Image file here.  

Image file here, boot log here.  

A new FreeBSD Wandboard build is available here and the boot log is here. This build uses U-Boot 2014.07.

In this blog article, I described a way to use Netatalk3 to do Time Machine backups on FreeBSD.  This approach worked well, but it had some problems: The Time Machine backups are in every user’s home dir.  That’s messy and there is the potential that they’ll accidentally delete the backup. If I put the backups on a ZFS disk, I can compress them I would like the potential to use ZFS snapshots down the road I would prefer to have all the backups in one directory, rather than scattered across user profiles So, here is a new, better recipe.  Note that this recipe will only work with Netatalk 3.1.2 or better.  The current FreeBSD port is version 3.1.3, so that helps.  Firstly, as in the other recipe, the first step is to install netatalk3, and nss_mdns pkg install netatalk3 pkg install nss_mdns avahi needs mDNS, so that needs to be configured in /etc/nsswitch.conf.  Ensure that this line exists: hosts: files dns mdns Next create a ZFS dataset for the backups.  my zpool is /storage, and the Time Machine backups will be in /storage/timemachine.  Notice that I’ve turned on compression. zfs create storage/timemachine zfs set compression=gzip storage/timemachine zfs get all storage/timemachine zfs list I want to grant the ability to do time machine backups to a FreeBSD group, so I’ll make that, and add the users.  This group will be referred to in afp.conf. pw groupadd timemachine pw groupmod timemachine -m tom pw groupshow timemachine After that, we need to create user directories, one for each time machine user. mkdir storage/timemachine/tom chown tom:timemachine /storage/timemachine/tom chmod 700 /storage/timemachine/tom chmod 777 /storage/timemachine So, now that I have a compressed ZFS dataset to store the backups on, backup directories created, and a FreeBSD group created, I can create afp.conf.  I’ve chosen to limit Time Machine to 500GB space for each user. ; ; Netatalk 3.x configuration file ; [Global] vol preset = default_for_all_vol log file = /var/log/netatalk.log log level = default:warn  hosts allow = 192.168.77.0/24 mimic model = TimeCapsule6,116 disconnect time = 1 vol dbpath = /var/netatalk/CNID/$u/$v/ [default_for_all_vol] file perm = 0640 directory perm = 0750 cnid scheme = dbd [Homes] basedir regex = /storage/home #500 GB (units of MB) vol size limit = 512000 [TimeMachine] time machine = yes path=/storage/timemachine/$u valid users = @timemachine #500 GB (units of MB) vol size limit = 512000 You should notice that the path of the [TimeMachine] share is set to path=/storage/timemachine/$u This means that for each logged in user, $u is substituted wth the name of the user. So, when Time Machine logs in as “tom”, the data is stored at /storage/timemachine/tom. Only members of the group “timemachine” will be able to use Time Machine. This line vol dbpath = /var/netatalk/CNID/$u/$v/ Ensures that each user as a CNID database for each volume.  Without this line, there is a single CNID database which is shared for all users who are using TimeMachine.  That generally results in corrupting the CNID database.  By specifying /$u/$v, we get a CNID database for each user for each volume, which is much more reliable. By specifying a disconnect time of one hour: disconnect time = 1 We can disconnect orphaned sessions and hopefully avoid the dreaded “volume in use” error in TimeMachine. The rest of the steps are exactly as in the previous blog entry. You’ll need to start dbus, avahi, and netatalk, like this: /usr/local/etc/rc.d/dbus onestart /usr/local/etc/rc.d/avahi-daemon onestart /usr/local/etc/rc.d/netatalk onestart The next step takes place on your OS X client machine.  On each host that will perform backups, enable Time Machine to see non-TM volumes: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 Then, mount your user’s share using afp://.  This will make the share visible to TimeMachine. After this, you should be able to see your Netatalk shares in Time Machine, and perform backups

I usually work on a Macbook, and I use keyless ssh with a cron job to do nightly backups.  It works very well.  However, I decided to try backups with Time Machine, using my FreeBSD-10 server as the host. The first step is to install netatalk3, and nss_mdns pkg install netatalk3 pkg install nss_mdns avahi needs mDNS, so that needs to be configured in /etc/nsswitch.conf.  Ensure that this line exists: hosts: files dns mdns Finally, configure netatalk.  My configuration in /usr/local/etc/afp.conf looks like [Global] vol preset = default_for_all_vol log file = /var/log/netatalk.log hosts allow = 192.168.77.0/24 mimic model = TimeCapsule6,116 [default_for_all_vol] file perm = 0640 directory perm = 0750 cnid scheme = dbd [Homes] basedir regex = /storage/home time machine = yes You’ll need to start dbus, avahi, and netatalk, like this: /usr/local/etc/rc.d/dbus onestart /usr/local/etc/rc.d/avahi-daemon onestart /usr/local/etc/rc.d/netatalk onestart The next step takes place on your OS X client machine.  On each host that will perform backups, enable Time Machine to see non-TM volumes: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 Then, mount your user’s share using afp://.  This will make the share visible to TimeMachine. After this, you should be able to see your Netatalk shares in Time Machine, and perform backups

