Re: DFreeBSD/arm64 EFI loader, Revision 3.0

Shawn Webb <[email protected]> Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:20:20 +0000
Newsgroups	gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hackers
Message-ID	<6qymnisobjud6s4f6pcpsx6uk2uxg2ug6l3xe56woyqrkftbva@gkdb2frg7tae>
Pretty sure you nailed it on the head.

In cases like these, using objdump to inspect the string tables would
provide the most accurate result. I myself am to lazy to do that at
the moment, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. ;-)

On Thu, Mar 19, 2026 at 03:05:07PM +0200, Aleksandr Rybalko wrote:
> Morning hackers!
> 
> Sorry if I get the question wrong. But ...
> You are using strings on the binary file, so it just scans for everything
> like printable symbols ending with 0.
> So, if (for example) the file address of the arch string is 0x1280, but
> there is a printable 'D' at 0x127f, it will be displayed the way you show.
> At the same time, that 'D' can be part of some other value like an integer.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> чт, 19 бер. 2026 р. о 04:10 Graham Perrin <[email protected]> пише:
> 
> > On 19/03/2026 00:57, Warner Losh wrote:
> > > This surprised me
> >
> >
> > I wondered whether it was somehow a typo. Not as far as I can tell.
> > Here's the (temporary) page that I used for the typescript file:
> >
> > <https://termbin.com/cwrc>
> >
> > The unabridged content is at the foot of this email. I get the same D
> > after restarting the OS.
> >
> > The affected VM (in Virtual Machine Manager) was created a few weeks ago
> > with FreeBSD-14.3-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-disc1.iso. I probably converted
> > to pkgbase and then upgraded to 16 (skipping 15). Also I probably did
> > NOT bother updating the loader files, my bad.
> > <https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/loaders-update/> not for ARM64. I
> > might manually attend to the files later, or is that not necessary with
> > pkgbase?
> >
> > I have a separate ARM64 16.0-CURRENT VM, on the same host, that does not
> > (or not yet) have the peculiarity. Upgrading base and other packages
> > now, I might follow up in a few hours (it's slow).
> >
> > ----
> >
> > Script started on Thu Mar 19 00:19:57 2026
> > You have mail.
> > root@aarch64:~ # echo $SHELL
> >
> > /bin/tcsh
> > root@aarch64:~ # strings /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTAA64.EFI | grep FreeBSD
> > | grep EFI
> >
> > DFreeBSD/arm64 EFI loader, Revision 3.0
> > root@aarch64:~ # freebsd-version -kru ; uname -mvKU
> >
> > 16.0-CURRENT
> > 16.0-CURRENT
> > 16.0-CURRENT
> > FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT main-n284512-a0b3ef195260 GENERIC arm64 1600013
> > 1600013
> > root@aarch64:~ # exit
> >
> > exit
> >
> > Script done on Thu Mar 19 00:22:04 2026
> >
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
> WBW
> -------
> Rybalko Aleksandr <[email protected]>
> aka Alex RAY <[email protected]>
> D-Link.ua

-- 
Shawn Webb
Cofounder / Security Engineer
HardenedBSD

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