FreeBSD on the NanoPi NEOLTS

The NanoPi NEOLTS is a SBC from FriendlyElec that uses the Allwinner H3 SOC. The NanoPi NEOLTS has a nice selection of hardware including 100Mbit Ethernet, 3 USB Ports and a bunch of exposed GPIO.

FreeBSD on the NanoPi uses GENERICSD image. This image requires a bootloader to be added before it will work. We can prepare a single image to be copied to many SD cards by using a memory disk as an intermediate step.

We need to:

  • Get the latest GENERICSD card image snapshot
  • Install the correct boot loader pkg
  • Create a memory disk
  • Copy the GENERICSD image to memory disk
  • Copy the bootloader to the memory disk
  • Mount the root partition of the sd card image
  • Copy the programs and files we need for the tutorial to the sd card

The latest image is as I write is 13 CURRENT from 20190829:

$ fetch ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/arm/armv7/ISO-IMAGES/13.0/FreeBSD-13.0-CURRENT-arm-armv7-GENERICSD-20190829-r351591.img.xz

We have to decompress the image before we can use it

$ xz -d FreeBSD-13.0-CURRENT-arm-armv7-GENERICSD-20190829-r351591.img.xz

Each u-boot bootloader platform has its own package, currently there are 46 different bootloaders in the FreeBSD ports system. We want the u-boot for the nanopi_neo (our target).

$ pkg search nanopi     
u-boot-nanopi-neo2-2019.07     Cross-build das u-boot for model nanopi-neo2
u-boot-nanopi_a64-2019.07      Cross-build das u-boot for model nanopi_a64
u-boot-nanopi_m1plus-2019.07   Cross-build das u-boot for model nanopi_m1plus
u-boot-nanopi_neo-2019.07      Cross-build das u-boot for model nanopi_neo
u-boot-nanopi_neo_air-2019.07  Cross-build das u-boot for model nanopi_neo_air

# pkg install u-boot-nanopi_neo-2019.07

The u-boot-nanopi_neo package contains the binary bootloader we need in u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin

$ pkg info -l u-boot-nanopi_neo-2019.07

u-boot-nanopi_neo-2019.07:
    /usr/local/share/licenses/u-boot-nanopi_neo-2019.07/GPLv2
    /usr/local/share/licenses/u-boot-nanopi_neo-2019.07/LICENSE
    /usr/local/share/licenses/u-boot-nanopi_neo-2019.07/catalog.mk
    /usr/local/share/u-boot/u-boot-nanopi_neo/README
    /usr/local/share/u-boot/u-boot-nanopi_neo/boot.scr
    /usr/local/share/u-boot/u-boot-nanopi_neo/metadata
    /usr/local/share/u-boot/u-boot-nanopi_neo/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin

With the GENERICSD image and the bootloader we need to create the memory disk image we will use for staging. First we need to create a large enough backing file.

$ truncate -s 8G nanopi.img
# mdconfig -f nanopi.img
md0

Now we can dd the GENERICSD image to the memory disk

# dd if=FreeBSD-13.0-CURRENT-arm-armv7-GENERICSD-20190829-r351591.img of=/dev/md0 bs=1m

We need to dd the bootloader to the start of the SD card, i.e. the entire device and not a partition.

# dd if=/usr/local/share/u-boot/u-boot-nanopi_neo/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/da0 bs=1k seek=8 conv=sync

With the memory disk attached we can interact with the image file as if it were a real USB drive or SD card.

$ gpart show md0
=>      63  16777153  md0  MBR  (8.0G)
        63      2016       - free -  (1.0M)
      2079    102312    1  fat32lba  [active]  (50M)
    104391   6187041    2  freebsd  (3.0G)
   6291432  10485784       - free -  (5.0G)

We can mount the root partition of the SD card and modify or add any files we wish:

# mount /dev/md0sa mnt

When we are done changing things we have to disconnect the memory disk:

# sudo mdconfig -d -u md0

Finally we can copy the memory disk to a real sd card using dd :

# sudo dd if=nanopi.img of=/dev/da0 bs=1m