[HN Gopher] FreeBSD on the Raspberry Pi
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FreeBSD on the Raspberry Pi
Author : mariuz
Score : 170 points
Date : 2022-12-05 09:20 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cromwell-intl.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cromwell-intl.com)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Title is somewhat misleading IMO; the page _does_ discuss setting
| up FreeBSD on a Pi, but it 's mostly _about_ setting up samba on
| top of that.
| ggm wrote:
| Bad links inside. Should point to
| https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi
| klondike_klive wrote:
| Not only that but one of those GDPR dialog boxes that forces
| you to untick thirty different "legitimate interest" buttons
| then click through to the vendor list and give up. I thought
| these vampires were bound by law to require one or two clicks
| to opt out?
| Sunspark wrote:
| I recently powered on my model 1 B for the first time to see what
| it was like.
|
| The Linux desktop experience on this single core device is
| horrific.
|
| What is MUCH more impressive is RiscOS on it. It flies. The whole
| OS is written in assembler. It's fast. It's a what-if of
| computing.
| https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi if
| you're curious to take a look.
|
| Curiosity of RiscOS aside, those single core 700 MHz devices I
| would only advise using them in terminal mode, no desktop,
| whether Linux, FreeBSD or something else.
| sedatk wrote:
| > The whole OS is written in assembler.
|
| That's just not true. It's full of C code, even the HAL, which
| is a good thing by the way:
| https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/HAL/HAL_OMAP5/-...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| What exactly does "Linux desktop experience" mean. For example,
| what distribution and what version of Linux for the RPi was
| used in the test.
|
| Even though I had no plans to run Linux on the RPi I saved the
| "NOOBS" SD card that came with it. It contained specific,
| presumably "known-to-work" versions of Arch, RaspBMC, Pidora,
| OpenELEC, RISC and Raspbian. I knew that those offerings would
| probably balloon in size, or possibly disappear, as the RPi
| project progressed.1 It was early days for the RPi and I was
| not sure I would be able to easily access those old versions
| going forward. It is wonderful see one can still conveniently
| get them (kudos to RPi Foundation):
|
| https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS/images/
|
| Based on past experience with computers and software, I
| concluded that years later the most recent versions of these OS
| for the RPi would not run smoothly on an old Model B. To be
| truthful, I still have not tried. Maybe I am wrong, but it
| sounds like running, e.g., the latest Raspbian on an old Model
| B would not be a pleasant experience.
|
| Being someone who prefers "terminal mode" over the
| alternatives, I have always used NetBSD. It was perhaps the
| first BSD to boot the RPi. It was certainly the first BSD,
| perhaps the first OS for the RPi, to come with sshd pre-
| configured so that one could use the RPi "headless" without the
| need for a serial cable.
|
| Most importantly, AFAIK, NetBSD was the only OS for the RPi
| that, by default, allowed the SD card to be removed after boot.
| I recall reading so many comments about SD card wear-and-tear
| but I have never run the RPi with an SD card mounted R/W.
| Normally I only use the SD card slot for booting and run the
| computer with the slot empty.
|
| 1. Original NOOBs was 1.1GB. Latest NOOBS is 2.7GB.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Here[0] is an actual link discussing freebsd on the raspberry pi.
|
| Most people can skip to the section on prebuilt images and note
| that the default user account is `freebsd` with the same as the
| password. And the `root` account has password `root`.
|
| Finally `freebsd-update`* will not work and so you must flash a
| new image to update. Images are updated approximately weekly.
|
| FreeBSD makes this much easier (rigid directory structure
| simplifies where what to backup) than if you had to do the same
| with Linux but it is still a chore backing up installed programs
| and config files.
|
| [0] https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi
|
| * apparently working as of fbsd 13 on arm64 (?rpi3+ but not on
| 0,1,2 this article is on the rpi1). See nreilly reply below.
| nreilly wrote:
| FreeBSD update does work fine. This started with aarch64 being
| promoted to a Tier 1 architecture in FreeBSD-13.
