OpenBSD 6.7 on Pinebook Pro

[SKG]

With OpenBSD 6.7 already around the corner, can someone please tell what's in stock for the Pinebook Pro?

Will all of the hardware be supported?

What's the installation procedure like?

Anything else worth mentioning?

[User 15267]

My understanding is that most wifi and display are supported at least. I have not been able to get either 6.6 or snapshots up and running yet, I am currently waiting for 6.7 to try again. There is active development on the Pinebook Pro within the OpenBSD community and I have been told that support is improving all the time.

As it stands I have been following the official instructions in the OpenBSD arm64 guide by doing the following:

1) dd miniroot67.fs to microSD card
2) Download the latest u-boot package from snapshots
3) dd idbloader.img to microSD card with a seek of 64
4) dd u-boot.itb to microSD with a seek of 16384
5) Download the latest dtb package from snapshots
6) Make a folder called 'rockchip' on the boot partition of the microSD
7) Copy rk3399-rockpro.dtb to the folder created above

I boot this with the serial cable connected however it always stops at the following two lines:

Code:

rkclock0 at mainbus0
rkclock1 at mainbus0

I have started a thread  on the OpenBSD subreddit where a user provided me with the script below which is also referenced in this thread on the mailing list although I am not sure where to get the relevant files such as the trust.img although I have only briefly read over the script.

Code:

#!/bin/sh

set -e

SD=$1

if [ "$SD" == "" ]; then
    echo "specify the device your SD card is using."
    exit 1
fi

if [ ! -f miniroot66.fs ]; then
    ftp http://ftp.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/arm64/miniroot66.fs
    ftp http://ftp.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/arm64/SHA256.sig
fi

signify -C -p /etc/signify/openbsd-66-base.pub -x SHA256.sig miniroot66.fs

if [ ! -f u-boot.img ]; then
    ftp https://github.com/pcm720/rockchip-u-boot/releases/download/nvme-boot/u-boot.img
fi

sha256 u-boot.img | grep "6af3fbcd83c91f590551a0a8afeca489fe13ac777934fd77b38495134fcac6ea"

echo
echo

echo "doas dd if=miniroot66.fs of=/dev/r${SD}c bs=5M"
echo "doas dd if=idbloader.img of=/dev/${SD}c bs=32k seek=1 conv=fsync"
echo "doas dd if=u-boot.img of=/dev/r${SD}c bs=64k seek=128 conv=fsync"
echo "doas dd if=trust.img of=/dev/r${SD}c bs=64k seek=192 conv=fsync"
echo "doas mount /dev/${SD}i /mnt"
echo "doas cp rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb /mnt/"
echo "doas umount /mnt"

I will likely have another crack at this weekend so if you have any pointers please let me know.

[SKG]

My understanding is that most wifi and display are supported at least. I have not been able to get either 6.6 or snapshots up and running yet, I am currently waiting for 6.7 to try again. There is active development on the Pinebook Pro within the OpenBSD community and I have been told that support is improving all the time.

Thanks for your feedback. Yes, I'm also waiting for 6.7 to give it a try, I haven't played around with my Pinebook Pro at all so far (didn't even unpack it yet).

My Pinebook 1080p has currently Manjaro KDE installed and has been used by my eldest son till now, but that one is supposed to be repurposed for OpenBSD 6.7 as well.

[Lumat]

I boot this with the serial cable connected however it always stops at the following two lines:

Code:

rkclock0 at mainbus0
rkclock1 at mainbus0

Are you using the serial cable from pine store? If so it's 5v instead of 3.3v and it creates all sorts of problems such as that one.

[User 15267]

I boot this with the serial cable connected however it always stops at the following two lines:

Code:

rkclock0 at mainbus0
rkclock1 at mainbus0

Are you using the serial cable from pine store? If so it's 5v instead of 3.3v and it creates all sorts of problems such as that one.

I am using the serial cable from the store. I have another one that I connect to the GPIO pins of my SBCs, am I able to use that on the PineBook Pro?

[SKG]

I am using the serial cable from the store. I have another one that I connect to the GPIO pins of my SBCs, am I able to use that on the PineBook Pro?

I really hope that no serial cable is need. I don't have one and I don't want one.

[User 15267]

I am using the serial cable from the store. I have another one that I connect to the GPIO pins of my SBCs, am I able to use that on the PineBook Pro?

I really hope that no serial cable is need. I don't have one and I don't want one.

My understanding is that it is necessary for the installation. There may be a way to utilise autoinstall but I will need to actually get it running before I can explore that. Last resort I will just image the microSD card after installation and you can dd that to your own.

[Lumat]

I boot this with the serial cable connected however it always stops at the following two lines:

Code:

rkclock0 at mainbus0
rkclock1 at mainbus0

Are you using the serial cable from pine store? If so it's 5v instead of 3.3v and it creates all sorts of problems such as that one.

I am using the serial cable from the store. I have another one that I connect to the GPIO pins of my SBCs, am I able to use that on the PineBook Pro?

I also had another one for GPIO pins so what I did was cutting the 3.5mm jack from pine store and then joining cables to the other one I had with 3.3v. If you open the one from the pine store you will see it's 5v. My pbp was booting all the way through just the connection gets stuck right there when it loads the serial device and we stop seeing after that.

---

I really hope that no serial cable is need. I don't have one and I don't want one.

One misses out so much simply flashing an image. Easy and fast has a price and that's deeper understanding and knowledge. OpenBSD's documentation is excellent and I really hope the UNIX way never changes.

“Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft. We do what we do because we love Unix."

– Theo de Raadt

[SKG]

One misses out so much simply flashing an image. Easy and fast has a price and that's deeper understanding and knowledge. OpenBSD's documentation is excellent and I really hope the UNIX way never changes.

I think I don't understand. I don't want to just flash an image, I want to perform a regular installation to the eMMC. I must be missing something here, so why would it not be possible to perform a regular installation from the install media as you would do with any other computer without having to use a serial console?

I mean it's a full fledged laptop with screen and keyboard. The last time I played around with a serial console was when using my good old Intel SS4200 which has no graphics and thus no monitor connector.

[xmixahlx]

*do what you want* but you only need to mess with the serial console while troubleshooting with new os development, etc. we aren't all doing this for fun.