cubox-i armv7 12.1-RELEASE image fails to boot

[Ian Lepore]

On Mon, 2019-11-25 at 21:37 -0500, Tom Pusateri via freebsd-arm wrote:
> I tried booting the 12.1-RELEASE image on my cubox-i and it goes into
> an endless loop before it boots the kernel but it scrolls so fast
> it’s hard to make out or figure out how to stop it.
> 
> The last line I can read before it hits the endless loop is:
> 
> Loading /boot/loader.conf.local
> /
> 
> If I freeze frame a slow mo video of the endless loop it repeats:
> 
> Code: b1116931 f0074806 4806fea4 fea1f007 (e7cf682d)
> data abort
> pc : [<8ffafd74>]		lr : [<0ffafd2f>]
> reloc pc : [<1782bd74>]		lr : [<1782bd2f>]
> sp  : 8f57ae38	ip : 8f5a	fp : 8ffc2f1c
> r10 : 8ffbb240	r9 : 8f58	r8 : 8ffafd74
> r7  : 8ffd06c4	r6 : 8e55	r5 : ffffffff	r4 : 8f8a6318
> r3  : 9ff01ce5	r2 : 9ff0	r1 : 8ffbb240	r0 : 0000005e
> Flags : nzCv	IRQs on  FIQs  on  Mode SVC_32
> 
> 
> This unit is a couple of years old now but still works fine with
> Linux.
> 
> Thanks,
> Tom
> 

Hmmm, I just downloaded the image, burned it to a fresh sdcard, and my
cubox boots from it fine.  I'm using a serial console, not video, maybe
that's related somehow.

Yep, that's what it is... I dug out a monitor and hooked it up, and
that gives me the same symptoms you're seeing.

The problem is, I have no idea what to do about that.  Those register
dumps are printed by uboot's exception handlers, and this happens while
the efi loader is loading the kernel.  I don't know much about efi or
about running arm systems with video monitors connected.

-- Ian