| psychphysic wrote:
| That's a good point.
|
| From Rpi3 onwards then?
| nix23 wrote:
| Yes aarm64 since RELEASE 13
| nix23 wrote:
| >Finally `freebsd-update`* will not work and so you must flash
| a new image to update. Images are updated approximately weekly.
|
| It works (arm64 >FBSD13), my DNS server is RPI3 and FB13.1, all
| Tier 1 platforms support binary updates:
|
| https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/
| [deleted]
| petre wrote:
| Does WiFi work yet?
| heyflyguy wrote:
| Everytime I read one of these I wonder..."where'd you get a
| raspi?"
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| FreeBSD, LISP,Emacs, and a mountain top solitude ? Is this the
| Zen, we all seek even come if we don't know it ??
| rahen wrote:
| For those interested, OpenBSD also works on the Rasp Pi. The Pi 4
| is supported officially.
|
| https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html
|
| https://dev.to/spacial/installing-openbsd-7-on-raspberry-pi-...
|
| This makes it a great choice for a small node requiring security.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| From 2014-2017, I used small Linux-capable SBCs running BSD as
| a "router on a stick" for my home network.
|
| At first I was running FreeBSD on a Rasberry Pi 2 (not the
| Model B version). There was some bug at the time that made Vim
| unusable over a serial terminal, so in spite of it always
| working and never requiring a reboot, I decided to look for
| another solution.
|
| The solution was OpenBSD running on a Beaglebone Green. It was
| actually easier to set up, just as stable, and the pf syntax
| was even simpler.
|
| Were I to go with a similar setup today, I'd prefer something
| that:
|
| - has multiple NICs
|
| - can be tuned to boot very fast
|
| - capable of rolling-back updates/changes
|
| - runs NSH[0]
|
| The 3rd point is something NSH could facilitate for the network
| configuration. For system-level changes, I suppose the best I
| could do on OpenBSD is use CARP between two OpenBSD systems,
| and switch between the two as I apply and test updates.
|
| [0] https://www.nmedia.net/nsh/
| kjs3 wrote:
| I run OpenBSD on a NUC-like from Seeed studio for this. Don't
| recall which model, but has a decently strong Atom, dual
| GigE, plenty of memory and an NVME slot. And Rpi compatable
| GPIO, which has some interesting possibilities. Has worked
| flawlessly for several years.
| jon_adler wrote:
| Probably the Odyssey Blue, which uses a Celeron rather than
| an Atom CPU. I disabled the fan so it is silent, and the
| temperature stays very stable (and pretty low). It's a
| wonderful device. I've programmed the Arduino and use it
| with Home Assistant (serial sensor). My Odyssey Blue is
| virtualised using Proxmox and also runs OpenWrt (router),
| Home Assistant, UniFi Controller, Plex, Transmission, CUPS,
| SAMBA and more. It still has plenty and ram and CPU left
| too, if I only I could think of anything else I want to run
| on it.
| asmor wrote:
| Or it would, if the Pi 4 didn't have a street price of 100+
| even for the 2GB model.
|
| We're getting to the point where buying a barebone x86 system
| on Aliexpress is cheaper than some of these ARM development
| boards, definitely not something I saw coming.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| What's going on? I'm pretty sure I got 8GB one some time ago
| for peanuts?
| seanw444 wrote:
| High demand, low supply.
| destitude wrote:
| More like no supply.
| phoehne wrote:
| When you add performance as a consideration, for just
| straight computing tasks, you might also want to consider a
| refurbished or used 1 liter PC. They'll have a 6th or 8th
| generation intel CPU and power draws usually below 60 watts.
| There are also some other alternatives like Orange Pi.
| Generally speaking, some of the other options don't have a
| PoE capability (my Pis are all PoE) and you lose the exposed
| GPIO pins. But if you're just running a web server and don't
| care about PoE or hooking an i2c device to it, used 1 liter
| machines aren't a bad way to go.
| implements wrote:
| Just as a heads-up, OpenBSD isn't a great low wattage OS.