I’m upgrading the U-boot version used for Wandboard by Crochet-BSD.    The first step is to upgrade the Device Tree Compiler (DTC); there are instructions here. Once you have the U-boot 2014 source, the build is trivial: gmake SED=gsed HOSTCC=cc CROSS_COMPILE=armv6-freebsd- wandboard_quad_config gmake SED=gsed HOSTCC=cc CROSS_COMPILE=armv6-freebsd-  

I got interested in building Crochet images for Chromebook.  The first step, naturally is to build U-boot for Chromebook. In order to build U-boot, you’ll need to have already installed gmake gcc You can get these from the ports tree.  You’ll also need xdev, the FreeBSD cross-compiler toolkit. I started with the latest U-boot 2014 source, which I got here.  The latest U-boot requires DTC 1.4.  I’m on FreeBSD 10, which has a much older DTC. To build the latest DTC: git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/dtc/dtc.git cd dtc gmake CC=gcc cp dtc /usr/bin Once we have DTC 1.4, we can build U-boot. wget ftp://ftp.denx.de/pub/u-boot/u-boot-2014.07.tar.bz2 tar zxvf u-boot-2014.07.tar.bz2 cd u-boot-2014.07 gmake SED=gsed HOSTCC=cc CROSS_COMPILE=armv6-freebsd- snow_config gmake SED=gsed HOSTCC=cc CROSS_COMPILE=armv6-freebsd- The U-boot binary image is “u-boot.bin”. To burn the U-boot binary to a SD card: sudo dd if=u-boot.bin of=/dev/rdisk1 The next challenge is the file system. The file system on the Chromebook looks like this: start size part contents 0 1 PMBR (Boot GUID: E780FED6-7991-B94B-B622-FA7541BE9FBB) 1 1 Pri GPT header 2 32 Pri GPT table 8671232 21295104 1 Label: “STATE” Type: Linux data UUID: D5488177-EB19-3243-8D7C-D6E4F01DB5B3 20480 32768 2 Label: “KERN-A” Type: ChromeOS kernel UUID: 47715F23-7DD6-5545-93DC-3807D1CD4AFD Attr: priority=0 tries=0 successful=0 4476928 4194304 3 Label: “ROOT-A” Type: ChromeOS rootfs UUID: BE1064FF-EC28-E64B-B3A1-A5C176D57C0F 53248 32768 4 Label: “KERN-B” Type: ChromeOS kernel UUID: 5D200D96-1F52-804C-83A7-AD8081E8ACD4 Attr: priority=1 tries=0 successful=1 282624 4194304 5 Label: “ROOT-B” Type: ChromeOS rootfs UUID: D0795A2A-1D0D-4140-9F57-F87AEF399C44 16448 1 6 Label: “KERN-C” Type: ChromeOS kernel UUID: E8A703B8-E0A5-964D-9508-D88DE336D003 Attr: priority=0 tries=15 successful=0 16449 1 7 Label: “ROOT-C” Type: ChromeOS rootfs UUID: 7A947ABA-E723-8440-9A07-0EC394C85195 86016 32768 8 Label: “OEM” Type: Linux data UUID: 173B3C97-CDCF-F849-99E7-7614C6C0F9FD 16450 1 9 Label: “reserved” Type: ChromeOS reserved UUID: CD83D43A-4FC8-4849-B0DD-368E9C3819BA 16451 1 10 Label: “reserved” Type: ChromeOS reserved UUID: 344D3149-A5C2-B44B-A65C-2DFD59758FC5 64 16384 11 Label: “RWFW” Type: ChromeOS firmware UUID: D9B79232-94AD-A143-9C49-F947BFA2491E 249856 32768 12 Label: “EFI-SYSTEM” Type: EFI System Partition UUID: E780FED6-7991-B94B-B622-FA7541BE9FBB 30777311 32 Sec GPT table 30777343 1 Sec GPT header There is a good description of the Chromium OS file system here.  The size parameter is in sectors, which are usually 512 bytes each.  So, for example the state partition is 10GB in size.  KERN-A is 16MB in size, and ROOT-A is 2GB. The partition ids for ChromeOS kernel and rootfs, are “fe3a2a5d-4f32-41a7-b725-accc3285a309” and “3cb8e202-3b7e-47dd-8a3c-7ff2a13cfcec” respectively.  The partition ids for ChromeOS are documented here.  

Available here.    

