[HN Gopher] NetBSD Booting on the Apple M1
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NetBSD Booting on the Apple M1
Author : jmmv
Score : 143 points
Date : 2021-08-28 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Netbsd was interesting around 2000 when there were a bunch of
| living computer architectures. Now when there is just basically
| ARM, AMD64 and maybe IBM Power it makes less. As an avid Unix
| afficionado I have yet to install NetBSD. OpenBSD does whatever I
| need it to do. Maybe the ability of NetBSD to support commericial
| linux software makes it still relevant but I suspect that is
| rapidly going away with SystemD dependence. Does anybody know if
| you can run a SystemD layer on Netbsd?
|
| Otherwise the ability to support Alpha and Vax and M68k while
| interesting once is for all intents and purposes irrelevant
| today, at least for me.
|
| >NetBSD/next68k System Requirements and Supported Devices
|
| NetBSD/next68k 9.2 will run on the 25 MHz 68040-based NeXT
| workstations. The Turbo (33 MHz) models are not supported. The
| 68030 model is not supported. NetBSD/next68k 9.2 does not have
| any local disk support, so you must netboot and run diskless.
|
| >The minimum configuration requires 4 MB of RAM and a network
| server capable of netbooting NetBSD/next68k. Serial consoles are
| poorly supported by the hardware, see the FAQ for help...
|
| In 2021 people spent developer hours testing NetBSD 9.2 on the
| NeXT cube...like what the www started on before the USSR fell.
| Anyway I guess everybody needs their hobbies...
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| netbsd is pure pain compared to openbsd, dont bother
| crasla wrote:
| What do you mean by pure pain? Netbsd and both openbsd are
| great operating systems. Neither one of them is bad,they just
| work differently and have other goals. Openbsd is more
| security minded and netbsd works on more
| computers/architectures
| mlyle wrote:
| > In 2021 people spent developer hours testing NetBSD 9.2 on
| the NeXT cube...like what the www started on before the USSR
| fell. Anyway I guess everybody needs their hobbies...
|
| Do you see no utility in this? I think we should keep old
| machines alive-- both their original operating system /
| environment and also something like NetBSD which is quasi-
| supported and quasi-modern have their roles.
|
| Preserving the history of it all is important.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| For society as a whole I see negative utility in time wasted.
| Not all history is important to keep alive. You don't see
| people firing up coal fire steam engines in their back yard.
|
| For the individual there may be some utility in such a hobby
| though.
|
| In life since we have a limited amount of time, we got to
| pick our priorities. Maybe maintaining a modern operating
| system on 30 year old esoteric hardware is rewarding to you.
| It wouldn't be for me. Neither of us have to justify our
| positions, however if I was looking at a resume and one kid
| put "Helped maintain netbsd/NeXT 2018-2021" and another put
| "Set up and maintained PostgreSQL based system for small
| business CRM," I would probably take the latter more
| seriously.
| jraph wrote:
| Why?
|
| Most people have "non-contructive" hobbies and that's fine.
| Everybody is out there for taking pleasure in life. What do
| you do during your leisure time? I do hike among other
| things. That probably does not help society too much.
|
| If you need to fulfill a OS-related position you should
| definitively the former, all other things being equal,
| because they will probably be more qualified. If you need a
| DBA, sure, take the latter.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| >what I do in my leisure time.
|
| Sometimes I participate in HN.
|
| My understanding is that systems programming is not in
| demmand these days. Microsoft and Apple products are
| mature. There is not a proliferation of different
| hardware architectures to port to anymore. Almost nobody
| gets paid for systems programing in unix or linux unless
| you want to become an AIX programmer or maybe work in
| academia. Again, OS programming was the big thing in the
| late 1990s early 2000s.
|
| Now it is important that your OS just works and gets out
| of the way and lets you get real work done. Anyway I am
| done with this thread because I don't want to be accused
| of flaming.