| My NUC came with Ubuntu and sipped power at idle, but
| OpenBSD doesn't idle well and (worse) doesn't SpeedStep on
| mains power either.
| anthk wrote:
| Install and set obsdfreqd.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| > and power draws usually below 60 watts
|
| That isn't really in the same class as the Pi though, it
| seems the various models use somewhere in the range of
| 1-6watt max.
| smcl wrote:
| Ahh I've accidentally been referring to all of these 1
| litre PCs as "NUC"s - didn't realise there was a non-intel,
| generic name for it
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Some also call them SFF (Small Form Factor) PCs but that
| term for me typically means the slightly larger desktop
| size PCs you could set a monitor on top of. The 1L PCs
| are more like the thin clients hospitals have bolted on
| their monitors.
|
| ServeTheHome has a great ongoing series on
| "TinyMiniMicro" computers that make great little home
| servers.
| ciupicri wrote:
| SFF is about two, two and half stacked pizza boxes when
| it comes to Dell OptiPlex and Lenovo ThinkCentre. There
| is also USFF which is tiny, but still bigger than NUC.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| You can still get them at retail price but you have to put a
| mild amount of work into it.
|
| https://rpilocator.com is an invaluable resource, especially
| this guide: https://rpilocator.com/tips-and-tricks.cfm
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| OpenBSD still _supports_ it, regardless of whether users can
| actually purchase the hardware. I mean, it also supports
| loads of hardware that hasn 't even been manufactured in
| years if not decades, so availability of the hardware on the
| market is hardly its limiting factor.
| peatmoss wrote:
| Funny, I connected up an old rPi 3 that I wasn't using just
| yesterday, and put OpenBSD on it for the first time. I wrote
| the miniroot iso to my SD card using one of those cheapy camera
| USB adapters on my desktop, then just installed to the SD card
| after the miniroot was loaded into memory.
|
| Very satisfying seeing the serial TTY come up with the familiar
| ASCII spinner. My plan is to configure this to connect to wifi,
| establish a VPN connection to somewhere, then set it up to
| dispense an IP address and function as a NAT for anything
| plugged into its ethernet port.
| liendolucas wrote:
| Is it still necessary to do the serial console procedure to
| install it on the RaspberryPi? If that's the case does anyone
| know _why_ I can do a simple `dd` with a FreeBSD image to the
| SD card and boot the RaspberryPi but not with an OpenBSD image?
| I tried once OpenBSD in my laptop and was extremely happy with
| with it. Then for some reason that I can 't remember I switched
| to FreeBSD which also makes me very happy.
| Yuioup wrote:
| I couldn't connect to the pi using the serial console. Linux
| detects it and it gets logged in dmesg but the telnet doesn't
| seem to work.
|
| It could be that I have a faulty cable.
|
| Oh it's on an rpi3 . Maybe the serial connection only works
| on 4? The documentation doesn't say.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Er, serial and telnet are very different things; what
| exactly are you doing?
| Yuioup wrote:
| Oh sorry I meant `screen`
|
| Basically these instructions:
|
| https://dev.to/spacial/installing-openbsd-7-on-raspberry-
| pi-...
|
| But...
|
| This was a while ago. It looks like the instructions for
| OpenBSD have changed?
|
| https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html
|
| Maybe I'll try again soon...
| brynet wrote:
| > Is it still necessary to do the serial console procedure to
| install it on the RaspberryPi?
|
| No, you can switch to a glass console by typing 'set tty fb0'
| at the 'boot>' prompt.
|
| https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.2/arm64/INSTALL.arm64
| tosh wrote:
| I like the idea. Would there be any expected performance
| differences between running ZFS on a Pi using FreeBSD instead of
| Ubuntu?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That feels like something we'd need to actually benchmark for
| real to test.
| wil421 wrote:
| ZFS without mirrored disks is kinda pointless.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| No it's not; you still get _detection_ of errors (just
| without correction), compression, arbitrary filesystems in a
| single pool, and snapshots. ZFS is great regardless of RAID.
