Booting NetBSD

[KC9UDX]

Using the image from http://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/arm/, (dd'ing to eMMC) U-boot just works, and works well.

[KC9UDX]

You can use swap, but you have to halt the first boot and change rc.conf to not resize the disk. I did this before and it wasn't worth it. File-based swap is fast enough for situations where I've thought I needed it, but I don't normally do that either. I haven't had a situation where I actually need it.

sysinst does not create a boot that will work on anything but x86, and as far as I know this is intentional: the other systems vary too much.

You can cook your own installation; I've done that too, but frankly I had too much trouble getting U-boot to work. Most days using the serial console is a big hassle for me. If only it was 19,200 baud...

I'll keep my opinions on MBR and GPT to myself; I don't like most things that come from the x86 world.

[untitled]

Ok, with great help of good people on #netbsd, I finally got the system booting after sysinst.

The trick is to leave enough space for binary blobs before beginning of /boot partition. Install u-boot-pinebook-pro package with pkgin and then run installboot. Read the plist file in /usr/pkg/share/u-boot/pinebook-pro/ dir and man installboot for further details.