Re: FreeBSD13.0 on Pine ROCK64

Petru,

	I have 4 Rock64 devices.  I'm just using sdcards instead of
eMMC (FYI).  I followed a similar path to yours below.  I "burned" an
image for device #1.  It didn't boot immediately.  There is a lot of
online documentation on creating a serial console to view the boot
output; but they all require more than what I had available at my house
(custom USB cables, messing with wires, etc.).  At the time, I was
accustomed to single board computers outputing to HDMI during boot but
came to realize from my research that the Rock64 devices do not output
to HDMI until/unless the kernel boots 3/4 of the way.  

  I followed some documentation to flash the U-boot code to the SPI
flash.  U-boot appears to be similar to Linux "Grub" and the SPI is
similar to an old fashioned BIOS.  After messing with it several times,
it worked on device#1.  I flashed the SPI and the FreeBSD 13 boot image
worked fine.  I used the same 'dd' command you did below.  What you did
is correct.

	Then I moved on to Rock64 device #2.  On this device I tried
burning an SDCard just like the 1st device.  Wouldn't boot.... no
surprise... I didn't "flash" the SPI yet; but I wanted to test it 1st. 
I then proceeded to 'flash' the SPI with U-boot....  still didn't boot.
At this point I switched sdcards between working device #1 and device
#2.  Still didn't work.  I switched the sdcards back to their original
device and verified device #1 booted fine with either microSD card. I
assumed it MUST be that SPI, so I proceeded to "factory wipe" and
reload the FreeBSD-13 'friendly' U-boot code.  no luck.  I moved device
#2 to a troubleshooting bench of my basement which happened to have a
older 100 MB switch instead of a 1 GB switch.  To my surprise, the
device started pinging on the network!!!!

Here's where I accidentally found something weird!!!

	Turns-out, some (not all) of these Rock64s will not connect to
a 1 gig switch port.  If I hard-code my primary switch port to 100 MB,
the Rock64 booted to the network no problem.  If I switch the switch
port back to "auto" [10/100/1000], it won't connect.

	I proceeded to "U-boot" flash the SPI of the other two devices
(3 &4) and create sdcards for all of them.

My result:
Device 1	works perfectly
Device 2	only works 100 MB
Device 3	only works 100 MB
Device 4	only works 100 MB

I reloaded devices 2-4 w/Armbian and they all work fine at 1 GB.  It
appears to be a FreeBSD NIC driver-related issue.  I posted details on
this forum and didn't get any solutions.  I ended up moving to Armbian
for all 4 devices due to this problem being unresolved.

Recommend: Test on a 100 MB switch port and see if you are having the
same problem.  If yes, see attached response I received from a fellow
FreeBSD-ARM member.
-Jeff

On Mon, 2021-12-27 at 22:40 -0500, petru garstea wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> Hope all is well.
> 
> I burned on emmc drive a FBSD13 version for pine rock64 SOC however
> the 
> system doesn't boot.
> 
> The command I used
> 
> dd if=FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-ROCK64.img of=/dev/da0
> bs=1m 
> conv=sync status=progress
> 
> Then I validate the partition tables
> 
> gpart show
> =>     40  6291376  da0  GPT  (29G) [CORRUPT]
>         40    32728       - free -  (16M)
>      32768   102400    1  efi  (50M)
>     135168  6156160    2  freebsd-ufs  (2.9G)
>    6291328       88       - free -  (44K)
> 
> 
> I tried to boot as is but no luck, then since the GPT is corrupted I
> ran
> 
> gpt recover da0
> 
> But the result is the same, the system doesnt boot.
> 
> 
> I tested an armbian image and that worked well.
> 
> 
> Please advise.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Petru
> 
>