| nix23 wrote:
| Exactly, that's why my offline/off-site backups are all
| zfs, well and encryption and compression (zstd-19), at
| least i know that something is damaged an can (or not) get
| it from another backup.
| modderation wrote:
| You can always set copies=2 to work around block-level
| failures on important datasets.
|
| Beyond that, you still get all the other ZFS goodness for
| management, snapshots, compression, zvols, error detection,
| send/recv, and so forth. Best of all, you can always throw
| another disk at it and convert to a mirror if the situation
| changes.
| agilob wrote:
| This is rasbperry pi 1 the post is about. It's not a super
| computer. Running updates and unpacking archives chokes the SD
| and CPU on official raspbian with ext4. It only has 512MB of
| memory, so ZFS would be killing it.
| tosh wrote:
| It sounds like FreeBSD also works on the Pi 3 and Pi 4:
|
| https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi
| macshome wrote:
| Yeah, the pi 1 is really slow for a lot of things these days.
| While the post mentioned they started this on a pi 1B+,
| everything else is about running things on model 3 units.
| agilob wrote:
| Yes, regardless whether RPI1 or 3. These boards are quite
| weak. I wouldn't want file system to one of the biggest
| bottlenecks on a running system. I had BRTFS on rpi3 before
| and don't recommend it. Both FS are CoW.
| ggm wrote:
| I'd love to know this too. I have a zfs over 4 drives with the
| radxa sata hat, running ubuntu and I'd much rather run FreeBSD
| if I could. (Pi4, 8gb)
|
| The great thing about zfs is the portability Linux to BSD and
| vice versa, feature flags noted. I've done it many times on
| racked servers.
|
| The sad thing about the radxa card is that it presents as usb.
| You don't want to run any raid-like fs over usb if you can
| avoid it.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Hopefully this will also fuel interest to have OpnSense and
| XigmaNAS fully ported to ARM. RasPIs scarcity aside, there are
| many ARM boards from other vendors that could benefit from the
| port. All it needs is driver support for one of these boards, or
| similar ones.
|
| https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804400925663.html
|
| https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804337466480.html
| codetiger wrote:
| No supply of any RPi computers in India for almost 2 years now.
| :(
| josefresco wrote:
| Same in the US. I've used rpilocator.com extensively and never
| seem to be fast enough. -\\_(tsu)_/
|
| I don't understand why this shortage has continued for so long
| - is it because they keep the price low?
| jccooper wrote:
| Continuously reload Adafruit's page from 10:30-10:45am
| Central Wednesday and Thursday.
| asddubs wrote:
| yup, seems to be a worldwide problem.
| phoehne wrote:
| rpilocator.com tracks them. Jeff Greeling has a couple of good
| YouTube videos on the problem. Sometimes, if you're willing to
| wait, you can put in an order on a site like digikey and you'll
| eventually get some at list price. But yeah, no one can get
| them _at list price_. And for what scalpers are charging, or
| the BS 'starter kit' that you might be forced to buy, get a
| used thin client PC. The other options, like Nvidia's CM4 style
| board, are just as hard to find or just as scalped.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| DigiKey seems to be the best bet, at least for some models.
| It may take 1-3 months but they do seem to fill back orders
| consistently.
|
| Rpilocator tracks stock and has found some sites stick things
| regularly once a week but if you don't buy within 10-20
| minutes of the in stock alert, you'll miss it.
|
| Even Upton said he thinks the supply will be getting better
| to the point it'll be fully stocked again within one year.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Here in Europe kubii does preorders for list price. I got my
| 400 with 3 or so weeks waiting. But yeah they really have to
| start solving this issue otherwise raspberry is just going to
| become obsolete.
| VLM wrote:
| Pi is done already.
|
| For the last few years anyone doing "Circuit/Micro-Python
| with GPIO" switched to ESP32 a long time ago, and the "I
| need a small PC" people just went back to using small PCs.
| rjsw wrote:
| No supply of them in the UK either.
|
| Are other ARM single-board computers easier for you to buy in
| India? I have several from Pine64, CubieBoard and Hardkernel
| that work well.
| codetiger wrote:
| Not able to source others in India. But am very much
| interested in RPi4 for my home automation project. Seems like
| the wait is going to take few months or years.
| psychphysic wrote:
| I wish we had more control over cheap smartphones.
|
| That'd be ideal replacements. Similar spec to SBCs with a
| touchscreen and battery backup. But WiFi not ethernet.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Some can do Ethernet through a dongle!