I was curious to see how difficult it would be to compile NetBSD on FreeBSD 10.  Once you have the source, there is a build.sh script which is very helpful.  The build is as simple as: ./build.sh -m i386 tools ./build.sh -m i386 kernel=GENERIC release In my case I have both clang and gcc installed.  I believe the cross-compile tools were built with clang.  The resulting gcc cross-compiler “i486–netbsdelf-gcc” was used to build the NetBSD source. The generated binaries appear in obj/releasedir/i386/binary/

FreeBSD-11 has support for i2c on Wandboard. The working boot image is here, and the boot log is here. In order to enable it, there were three steps Enable the kernel options Update the files.imx6 file Create the DTS mappings The kerne config for Wandboard-Quad is here, however, most of the kernel options for Wandboard Quad are in the IMX6 config. The kernel options to enable are: device fsliic # Freescale i2c/iic device iic # iic protocol device iicbus # iic bus The files files.imx6 contains the mappings between the devices in the conf file, and the files to compile for that device.  In order to compile in the fsliic device for Freescale, I need to enable the mapping for it, so that /sys/arm/freescale/imx/i2c.c is compiled in. arm/freescale/imx/i2c.c optional fsliic Finally, I need to update the DTS files.  The file wandboard-quad.dts contains the device mappings for wandboard quad. However, similar to the kernel configuration, all the real mappings are in imx6.dtsi.  There are three i2c controllers on the wandboard quad, so I added these mappings: i2c@021a0000 { #address-cells = <1>; #size-cells = <0>; compatible = “fsl,imx-i2c”; reg = <0x021a0000 0x4000>; interrupt-parent = <&gic>; interrupts = <68>; }; i2c@021a4000 { #address-cells = <1>; #size-cells = <0>; compatible = “fsl,imx-i2c”; reg = <0x021a4000 0x4000>; interrupt-parent = <&gic>; interrupts = <69>; }; i2c@021a8000 { #address-cells = <1>; #size-cells = <0>; compatible = “fsl,imx-i2c”; reg = <0x021a8000 0x4000>; interrupt-parent = <&gic>; interrupts = <70>; }; The memory locations (0x21a000, 0x21a4000, 0x21a8000) as well as the interrupts (68,69,70) come from the IMX6 documentation.  This line compatible = “fsl,imx-i2c”; is the line that the i2c.c driver uses in probe() to determine that this hardware is a compatible Freescale IMX i2c device. Once the kernel is compiled and started it will detect the 3 iic devices.  The relevant lines from the boot log are: iichb0: <I2C bus controller> mem 0x21a0000-0x21a3fff irq 68 on simplebus2 iicbus0: <OFW I2C bus> on iichb0 iic0: <I2C generic I/O> on iicbus0 iichb1: <I2C bus controller> mem 0x21a4000-0x21a7fff irq 69 on simplebus2 iicbus1: <OFW I2C bus> on iichb1 iic1: <I2C generic I/O> on iicbus1 iichb2: <I2C bus controller> mem 0x21a8000-0x21abfff irq 70 on simplebus2 iicbus2: <OFW I2C bus> on iichb2 iic2: <I2C generic I/O> on iicbus2 You should have 3 iic devices in the /dev/ directory crw——- 1 root wheel 0x20 Jul 6 01:23 iic0 crw——- 1 root wheel 0x21 Jul 6 01:23 iic1 crw——- 1 root wheel 0x22 Jul 6 01:23 iic2 You can check which devices are specified in the dts file, using ofwdump. root@wandboard:/dev # ofwdump -a Node 0x38: Node 0xa8: cpus Node 0xd4: cpu@0 Node 0x190: aliases Node 0x1bc: soc@00000000 Node 0x230: generic-interrupt-controller@00a00100 Node 0x2cc: mp_tmr0@00a00200 Node 0x348: l2-cache@00a02000 Node 0x3d0: aips@02000000 Node 0x458: ccm@020c4000 Node 0x4b4: anatop@020c8000 Node 0x520: timer@02098000 Node 0x594: gpio@0209c000 Node 0x668: gpio@020a0000 Node 0x71c: gpio@020a4000 Node 0x7f0: gpio@020a8000 Node 0x8a4: gpio@020ac000 Node 0x958: gpio@020b0000 Node 0xa0c: gpio@020b4000 Node 0xac0: serial@02020000 Node 0xb4c: serial@021e8000 Node 0xbdc: serial@021ec000 Node 0xc6c: serial@021f0000 Node 0xcfc: serial@021f4000 Node 0xd8c: usbphy@020c9000 Node 0xe2c: usbphy@020ca000 Node 0xed0: aips@02100000 Node 0xf58: ethernet@02188000 Node 0xfec: usb@02184000 Node 0x1088: usb@02184200 Node 0x1124: usb@02184400 Node 0x11b4: usb@02184600 Node 0x1244: usbmisc@02184800 Node 0x12c4: usdhc@02190000 Node 0x1368: usdhc@02194000 Node 0x1404: usdhc@02198000 Node 0x14a8: usdhc@0219c000 Node 0x1538: i2c@021a0000 Node 0x15d0: i2c@021a4000 Node 0x1668: i2c@021a8000 Node 0x1700: ocotp@021bc000 Node 0x1750: memory Node 0x1774: chosen You can also check that the iic modules are compiled into the kernel, using kldstat root@wandboard:/usr/home/tom # kldstat -v | grep iic 131 i2c/iicbus 13 iichb/iicbus 12 iicbus/iic 55 iichb/ofw_iicbus 54 iicbb/ofw_iicbus Once you have a device connected to the wandboard, you can use the i2c command to access the devices.