Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2020 17:19:39 -0500 From: Paul Mather <paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> To: freebsd-arm@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Showstoppers for RPI3 Message-ID: <7C971B68-5FA9-4AE6-9A1B-B3BB406A8215@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> In-Reply-To: <b66a5fa6-461e-7e96-ae3f-07fa8add72e9@denninger.net> References: <20200225175446.GA77976@www.zefox.net> <11951E01-EC13-4FBB-938A-AEB5700C4281@yahoo.com> <CACNAnaEiv5NZZz%2BxfETkhSZ-zbjZ3Ya6z7pyteheP4zj3EK1Gg@mail.gmail.com> <20200226052045.GA79939@www.zefox.net> <E866B6BE-7948-4412-82EF-999A2F8C0DF9@googlemail.com> <04e8e290e5d7bb810f76ece4ff33d6e1006e63cd.camel@freebsd.org> <9AF20341-AFCC-46BE-A2F2-96CF01655983@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> <b66a5fa6-461e-7e96-ae3f-07fa8add72e9@denninger.net>
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On Feb 26, 2020, at 4:17 PM, Karl Denninger <karl@denninger.net> wrote: > On 2/26/2020 3:41 PM, Paul Mather wrote: >> All fair enough. I'm probably in the same boat as Bob Prohaska inasmuch >> as I have a couple of Raspberry Pi devices of varying vintages hanging >> around. I'm a longtime FreeBSD user, so, naturally, I prefer to run >> FreeBSD on these devices, and have done so for a while (with varying >> degrees of success/stability). >> >> It sounds from the above I shouldn't bother, for pain and misery will >> attend me all my days as a result. :-) >> >> If Raspberry Pi is a crappy platform and a bad choice to use, >> FreeBSD-wise, what is the suggested alternative in the same >> low-power/low-price (and Raspberry Pi-like spec) arena? Is it the >> Pine64 stuff like the PINE A64, ROCK64, and ROCKPro64?? >> >> I'm willing to buy something other than Raspberry Pi (I have a >> BeagleBone Black, for example), but I don't want to buy something that >> is derided and despised by FreeBSD developers and avoided by them like >> the plague. I am not an ARM/SoC or electronics expert, so I feel >> unqualified to know what is a "crappy ARM platform." >> >> Also, if the true situation with Raspberry Pi is that it is unlikely to >> see development within FreeBSD, it would be more honest to deprecate the >> platform officially on the FreeBSD site. I'd even go so far as to >> suggest not to distribute official images for it, as that carries with >> it a hint of blessing and support. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Paul. > > I'm not at all sure that's reasonably fair, to be frank. I thought given Ian's pretty frank appraisal of the "love" (or otherwise) of the RPi platform amongst FreeBSD developers, it was a reasonable conclusion on my part. :-) But, we can agree to disagree. I apologise if the last paragraph of my original post seemed overly despondent. > I have Pis in both the "2" and "3" vintage running what I consider to be > production (and important) code. Other than the issues that ALL Arm > platforms have (e.g. lldb doesn't work right, so have fun debugging > things) I've had zero trouble with it. In fact, I've got uptimes > recorded in the many-months timeframe, only limited by when the power > goes off and since I use them in a "NanoBSD" environment I don't much > care if/when that happens, since the things they talk to go off when the > power does too, and they've always come back up on their own. > > Are they perfect or even "excellent" platforms? Not really. The I/O is > a mess, but if you don't need more "oomph" in I/O capacity than they have > it doesn't matter (e.g. they make poor routers or firewalls, simply > because they don't have the necessary "oomph" through the network side of > things.) I agree with the above, and, over the long term, I've had great success with FreeBSD/arm and (to a lesser extent) FreeBSD/arm64 on various RPis. Lately, however, not so much---at least in the case of FreeBSD/arm64 on an RPi 3. I'm using this as a local backup target for Arqbackup via SSH. As of the last month(-ish), the system will go off into la-la land after a few days uptime such that it is only reachable via serial console. IIRC, the USB subsystem is complaining about missing/losing interrupts. (The error just keeps scrolling repetitively on the console.) I'm wondering if the I/O load from the external backup hard drive is precipitating this? For the record, it worked smoothly for many many months prior to that. I'm using 12-STABLE (r358260 currently). > I'd be happy to move to something else too, provided it was something I > can get at a reasonable cost and does the things I need (specifically, I > need I2c and GPIO for the purposes I put these to.) But... what is the > "something" I should move to? I'm in the same boat. I'm using RPi probably because the huge "mindshare" caused me to buy them. There seem to be a lot of similar "hobbyist" devices out there, but the choice is overwhelming to me (hence my asking for specific hints). Cheers, Paul.
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