| banned23211 wrote:
| New developers are born every day and these old systems
| provide all kinds of opportunities for learning. It's an
| historical preservation effort and an interesting
| intellectual challenge. Some programmers have very high
| IQ which makes them very curious. Low IQ programmers just
| don't get it, and never will.
| the_only_law wrote:
| While I agree that systems programming has nowhere near
| the demands of business application developer these days,
| "almost nobody" seems like a hyperbole. There are a
| number of jobs out there for Unix/Linux systems
| programmers. Driver development at hardware companies,
| all sorts of security software, etc.
| jraph wrote:
| Just a comment to say that I had no intent to piss you
| off, and I don't think you are flaming, just exposing
| your perspective. Maybe I should not have included my
| question on your hobbies. It was more for the readers,
| including you, to answer in their head.
| [deleted]
| zozbot234 wrote:
| There are solid engineering reasons to keep support for
| these systems alive. They're comparatively simple and very
| well understood, so a well-maintained support for these
| "toy" systems can be used as a trusted reference even when
| working on more complex platforms.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Not all history is important to keep alive. You don't see
| people firing up coal fire steam engines in their back
| yard.
|
| Actually, people do! I'm pretty grateful that people keep
| old steam engines going. The context of where we've been
| and how we've gotten here is important.
| kelnos wrote:
| Also if there's some sort of global semi-apocalypse, we
| will likely need to fall back to some older technologies
| in order to keep some semblance of civilization going,
| where the alternative might be dropping back to a
| completely pre-industrial state.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Reminds me of the old quote: "The ability to play chess is
| the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is
| the sign of a wasted life."
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Otherwise the ability to support Alpha and Vax and M68k while
| interesting once is for all intents and purposes irrelevant
| today, at least for me.
|
| Great! You don't have to use it.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I continue to be skeptical of all the "boots on Apple M1"
| efforts. Ultimately, I don't expect them to get much further than
| the "proof-of-concept" phase, as far as usability goes.
|
| Apple's chips are SoCs, and as such are extremely complicated
| systems. There are tons of parameters to make it work efficiently
| that either need to be carefully reverse-engineered, or out-of-
| reach entirely. Apple not only won't be any help, but will be
| actively hindering these efforts.
|
| For example, is anyone dealing with the performance modes of the
| chip, tuning them for performance-vs-dissipation? What about the
| DRAM interface?
|
| Alyssa Rosenzweigs effort on reverse-engineering the GPU is
| impressive and laudable, but it's just one component of the
| dozens or so IP blocks in the chip, each of which require that
| level of work.
|
| Being able to boot your OS on the CPU is like landing on the
| beaches of Brittania and calling it conquered. (I couldn't come
| up with a better analogy)
|
| I understand the appeal of the technical challenge, and that's
| awesome! But people should lower their expectations if they ever
| expect to run an open OS with the full power (or even significant
| fraction) of the hardware.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| you sound fun. I'd love to see your operating system efforts.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "... if they expect to run an open OS with the full power (or
| even a significant fraction) of the hardware."
|
| When using open OS I never expect that.1 To me its a tradeoff
| worth making.
|
| 1 In some cases I dont want/need all the hardware features.
|
| Is there a name for the common practice where a vendor produces
| a low-priced and a high-priced version of a product that
| actually contain the exact same chip, only the lower-priced
| version has some features disabled. Vendors seem not to fear
| that buyers will reject the lower-priced version because it
| does not access all the chip's capabilities
| rjsw wrote:
| The Apple M1 is useful as a fast build machine even if the GPU
| is never usable by non-Apple operating systems.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Is it really the best option, performance-per-$?
