Editing boot.conf to set tty to fb0 in miniroot69.img

[Paul W. Rankin]

Hello,

I am trying to install OpenBSD on a Raspberry Pi 4B without the
assistance of the serial console. The Pi firmware is set to boot from
USB. I have arm64 miniroot69 on a USB and the system boots; I see the
"BOOT>" prompt, but my USB keyboard does not appear to be recognised at
this point in boot, so I cannot interrupt and set tty to fb0. The boot
then proceeds to the serial console (i.e. blank screen).

The thought occurred that it may be possible to change boot.conf in the
miniroot69 image to set tty to fb0 but so far my attempts have been
unsuccessful. I have tried...

...on my macOS system, I tried many variations of the following without
success:

# qemu-system-aarch64 -machine raspi3 -hda /dev/disk2
# qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt -hda /dev/disk2
# qemu-system-aarch64 -machine raspi3 -drive
file=miniroot69.img,format=raw
# qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt -drive file=/dev/disk2,format=raw

The qemu system just presents a blank screen. Nothing on serial or
parallel screens.

...on my OpenBSD server, I tried mounting the miniroot69.img and
altering boot.conf directly:

# vnconfig vnd0 miniroot69.img
# mount /dev/vnd0a /mnt

But this just presents:

# ls -1
bsd
bsd.rd

Does anyone have any suggestion of how I might achieve editing boot.conf
on the miniroot69 image or otherwise how to boot the Raspberry Pi 4B
into fb0?

Much thanks,

[Stuart Henderson]

Post by Paul W. Rankin
Hello,
I am trying to install OpenBSD on a Raspberry Pi 4B without the
assistance of the serial console. The Pi firmware is set to boot from
USB. I have arm64 miniroot69 on a USB and the system boots; I see the
"BOOT>" prompt, but my USB keyboard does not appear to be recognised at
this point in boot, so I cannot interrupt and set tty to fb0. The boot
then proceeds to the serial console (i.e. blank screen).
The thought occurred that it may be possible to change boot.conf in the
miniroot69 image to set tty to fb0 but so far my attempts have been
unsuccessful. I have tried...
...on my macOS system, I tried many variations of the following without
# qemu-system-aarch64 -machine raspi3 -hda /dev/disk2
# qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt -hda /dev/disk2
# qemu-system-aarch64 -machine raspi3 -drive
file=miniroot69.img,format=raw
# qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt -drive file=/dev/disk2,format=raw
The qemu system just presents a blank screen. Nothing on serial or
parallel screens.
...on my OpenBSD server, I tried mounting the miniroot69.img and
# vnconfig vnd0 miniroot69.img
# mount /dev/vnd0a /mnt
# ls -1
bsd
bsd.rd
Does anyone have any suggestion of how I might achieve editing boot.conf
on the miniroot69 image or otherwise how to boot the Raspberry Pi 4B
into fb0?

That would go on the booted disk, not inside the ramdisk kernel, so

cd /mnt
mkdir etc
echo set tty fb0 > etc/boot.conf

Pretty sure I tested that scenario and it worked without boot.conf
though I'm not sure if it was with the pftf firmware or U-Boot.