ARM board recommendations with true GigE ports

[Jim Thompson]

On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 5:06 PM, Brett Glass <brett at lariat.net> wrote:

> So, how would I obtain an image for the Solidrun "ClearFog" board (whose
> specs say it uses the Marvell ARMADA 88F628 SoC)? Is it supported by
> any of the snapshots of 11.1-RELEASE or 12.0-CURRENT? Or would I have to
> set up
> a development system to cross-compile? If there's no SD/MMC driver (as
> suggested
> by some of the messages earlier in the thread), what media would I use to
> boot
> the system and as mass storage? Is there better support for the
> "Macchiatobin"
> board, whose specs say it uses a "Marvell AMADA 8040"?
>
> --Brett Glass


​I don't see where anyone has responded to Brett, (I was in Europe starting
with EuroBSDcon for two weeks, so I didn't notice that the thread had gone
stale without answering Brett's question.)
Apologies if I missed someone else answering.

​Solid-Run has some documentation specific to FreeBSD on the ClearFog,
including build instructions for FreeBSD​
https://wiki.solid-run.com/doku.php?id=products:a38x:software:os:freebsd
​
That URL above has a link to pre-built images that Solid-Run has made if
that's what you're after.​
http://images.solid-build.xyz/A38X/freebsd/

​I booted pfSense 2.4.1 (not released, but based on FreeBSD 11.1) from USB
on a ClearFog Base (with eMMC) yesterday.  ​ClearFog Pro works as well.
​We use a customized toolchain that started off as crochet, but the
instructions on that page should serve to get you to freebsd -HEAD running
from microSD.  Getting from there to FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE
is simple.   Since arm32 isn't a tier-1 architecture in FreeBSD, I don't
know what it takes to have RE make images for these boards.  I know I've
given Glen Barber a selection of boards (arm and non-arm) to
use in his efforts to make FreeBSD images for various boards, and if it's
as simple as sending him a ClearFog, he only needs to hold his hand up.  I
have about 20 of them sitting in my office.

Since Brett mentioned "mass storage",  I haven't tried the m-sata on
ClearFog, but the m.2 SATA ports on our product based on the Armada 385
work, so presumably the m-sata on the ClearFog also works.

The Marvell 8040 stuff is further behind.  It boots, but no interfaces, etc.

I'll be trying the espresso.bin board (Armada 3700) next.

Jim