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Samsung with 3rd party roms this always worked, I was
| surprised to dind out vanilla android on a picel doesn't.
| I have no insight as to what driver is missing or why it
| wouldn't always be there.
| signa11 wrote:
| that is not correct. i had a raspberry pi (4b, 8gb) delivered
| (for a friend) in india this january. although this information
| is quite old now, so might be outdated.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think it's easier to just source (used)office desktops and
| x86-based thin clients at this stage. There are only upsides to
| it e.g. no SD corruption, power adapter compatibility issues,
| overheating problems, etc., so long that you don't need the
| exact Pi form factor or Pi HAT interface compatibility.
| wil421 wrote:
| No GPIO.
| tssva wrote:
| > There are only upsides to it e.g. no SD corruption, power
| adapter compatibility issues, overheating problems
|
| Boot your Pi from USB and there is no SD corruption to worry
| about. This has been out of beta and officially supported for
| over 2 years now. I've never had an issue with power adapter
| compatibility but understand some had issues when the RPi 4
| was released due to it requiring more amperage than previous
| models. Not really a concern with modern USB C adapters and
| if you are really concerned just buy the official power
| supply or one of the multitudes sold on Amazon as for the
| RPi.
|
| As for overheating, I have had a RPi 4 stuffed in a crowded
| wiring box with no air flow in my unconditioned garage
| running non-stop without overheating for a few years now. I
| live in a climate where it is over 90 degrees Fahrenheit
| every day June - early September with a good part of late
| July - late August being over 100. I also have a 4 node RPi
| cluster which has been running for years without any
| overheating issues. The cluster nodes do have 5v fans running
| at 3.3v to reduce noise. I installed these when originally
| setting up the cluster but would be confident removing them.
| At this point it just isn't worth the effort to do so.
| vital101 wrote:
| Are there any Raspberry Pi competitors that people like? I've see
| a few referenced in different articles but I don't have any idea
| how reliable or useful they are.
| Klasiaster wrote:
| The boards from Libre Computer are great because they work with
| mainline Linux and EFI, meaning you can boot any distro, be it
| Fedora, Debian etc. and directly use the latest distro kernels.
| You don't need a special image e.g. with a bootloader setup or
| some custom kernel that gets outdated quickly and never
| updated. It's really great to be able to not worry about the OS
| and kernel updates because you can follow what you would also
| do on your laptop or x86 server.
|
| https://libre.computer/products/
| treesknees wrote:
| That will depend on what your project requires. There are a
| large number of Pi users that could get by with a simple x86
| desktop-class PC or thin client [1] which, as the article
| points out, can have pretty similar wattage and compute power
| compared to say running 3-4 Pis.
|
| It gets a little tricky when you start talking about GPIO
| requirements. There are things like the ASUS tinkerboard [2]
| but it's much more expensive than a Pi.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/used-thin-client-
| pcs...
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WPVVZNH
| destitude wrote:
| Power usage is the problem. Running a machine that uses 10x
| more power to accomplish same task that a Pi could is an
| issue.
| oblak wrote:
| There are a number of machines using 5800u @ 15W. That's
| hardly 10x more power. They are only slightly bigger but
| offer a quite a bit more performance, let alone features.
|
| That said, what am I talking about costs about 500. There's
| some overlap but it's not exactly the same market.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I'm having success with Orange Pi One using Armbian to build
| images. Not going to be as performant as a Pi 4 by any stretch
| but at $25 a pop I can't complain
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(page generated 2022-12-05 23:01 UTC)