• powerpc
• UBoot-Install

Installing FreeBSD On U-Boot based PowerPC Targets

Some install notes from building and installing on AmigaOne A1222 and AmigaOne X5000, but should be relevant to most U-Boot PowerPC targets.

As of r344242 bsdinstaller will place ubldr on its own FAT filesystem, which can then be loaded by uboot as follows:

fatload $medium $part $loadaddr ubldr
fatload $medium $part $fdtaddr $fdtfile
fdt addr $fdtaddr
fdt boardsetup
bootelf $loadaddr

With '$medium' and '$part' being the device FreeBSD is installed to, with the partition ubldr is installed to. For example:

fatload sata 0:1 $loadaddr ubldr
fatload sata 0:1 $fdtaddr $fdtfile
fdt addr $fdtaddr
fdt boardsetup
bootelf $loadaddr

Building the World and Kernel

The targets tested with are:

• AmigaOne A1222 - MPC85XXSPE (powerpcspe)

• AmigaOne X5000 - QORIQ64 (powerpc64)

Example with 64-bit target:

make -s -j3 buildworld buildkernel TARGET_ARCH=powerpc64 KERNCONF=QORIQ64
make -C release cdrom

You should be able to boot the CDROM image on a USB stick, if U-boot can read ISO9660, otherwise you will need to use another means (FAT volume) to get ubldr into U-boot's memory, along with the FDT blob.

On Freescale hardware with SATA, you can install to SATA for local booting. This includes the AmigaOne A1222 and X5000 I tested. Notes for this are:

1. SATA disk needs to be partitioned MBR, with a FAT volume for booting. I make this 128MB, so there's plenty of space for kernels, the dtb, and any other needed files.
2. If you plan to only use FreeBSD, dedicate slice 2 to FreeBSD.

My GEOM map:

# gpart show ada0
=>       63  234441585  ada0  MBR  (112G)
         63          1        - free -  (512B)
         64     262144     1  fat16  (128M)
     262208  234179432     2  freebsd  (112G)
  234441640          8        - free -  (4.0K)

=>        0  234179432  ada0s2  BSD  (112G)
          0   41943040       1  freebsd-ufs  (20G)
   41943040    8388608       2  freebsd-swap  (4.0G)
   50331648  183847784       4  freebsd-zfs  (88G)

Once FreeBSD is installed, set bootargs in ubldr, and set SATA boot:

setenv bootcmd_sata 'sata start; fatload sata 0:1 ${loadaddr} ubldr; fatload sata 0:1 ${fdtaddr} ${fdtfile}; fdt addr ${fdtaddr}; fdt boardsetup; bootelf ${loadaddr}'
setenv bootcmd_old ${bootcmd}
setenv bootcmd run bootcmd_sata
saveenv

Be sure to use single quotes when setting bootcmd_sata, so the environment variables aren't expanded immediately, and can be updated later if needed.