rpi4 updated eeprom

[Mark Millard]

On 2020-Sep-24, at 08:21, tech-lists <tech-lists at zyxst.net> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 01:46:27PM +0000, Robert Crowston wrote:
>> Could you be a little more specific about �can�t boot�: what happens?
>> The pi melts into a puddle? ;)
> 
> ahhh sorry ;)
> 
> ok, the screen that comes up, it has a qrcode on the right, a raspberry
> graphic on the left, it says that I need to upgrade the software, it
> seems to run md5 (or something like it) against startelf4 (and other things like uboot.bin, but it's so quick I can't catch it all) and objects to it, screen refreshes. No boot loader I'd associate with freebsd starts.
> 
> I can boot freebsd if I put the sdcard into a working machine and revert the changes made to config.txt (whew!)
> 
> If it helps, I can make an mp4 of it and post it somewhere, seems the only way
> to capture the information. The qrcode translates to (i seem to remember) the
> official rpi website).
> 
> (unfortunately I still haven't got a usb/serial <> TTY cable so can't capture
> the output that way, yet)

I do not know if the following will be of help or not.
I'm not sure of the details of what you have set up.
But "it says that I need to upgrade the software" suggests
the following to me. (Booting off the microsd card does
not require as recent of software as I understand.)

Note: I have the USB3 SSD's msdosfs mounted on /usb_efi for
the below.

# ls -ldTt /usb_efi/*
drwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     8192 Sep  7 22:48:50 2020 /usb_efi/OVERLAYS
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    47516 Sep  1 14:04:10 2020 /usb_efi/bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  2283936 Sep  1 14:04:08 2020 /usb_efi/start4.elf
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     5422 Sep  1 14:04:04 2020 /usb_efi/fixup4.dat
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     5252 Sep  1 13:59:48 2020 /usb_efi/Readme.md
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel      206 Sep  1 13:59:48 2020 /usb_efi/config.txt.uefi_orig
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  2031616 Sep  1 07:08:54 2020 /usb_efi/RPI_EFI.fd
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel      236 Jul 15 02:21:48 2020 /usb_efi/config.txt
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    18693 Nov 22 09:06:44 2019 /usb_efi/COPYING.linux
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     1594 Nov 22 09:06:44 2019 /usb_efi/LICENCE.broadcom
drwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     8192 Sep 27 21:05:00 2018 /usb_efi/EFI

Note the "Sep 1" dates. What are the dates for yours (presuming that you
have handled things to preserve the original dates instead of showing
when you copied things)?

https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/blob/master/firmware/release-notes.md
reports:

QUOTE
USB MSD boot also requires the firmware from Raspberry Pi OS 2020-08-20 or newer.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bcm2711_bootloader_config.md

2020-09-14 Promote the 2020-09-03 release to be the default EEPROM images.

	• Promote the 2020-09-03 bootloader EEPROM and VLI 0138A1 as the default release (critical folder).
END QUOTE

The 2020-08-20 date was also present during the end of the BETA/stable
sequence as well.

(UEFI/ACPI may well require something not too old as well, although
it might tolerate older and MSD does.)

FreeBSD and its port sysutils/rpi-firmware are not yet up to
date for such things so to use the UEFI/ACPI and USB MSD together
you need to manage your own materials. I do not remember if:

https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases/download/v1.20/RPi4_UEFI_Firmware_v1.20.zip

supplies 2020-Aug-20 or later files or not. I've updated mine separately
at times and so I might have more recent materials than in the .zip file.

I expect that "it says that I need to upgrade the software" means
that you need to do something to update the relevant files on the
msdos file system on the USB SSD that you are trying to boot from.

===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com
( dsl-only.net went
away in early 2018-Mar)