Re: KHADAS EDGE V booting hangs if I install UEFI instead of u-boot

On Aug 8, 2025, at 12:42, Mario Marietto <[email protected]> wrote:

> >with the fully working 13.0 FreeBSD running on the KHADAS board is beyond your abilities? Getting the file content to pastebin is beyond your abilities ?
> 
> Enabling the panfrost driver on FreeBSD 13 goes beyond your abilities. I can do "sysctl hw.clock >somefile.txt. But without the pan frost enabled,you could confound the log messages ? What is causing what ? 

Ahh. Got it.

> >This is a problem in the uefi firmware. You need to look into the uefi code base.
> 
> ok,but why doesn't it happen when I boot FreeBSD 14.2 on the RockPro64 ? In my experiments I'm using the same kernel and userland for RockPro64 and Khadas. 

SOC support is not sufficient for board support
generally. DeviceTrees and U-Boot instances and
EDK2 instances are normally board specific in
various ways.

A list of some RK3399 (SOC) based boards:

Edge V Khadas Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Edge Khadas Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Ficus 96boards Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Firefly-RK3399 Firefly Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Leez P720 Lenovo Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Nano Pi M4 FriendlyElec Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Nano Pi M4 (2 GB) FriendlyElec Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Nano Pi M4 B FriendlyElec Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Nano Pi Neo4 FriendlyElec Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Nano Pi R4S FriendlyElec Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
NanoPC-T4 FriendlyElec Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Orange Pi rk3399 Xunlong Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Pinebook Pro Pine64 Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
RK3399 EVB Rockchip Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
ROC-RK3399-PC Firefly Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
ROCK 4 SE Radxa Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
ROCK 4B Radxa Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
ROCK 4C Radxa Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
ROCK 4C+ Radxa Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
Rock960 96boards Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)
ROCKPro64 Pine64 Rockchip RK3399 ARM Cortex A72/A53 (armv8)

To expect all those to work well based on just ROCKPRo64
materials would be an incorrect expectation, as I
understand. To expect that just substituting a different
.dtb file would be sufficient need not be a correct
expectation either.

There are different sysutils/u-boot-*'s for various of
those (those that have/had official FreeBSD support):

u-boot-firefly-rk3399
u-boot-nanopi-r4s
u-boot-pinebookpro
u-boot-rockpro64

(Other RK3399 based boards have no official FreeBSD
support, up to any errors I made forming the above
list.)

Some of those 4 likely had kernel work done as
well to handle material in the matching upstream
linux .dtb file that was not common with the other
3, not just u-boot creations. After all that work,
all 4 are supported (for whatever aspects are
supported). But earlier than that such support
as exists was unlikely to be automatic, as I
understand. (FreeBSD normally does not try to
provide an EDK2 instance or analogous. So examples
are uncommon.)

EDK2 builds are also normally board specific,
even for the same SOC. And EDK2/DeviceTree
builds have all the same DeviceTree issues
that U-Boot EFI/DeviceTree builds do for
how automatic support is (or is not).

It is true that for EDK2/ACPI, if the EDK2/ACPI
exists, it may be more likely for FreeBSD to
already support as much as the EDK2/ACPI
supports. But EDK2/ACPI likely supports less
than the DeviceTree contexts allow. (Closer
to what Servers are likely to support.)

Device Trees tend to have board specific
content that is not in common with other boards
for the same SOC. DeviceTrees do not provide
an executable abstraction. They provide a
description of what is present vs. not. It
takes work adding support for all the
combinations of things to the kernel before
the range of things covered grows.

No FreeBSD kernel work has been done for the "Edge
V Khadas Rockchip RK3399" as far as I can see. No
sysutils/u-boot-* work has been done for such
either. Nor has FreeBSD provided an EDK2/ACPI.

Even the EDK2/ACPI on github for the Edge
V Khadas Rockchip RK3399 that you referenced
reported that its USB support was not yet
working, as I remember. Development apparently
stopped before that was completed.


===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com