FreeBSD-10.1 Soekris r276913

The FDT is the “Flattened Device Tree”, a simple device tree used in embedded FreeBSD, for example on a Pi.  Every architecture has a DTS file, which contains a human-readable list of hardware for that architecture.   For example, the Pi FTD is here.  You should notice that there are declarations for: cpu axi (the…

I’ve been using FreeBSD jails for a while, and was looking for a simple way to create jail filesystems.   After some reading, I came up with this simple script which creates full FreeBSD filesystems.   The filesystem can then be used via jail.conf. #!/bin/bash JAILNAME=$1 echo “kjail “$1 JAIL_HOME=/tank/kjail/ FTP=http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/11.1-RELEASE/ # # get packages # if…

My preferred server OS is FreeBSD. Each time I install it, I have to go through numerous steps to secure it. So, to avoid that effort, and to make sure I get it right each time, I’ve created an Ansible playbook to automate the entire process. You can learn about it here. Some of the…

If you happen to have had an Apple][, you might be interested in retrieving your data from old DOS 3.3 floppies.  Or maybe you’re just interested in retrocomputing and downloaded some floppies at Apple2Online.  In my case, I had an ulterior motive.  I’ve been learning about FreeBSD device drivers and was wondering how difficult it…

I recently got a Beaglebone Black.   I was very excited; it’s similar to a Pi, but has 60 GPIO ports! Getting a serial console up on it was not quite a simple as I thought, since the BeagleBone uses FTDI.  Following the instructions here I installed the OS X serial driver for FTDI.   After plugging…

I’ve updated the u-boot bootloader for Crochet-FreeBSD Wandboard to 2014-10, from 2014-07.  The updated image is here, and the boot log is here.