why is armv7 GENERICSD in 13.0-RELEASE?

[Mark Millard]

On 2021-Apr-15, at 13:21, Emmanuel Vadot <manu at bidouilliste.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 18:22:27 +0100
> tech-lists <tech-lists at zyxst.net> wrote:
> 
>> (not sure where else to post this, -arm seemed most appropiate at first
>> glance)
>> 
>> As per subject. I went looking for armv7-rpi2b images. I could find
>> aarch64-rpi images and arm-armv6-rpb images but for some reason the
>> armv7-rpi2b image is called armv7-GENERICSD[1]. The only way of working
>> out if it could be suitable for rpi2b was to download, unpack the image
>> and mount the msdos partition with mdconfig to see that among the files
>> there, there's bcm2709-rpi-2-b.dtb. There's lots of armv7 hardware out
>> there not rpi2b. There is only one armv6 image and that is labelled as
>> rpi-b. There is only one armv7 image and that's labelled as GENERICSD
>> ?!? 
>> 
>> 1. why can't a naming convention be decided on and adhered to
> 
> I want to add a GENERICSD image for aarch64 for a long time, it wasn't
> possible before because some boards where using GPT while most of the
> others where using MBR. Now that Allwinner can be used with GPT a
> GENERICSD can be made (and only RPI will be left with MBR, even if I
> think that some of the RPI4 can boot from GPT)

Just an FYI for those that might care for
mostly-USB booting and use of GPT partitioning
on that USB media:

I boot a RPi2 v1.2 (so: Cortex-A53) and a RPi3B v1.2
(both 1 GiByte) via GPT partitioned USB SSD media,
based on also using a microsd card with one file on
it. (I put the microsd card in the already-booted
Rock64 for the below.)

# gpart show /dev/mmcsd1
=>      63  62333889  mmcsd1  MBR  (30G)
        63      8129          - free -  (4.0M)
      8192  62325760       1  fat32lba  (30G)

# find /mnt/ -print
/mnt/
/mnt/bootcode.bin

The microsd card that contains the bootcode.bin does
need to be MBR partitioned. Then the (pre-RPi4) RPi*
can find and load the bootcode.bin . With a modern
bootcode.bin on that media, GPT partitions then work
for booting, as does notation like [pi3] in
config.txt .

I've no access to a more modern RPi3 (such as a RPi3B+)
but all the Cortext-A53 RPi*'s that put bootcode.bin
to use would allow this sort of thing. (May be some
would not require such a microsd card use, at least
for the GPT aspect. The config.txt notation might have
shown up even later, I'm not sure.)

For the RPi4B's the 4 GiByte v1.1 ones and the RPi4B
8 GiByte v1.4 ones that I have access to all boot GPT
partitioned USB3 SSD media without use of the microsd
card slot. But, since all of them are rather early
instances, that started after an EEPROM update for each.
All involved now have the 2020-Sep-03 default/critical
EEPROM update --but such might not well cover a CM4 or
Pi400. (I've no access to those.) The RPi4's do not
use bootcode.bin at all (and likely CM4's and Pi400's
do not either?).

>> 2. when naming convention changes, please make some sort of announcement
>> on the main freebsd website.
> 
> The commit was taggued with Relnotes, not sure why it wasn't added to
> them.
> https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/commit/?id=e6b9cee76b14d687fb7ee6e37f381349b749401b
> 
>> [1] https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO-IMAGES/13.0/FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img.xz



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