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, but one day Apple might pull the plug on non-Apple
| OSes. By then, all of you people who supported Apple will
| have to find another solution, which may not be as appealing
| since the competition is now far behind because of all your
| support of Apple hardware. Therefore it's better to switch
| earlier than sooner even if it means a small step back in
| performance.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| You don't actually have to find another solution. The state
| it's in will continue working. The only thing apple can do
| is release a new piece of hardware that is locked down. But
| that could always happen regardless of vendor. Besides I
| don't think that's a serious risk with macs.
| amelius wrote:
| > The state it's in will continue working.
|
| Maybe so. But then again, maybe not if Apple decides to
| blow a bunch of fuses remotely. Also, your laptop could
| break. Or you might want to expand to more laptops but
| the one you are using now runs out of production.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| > Apple decides to blow a bunch of fuses remotely
|
| Then just... not update.
| amelius wrote:
| You seem to be under the impression that an OS has full
| control over the system when it is running. This is not
| necessarily true, see Intel ME.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| That is a class action law suit waiting to happen. I'm
| not saying it's not technically possible. I think Apple
| is smart enough to not do that.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| You truly expect every IP in the SoC to require GPU level
| complexity? That's a far out assumption imo. The speed of
| progress made on getting Linux to run is extremely high and
| once the GPU runs they will focus on power management. I think
| you are over way over estimating the impossibility of this
| task.
| amelius wrote:
| You missed the point. Apple may decide to make it more
| difficult to reverse-engineer their hardware. For now, we
| (the Linux/BSD community) are allowed to use their hardware,
| but this may not always be the case, e.g. when M1's successor
| hits the market.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| So we are now speculating about future hardware? Apple macs
| were never locked down. Why would they now suddenly start
| being locked down?
|
| If Apple wanted to lock them down there would not have been
| a better moment then with the M1. They already have all the
| tech ready to go. But they obviously decided not do to
| that. Assuming a product line that has been not locked down
| for decades to suddenly start being locked down AFTER the
| best moment to do it is the wrong assumption.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _If Apple wanted to lock them down there would not have
| been a better moment then with the M1. ... But they
| obviously decided not do to that._
|
| That's a laugh - what other OS can you run on the M1
| today apart from macOS? It is as good as locked down
| already!
|
| Apple understands very well that this is a very lacking
| feature of the M1, and that is why Apple is very cleverly
| using those reverse engineering effort as part of its
| online marketing to mislead some into beliveing that
| Linux or xBSD OSes will be available on the M1 in the
| very near future. The sad reality is that even if the
| reverse engineering is successful all you are going to
| get are buggy versions of other OSes, with features
| missing, which will make you regret purchasing the M1 if
| you hoped to run other OSes on it.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| You can run linux TODAY, you can run netBSD TODAY. it's
| not fully featured yet but you can run it. Locked down
| has a clear meaning and macs aren't locked down. Ipads
| are locked down, Iphones are locked down. It's impossible
| to boot a different OS on those.
|
| Linux has ran for years fine on macs. I don't see any
| reason why it won't run fine on the M1 macs.
| amelius wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23640746
|
| I will believe Apple _if_ they say they officially
| support booting of other OSes, and will keep doing so in
| the future.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| You mean like they supported bootcamp "officially" and
| then just took it away suddenly with M1? I don't see how
| that is different then having unofficial support and
| apple then locking down a new Mac. In either case you
| lost support with a new hardware platform.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Boot Camp was always Intel-specific. There was no Boot
| Camp on Power Macs, and they couldn't run Windows either.
| MS has not made available a version of Windows on ARM for
| the M1 platform, either.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| There is no "Windows for mac" for Intel either. Apple
| just added some drivers. That could be done for the M1 as
| well.
| wpm wrote:
| No it couldn't. Microsoft doesn't sell Windows for ARM.
| mlyle wrote:
| > In either case you lost support with a new hardware
| platform.
|
| If we're talking about "new hardware platforms" --- yes,
| any vendor or vendor ecosystem may drop support for
| anything at any time in future products. If ARM Ltd's
| next core is a mechanical abacus, it will not run Linux.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Right! So whether there's unofficial or official support.
| It doesn't buy you anything.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Apple not only won 't be any help, but will be actively
| hindering these efforts._
|
| They won't hinder anything, because they make money from the
| hardware.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Seriously. Apple have absolutely fractional actual reasons to
| limit non macOS boots on M1 devices. The fact they've made
| the transition & taken macOS to a whole version beyond X and
| kept supporting non apple OS boots on the devices proves (to
| me at least) that they're not going to remove it. If there
| ever was a time to lock that down, it was on the architecture
| shift.
