PC Engines APU2 boot problem

[Raimo Niskanen-7]

Hello misc!

I have problem booting an APU2 from SD card and USB stick.
It boots fine from the mSATA disk where I have the OpenBSD installation
that I have upgraded several times using sysupgrade(8).

I have tried to write install67.fs and install68.img to an SD card and to
an USB stick from a Linux machine using e.g
    dd if=install67.fs of=/dev/sdc bs=1M

On the APU:s serial console, I press [F10] to get a boot prompt, and then
select the SD card or the USB stick.  The kernel is loaded and the last
printout is "Entry point: 0xffff..." something.  The next line
[ELF ... whatnot] does not come.  After a while the APU resets and boots
again, or sometimes hangs.

The BIOS is factory installed SeaBIOS 1.10... something.

Can I expect a BIOS upgrade (flashrom) to solve this?  I might have had 2
USB sticks in when booting, might that provoke a bug?

This machine should boot OpenBSD 6.7 from at least an USB stick, right?

Cheers
--

/ Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB

[Stefan Sperling-5]

On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 12:08:52PM +0100, Raimo Niskanen wrote:

> Hello misc!
>
> I have problem booting an APU2 from SD card and USB stick.
> It boots fine from the mSATA disk where I have the OpenBSD installation
> that I have upgraded several times using sysupgrade(8).
>
> I have tried to write install67.fs and install68.img to an SD card and to
> an USB stick from a Linux machine using e.g
>     dd if=install67.fs of=/dev/sdc bs=1M
>
> On the APU:s serial console, I press [F10] to get a boot prompt, and then
> select the SD card or the USB stick.  The kernel is loaded and the last
> printout is "Entry point: 0xffff..." something.  The next line
> [ELF ... whatnot] does not come.  After a while the APU resets and boots
> again, or sometimes hangs.

Before loading a kernel the serial console needs to be enabled with:

  stty com0 115200
  set tty com0

On an installed system /etc/boot.conf is usually set up to do this
automatically but manual setup is still required when booting from
other media.

[Raimo Niskanen-7]

On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 12:36:57PM +0100, Stefan Sperling wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 12:08:52PM +0100, Raimo Niskanen wrote:
> > Hello misc!
> >
> > I have problem booting an APU2 from SD card and USB stick.
> > It boots fine from the mSATA disk where I have the OpenBSD installation
> > that I have upgraded several times using sysupgrade(8).
> >
> > I have tried to write install67.fs and install68.img to an SD card and to
> > an USB stick from a Linux machine using e.g
> >     dd if=install67.fs of=/dev/sdc bs=1M
> >
> > On the APU:s serial console, I press [F10] to get a boot prompt, and then
> > select the SD card or the USB stick.  The kernel is loaded and the last
> > printout is "Entry point: 0xffff..." something.  The next line
> > [ELF ... whatnot] does not come.  After a while the APU resets and boots
> > again, or sometimes hangs.
>
> Before loading a kernel the serial console needs to be enabled with:
>
>   stty com0 115200
>   set tty com0
>
> On an installed system /etc/boot.conf is usually set up to do this
> automatically but manual setup is still required when booting from
> other media.

Oh, bummer!  Of course.  I hope it is such a stupid mistake!
I will try when I get a new opportunity...

Thank you very much.

Cheers
--

/ Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB