first stage boot failure on PCengines APU 2C4

[O. Hartmann]

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Running CURRENT as routing and firewalling appliance on a PCengines APU 2C4 with the
latest (official) SEABios available for this product, NanoBSD (FreeBSD CURRENT FreeBSD
12.0-CURRENT #60 r335278: Sun Jun 17 07:57:20 CEST 2018 amd64)is unable to boot recent
OS at the first stage (GPT partitioning, SD card memory).

Last known good image without boot issues is FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT #52 r335222: Fri Jun 15
20:24:41 CEST 2018 amd64.

The issue is revealing itself by showing nothing but a static screen telling it is
booting from hard disk where usually the rotating indicator popps up.
Booting the APUwith my installation USB device and "gpart -b pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 2
mmcsd0" - which is a quite old image from December 2017 by the way, made the SD card
booting again - with r335278 now properly.

At the very moment, I do not dare to check whether the bootcode is broken on those boxes
I boot via MBR/GPTBOOT.

Can someone give me some hints how to check this further or is this issue already known?

Kind regards,

oh

- --
O. Hartmann

Ich widerspreche der Nutzung oder Übermittlung meiner Daten für
Werbezwecke oder für die Markt- oder Meinungsforschung (§ 28 Abs. 4 BDSG).

[Olivier Cochard-Labbé]

Post by O. Hartmann
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Running CURRENT as routing and firewalling appliance on a PCengines APU 2C4 with the
latest (official) SEABios available for this product, NanoBSD (FreeBSD CURRENT FreeBSD
12.0-CURRENT #60 r335278: Sun Jun 17 07:57:20 CEST 2018 amd64)is unable to boot recent
OS at the first stage (GPT partitioning, SD card memory).
​Hi,

My nanobsd images are based on :
[***@apu2]~# uname -a
FreeBSD apu2 12.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT r335286M amd64

And I don't remember to have upgraded its BIOS:
[***@apu2]~# kenv smbios.bios.reldate
03/07/2016
[***@apu2]~# kenv smbios.system.product
apu2

But I'm using MBR partitionning on a mSATA disk.

Regards

[Warner Losh]

Post by Olivier Cochard-Labbé

Post by O. Hartmann
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Running CURRENT as routing and firewalling appliance on a PCengines APU 2C4 with the
latest (official) SEABios available for this product, NanoBSD (FreeBSD CURRENT FreeBSD
12.0-CURRENT #60 r335278: Sun Jun 17 07:57:20 CEST 2018 amd64)is unable

to

Post by O. Hartmann
boot recent
OS at the first stage (GPT partitioning, SD card memory).
​Hi,

FreeBSD apu2 12.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT r335286M amd64
03/07/2016
apu2
But I'm using MBR partitionning on a mSATA disk.

Do you know the first version to have this problem? Are you using geli?

Warner

[O. Hartmann]

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Am Mon, 18 Jun 2018 07:42:20 -0600

Post by Warner Losh

Post by Olivier Cochard-Labbé

Post by O. Hartmann
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Hash: SHA512
Running CURRENT as routing and firewalling appliance on a PCengines APU
2C4 with the
latest (official) SEABios available for this product, NanoBSD (FreeBSD
CURRENT FreeBSD
12.0-CURRENT #60 r335278: Sun Jun 17 07:57:20 CEST 2018 amd64)is unable

to

Post by O. Hartmann
boot recent
OS at the first stage (GPT partitioning, SD card memory).
​Hi,

FreeBSD apu2 12.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT r335286M amd64
03/07/2016
apu2
But I'm using MBR partitionning on a mSATA disk.

Do you know the first version to have this problem? Are you using geli?
Warner

Hello,

if you addressed me (wasn't so clear from your reply on Olivier Cochard-Labbé's
reply to me), I could give you this information (I posted it to Allen Jude in response to

svn commit: r335254 - in head/stand/i386: libi386 zfsboot

probably the wrong commit. Please allow me to copy-paste:

[...]

I realised that CURRENT r335222 from Friday, 10th June 2018 booted without problems
(NanoBSD, slightly modified to boot off GPT/UEFI partitions, but in general a simple
"gpart bootcode -b pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 2 mmcsd0" preparation of a dd'd image).
Another try with recent r335282 on a APU 2C4, freshly build NanoBSD, fails to boot
firststage: the (most recent) SEABios stopps for ever at telling "Booting from hard
disk"; were usually a carret starts to spinn there is vast emptyness. Preparing the boot
partition with an older bootcode on that very same SD card via "gpart bootcode -b pmbr
- - -p /boot/gptboot -i 2 mmcsd0" with an older booted image of CURRENT has solved the
problem. The layout of the SD card is as follows, just for the record:

#: gpart show mmcsd0
=> 40 60751792 mmcsd0 GPT (29G)
40 1024 2 freebsd-boot (512K)
1064 2205944 3 freebsd-ufs (1.1G)
2207008 2210127 4 freebsd-ufs (1.1G)
4417135 1048576 5 freebsd-ufs (512M)
5465711 55286121 - free - (26G)

[...]

I didn't bi-sect the issue du to time constraints, but if it helps, I could try. I
resolved the problem temporarely by writing the bootcode and partition code from an older
image.

The APU is serial console only.

Kind regards,

Oliver Hartmann


- --
O. Hartmann

Ich widerspreche der Nutzung oder Übermittlung meiner Daten für
Werbezwecke oder für die Markt- oder Meinungsforschung (§ 28 Abs. 4 BDSG).