| amelius wrote:
| > and kept supporting non apple OS boots
|
| They don't officially (!) support it.
| jolux wrote:
| Of course they don't, or people wouldn't have to be
| reverse engineering things.
|
| But it doesn't affect your hardware warranty.
| bkallus wrote:
| Suppose there's a macOS exploit found that makes use of the
| unlocked bootloader. Are you certain Apple would actually
| patch it, and not just lock the bootloader? Sony famously
| did that to the PS3.
| saagarjha wrote:
| You can "exploit" macOS by disabling SIP, which requires
| about as much effort.
| webmobdev wrote:
| They do make a profit on the hardware when they sell it to
| you. But that's a one time profit. _The new buzzword of
| capitalism is "recurring income"_. And that is where Apple's
| software ecosystem comes into the picture. Apple today makes
| billions of dollars from its App stores, paid iCloud
| services, search bundling etc. These are profitable income
| they continue to earn for the whole life-cycle of the device.
|
| And this is why Apple wants a stranglehold on both its
| hardware and software. And precisely why it will _sabotage_
| any other viable OS that emerges on its platform (which it
| can now do much more easily with its ARM SoCs).
|
| For apple fans who crib about how Linux / xBSD OS sucks
| because of all the configurations / "extra steps" they
| require to do something, I'll wager that running a Hackintosh
| on an Intel / AMD processor will be a less buggy experience
| than running Linux / xBSD on the Mac M1 as a Desktop OS.
| (Simply because AMD and Intel are actually happy to see macOS
| running on their CPUs, unlike Apple that sees other OSes on
| its ARM cpus as a threat.)
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| I understand that part of the "magic" behind the M1 is how it has
| some cores that are "performance" cores and other cores that are
| highly efficient "low power" cores.
|
| My question is, how much of the sublime performance of M1 Macs
| comes from MacOS being fine-tuned to take advantage of these two
| different type of cores?
|
| If you simply get the bare minimum of NetBSD booting on an M1,
| will it not achieve nearly the same performance unless the OS is
| fine-tuned to schedule properly across the "performance" cores
| and the "efficient low power" cores?
|
| I remember reading a recent article [0] about how future Intel
| chips plan to have similar "perf" and "low power" cores, and part
| of the presentation included someone from Microsoft saying they
| spent lots of time on the Windows team making sure Windows could
| schedule across these properly. So I wonder how much work it
| really takes.
|
| [0] https://www.pcworld.com/article/3629502/intels-alder-lake-
| wh...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| ARM big.LITTLE[1] SoCs have been a thing for about a decade
| now, and most operating systems have schedulers that take
| advantage of each set of cores. macOS isn't doing anything
| special that Linux et al. aren't doing.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_big.LITTLE
| kbenson wrote:
| > macOS isn't doing anything special that Linux et al. aren't
| doing.
|
| MacOS isn't doing anything Linux and others _aren 't_ doing,
| or MacOS isn't doing anything those others _can 't_ do?
|
| That is, do we actually know how well tuned MacOS is for
| these cores and their capabilities, or is that an assumption?
| I thought I had read there were some specific instructions in
| the chip that were either new to it or were more aggressively
| used by MacOS to get additional energy savings or performance
| gains.
| hedgehog wrote:
| I don't know of anything really magical but for years Apple
| has been steadily pushing apps towards APIs that give the
| OS a lot of latitude to manage energy [1]. Grand Central
| Dispatch, AVFoundation, etc. Then on iOS BackgroundTasks
| etc (and iPhones have had little cores for quite a while
| now). I would imagine a lot of that experience transfers to
| macOS.
|
| The centralized + draconian approach they take has a lot of
| problems but does help sweeping changes like this.
|
| 1. https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentatio
| n/Pe...
