Introduction
Installing NetBSD-10 on the Raspberry Pi 4 is much the same as installing it on the Raspberry Pi 3. Refer to this article for more details: Installing NetBSD-10 on Raspberry Pi 3.
There are however some differences:
- The Raspberry Pi 4 uses different EEPROM to boot the system and can boot directly from GPT partitions.
- The Raspberry Pi 4’s UEFI firmware is capable of booting NetBSD-10.
For further information on updating the Raspberry Pi 4’s EEPROM, please refer to this link: Raspberry Pi boot EEPROM.
NetBSD Installation Steps
Several steps are required to install NetBSD. The following sections explain each step in greater detail.
Step 1: Create GPT Partitions
The first step in installing NetBSD is to create required GPT partitions. In this example, a microSD card is used, which is detected as sd0 device:
gpt destroy sd0
gpt create -f sd0
gpt add -a 1m -l "EFI-system" -t efi -s 128m sd0
gpt add -a 1m -l "NetBSD-root" -t ffs -s 8g sd0
gpt add -a 1m -l "NetBSD-swap" -t swap -s 4g sd0
gpt add -a 1m -l "NetBSD-var" -t ffs -s 4g sd0
gpt add -a 1m -l "NetBSD-opt" -t ffs sd0
Step 2: Create File Systems
Execute dkctl to display the wedges currently mapped to partitions. Note that wedge mappings are dynamic and may differ on your system:
dkctl sd0 listwedges
/dev/rsd0: 5 wedges:
dk1: EFI-system, 262144 blocks at 2048, type: msdos
dk2: NetBSD-root, 16777216 blocks at 264192, type: ffs
dk3: NetBSD-swap, 8388608 blocks at 17041408, type: swap
dk4: NetBSD-var, 8388608 blocks at 25430016, type: ffs
dk5: NetBSD-opt, 90914816 blocks at 33818624, type: ffs
Use the wedge mappings shown above to create the necessary file systems. Note that raw special devices should be used; therefore, the wedges specified in the newfs commands should be /dev/rdkN, where N is the wedge ID:
newfs_msdos -F 32 /dev/rdk1
for i in rdk2 rdk4 rdk5
do
newfs -B le -O 2ea /dev/${i} || break
done
The EFI partition is formatted as a FAT32 file system, while the remaining partitions (excluding swap) are formatted as NetBSD little-endian (option "-B le") UFS file systems. If you are using the NetBSD big-endian (evbarm-aarch64eb) port, adjust the newfs byte-order option accordingly to create big-endian file systems.
Step 3: Mount File Systems and Extract Files
Mount all file systems:
mkdir /mnt-netbsd-root && mount -o log NAME=NetBSD-root /mnt-netbsd-root &&
mkdir /mnt-netbsd-root/boot && mount -t msdos NAME=EFI-system /mnt-netbsd-root/boot &&
mkdir /mnt-netbsd-root/var && mount -o log NAME=NetBSD-var /mnt-netbsd-root/var &&
mkdir /mnt-netbsd-root/opt && mount -o log NAME=NetBSD-opt /mnt-netbsd-root/opt
Download Raspberry Pi 4 UEFI firmware, NetBSD EFI bootloader, and NetBSD sets. Note that the X11 sets are not included, as the Raspberry Pi 4 will be used in headless/server mode in this setup:
ftp https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases/download/v1.50/RPi4_UEFI_Firmware_v1.50.zip
ftp https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.1/evbarm-aarch64/installation/misc/bootaa64.efi
mkdir netbsd_sets
for i in base comp etc games kern-GENERIC64 man misc modules rescue text
do
ftp -o netbsd_sets/${i}.tar.xz https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.1/evbarm-aarch64/binary/sets/${i}.tar.xz || break
done
Install UEFI firmware and NetBSD bootloader into boot partition:
unzip -d /mnt-netbsd-root/boot RPi4_UEFI_Firmware_v1.50.zip
mkdir -p /mnt-netbsd-root/boot/EFI/BOOT && cp bootaa64.efi /mnt-netbsd-root/boot/EFI/BOOT
sync
Extract NetBSD sets:
for i in base comp etc games kern-GENERIC64 man misc modules rescue text
do
tar -C /mnt-netbsd-root -xpf netbsd_sets/${i}.tar.xz || break
done
sync
Step 4: Configure NetBSD
Create the /etc/fstab file:
cat > /mnt-netbsd-root/etc/fstab << 'EOF'
NAME=EFI-system /boot msdos rw 0 0
NAME=NetBSD-root / ffs rw,noatime,log 1 1
NAME=NetBSD-var /var ffs rw,noatime,log 1 1
NAME=NetBSD-opt /opt ffs rw,noatime,log 1 2
NAME=NetBSD-swap none swap sw,dp 0 0
kernfs /kern kernfs rw
procfs /proc procfs rw
ptyfs /dev/pts ptyfs rw
tmpfs /var/shm tmpfs rw,-m1777,-sram%25
EOF
Create the additional mount points and the time zone symlink:
mkdir /mnt-netbsd-root/kern /mnt-netbsd-root/proc /mnt-netbsd-root/home
ln -sf ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /mnt-netbsd-root/etc/localtime
Create the /etc/rc.conf file:
cat >> /mnt-netbsd-root/etc/rc.conf << 'EOF'
rc_configured=YES
critical_filesystems_local="${critical_filesystems_local} /opt"
hostname="rp4"
domainname="home.lan"
# Static IP config
net_interfaces="genet0"
ifconfig_genet0="inet 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0"
dns_search="home.lan"
dns_nameservers="192.168.1.254"
defaultroute="192.168.1.254"
# Dynamic IP config
#dhcpcd=YES
#dhcpcd_flags="-qM genet0"
ip6addrctl=YES
ip6addrctl_policy="ipv4_prefer"
ntpdate=YES
sshd=YES
devpubd=YES
EOF
Step 5: Clean Up
Finally unmount all file systems and remove temporary mount points:
sync &&
umount /mnt-netbsd-root/boot &&
umount /mnt-netbsd-root/opt &&
umount /mnt-netbsd-root/var &&
umount /mnt-netbsd-root &&
rm -rf /mnt-netbsd-root
Step 6: First Boot
Attach the microSD card or USB disk to the Raspberry Pi 4 and power it on.
To enable automatic boot from a specific device, you may need to modify the UEFI firmware boot order: at the UEFI boot screen, press Esc, then navigate to Boot Maintenance Manager → Boot Optins → Change Boot Order, and move the microSD card and USB drive to the top of the list.
To disable the UEFI 3 GiB memory limit, follow these steps: at the UEFI boot screen, press Esc, then navigate to Device Manager → Raspberry Pi Configuration → Advanced Configuration, and disable the 3 GiB memory limit option.
The current version of the Raspberry Pi 4 UEFI firmware uses a default configuration that interferes with NetBSD’s CPU frequency settings. See my latest comments in this bug report for more details: port-arm/57139. To work around this issue: at the UEFI boot screen, press Esc, then navigate to Device Manager → Raspberry Pi Configuration → CPU Configuration, and set the following options CPU Clock = Custom and CPU Clock Rate = 60. This should allow NetBSD to set CPU frequency between 600MHz and 1500MHz.
Review afterboot(8), then carry out any additional configuration as required.
Note that the newly installed system will have an empty /etc/openssl/certs directory, which may cause problems when connecting to TLS enabled sites. To resolve this, generate the certificates using the /etc/rc.d/certctl_init script. This only needs to be done once, on the first boot:
/etc/rc.d/certctl_init onestart
