4:48 PM, John <freebsd-lists at potato.growveg.org> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Sep 05, 2015 at 12:47:30PM -0700, kah42pub wrote:
> 
>> For what it is worth, these steps work for me to update an RPI2 in
>> place. A serial cable is definitely required. Most of this was taken
>> from the FreeBSD documentation. I've omitted steps that are specific to
>> my configuration.
> 
> [snip - thanks for the info btw]
> 
>> This process recently took me up to 11.0-CURRENT r287441 without a
>> hiccup on the RPI2. Hope it helps. If anyone sees anything obvious that
>> I didn't do that I should have for the upgrade process, feel free to
>> speak up.
> 
> Will your method work for an image made by crotchet - ie will it boot
> the right kernel, does it update what crotchet installed? The original
> install was http://download.raspbsd.org/FreeBSD-armv6-11.0-RPI2-286947.img.gz

Yes, it will work.

The reason there's not a lot of documentation about upgrading FreeBSD-arm in-place is simply that it's exactly the same as i386 or amd64.  All the existing documentation applies exactly.

There are a few minor bits of trivia:

* It takes a while: allow 15 hours on an RPI2, 40 hours on a BeagleBone Black.

* Crochet normally sets the KERNCONF in /etc/sys.mk so you should not need to set it manually.

* If you want to tweak the kernel configuration, it's in the usual place:  /usr/src/sys/<platform>/conf/<config>

* 1GB RAM is not enough for buildworld, so you'll need to configure swap space.  I normally aim for ram + swap >= 1.5GB, so at least 512MB on an RPI2.

* You also need to make sure you have enough disk space:  I think I've successfully done a full buildworld with an 8GB SD card.  16GB is ample.


> 
>> Also, powerd definitely works on RPI2. Having it enabled (allowing
>> stepped up CPU speeds under load) decreases the build world time by
>> hours - at least for me. Your mileage may vary.
> 
> yep, I have powerd enabled now rather than setting turbo in 
> /etc/sysctl.conf. I also have powerd_flags="-a hiadaptive" though am
> unsure if these flags have any effect on this arch.
> 
> thanks,
> -- 
> John 
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