| webmobdev wrote:
| Apple system developers definitely deserve a lot of credit for
| optimising ios / macOS Big Sur for its ARM hardware platform.
| If we could run another OS on it, it would be evident that part
| of the performance boost of Apple's M1 ARM processor is
| definitely due to the optimised software it runs.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If that is the case though, I wouldn't be surprised if newer
| Linux and BSD releases gain additional support for per-core-
| type performance scheduling and optimizations therein.
|
| It's not entirely new - Remember pretty much all ARM processors
| that aren't MCUs have big.LITTLE, but there is no doubt
| additional work to be done in the area.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| macOS/iOS have API for marking jobs as background which will
| run on slow cores. And this API is used, AFAIK. I'm not sure if
| widely used Windows or Linux software routinely marks its
| threads for background jobs. I know that I never did that in my
| software.
| ing3ng wrote:
| Well you could determine that from the priority of the
| process couldn't you?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| On both macOS and Linux, process scheduling goes further
| than just niceness. On macOS in particular, it has a
| concept of process priorities[1] and I/O policies, and the
| OS itself defines special priorities and policies for
| background processes.
|
| [1] https://www.manpagez.com/man/2/setpriority/
| wmf wrote:
| _how much of the sublime performance of M1 Macs comes from
| MacOS being fine-tuned to take advantage of these two different
| type of cores?_
|
| Basically none. The performance comes from the big cores.
| Linux/BSD can guarantee good performance in the short term by
| disabling the little cores.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| When Linux and (fingers-crossed) BSD get full M1 support in the
| next year or two, these machines will be _fantastic_ Linux and
| BSD computers. Not just from the unique hardware advantages
| (quiet operation, performance, etc.), but also from the upstream
| open-source kernel support and community documentation that is
| being written.
|
| And MacOS handles security on a partition level rather than on a
| system chip level, so I could have a Full Security MacOS install
| dual-booting with Linux/BSD someday. Exciting stuff.
| nix23 wrote:
| >MacOS handles security on a partition level rather than on a
| system chip level
|
| Really?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_T2
|
| >>Controllers for microphones, camera, ambient light sensors
| and Touch ID, decoupling the main operating system's access to
| those.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| > Really?
|
| M1 macs are not T2 macs, nor does that have anything to do
| with the issue at hand. What the parent means is that it's
| not like Android where you "unlock your bootloader" and it's
| global and locks you out of certain features. The Apple
| Silicon secure boot mode is per OS install, so installing
| Linux does not taint your macOS security (i.e. you can still
| use iOS apps and watch Netflix in 4K on macOS).
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This is the M1, which does not quite work like the T2 does.
|
| The partition-level system means that you could have a Full
| Security MacOS install (with Secure Boot equivalent, System
| Integrity Protection, AMFI, etc. turned on), a Permissive
| Security MacOS install (no Secure Boot, SIP, or other
| measures, or some on and some off), and a Linux install all
| dual-booting on the same system.
|
| Unlike other architectures, there's no "this chip is in full
| security mode or no security mode," like unlocking the
| bootloader on Android, where the entire system is secure or
| insecure. On the M1, you can just have OS installs with
| different security.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| So if it's booting from USB, does that imply that drivers for
| internal storage aren't there yet? Still excellent progress, of
| course:)
| brynet wrote:
| OpenBSD has a WIP driver for the NVMe controller on the M1
| chip, but AFAIK it's not working 100% reliably yet.
|
| https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/1c31dbaaf6000562ff37f7...
|
| https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/0ccab0b00204b8c23f121d...
|
| Patrick Wildt posted an early video of OpenBSD booting on the
| M1 Mac Mini back in January. A lot of the internal hardware is
| supported now as of 7.0-beta, such as the Broadcom Gigabit, Wi-
| Fi and USB.
|
| https://twitter.com/bluerise/status/1354216838406823936
| wiredfool wrote:
| Honestly, Today I'd be happy with Big Sur booting after a borked
| upgrade.
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(page generated 2021-08-28 23:00 UTC)