9 ms·

FreeBSD on the Raspberry Pi

194 points by mariuz 4y ago

rawoke083600 4y ago
FreeBSD, LISP,Emacs, and a mountain top solitude ? Is this the Zen, we all seek even come if we don't know it ??
tosh 4y ago
I like the idea. Would there be any expected performance differences between running ZFS on a Pi using FreeBSD instead of Ubuntu?
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  That feels like something we'd need to actually benchmark for real to test.
- agilob 4y ago
  This is rasbperry pi 1 the post is about. It's not a super computer. Running updates and unpacking archives chokes the SD and CPU on official raspbian with ext4. It only has 512MB of memory, so ZFS would be killing it.
  - tosh 4y ago
    It sounds like FreeBSD also works on the Pi 3 and Pi 4: https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi
  - macshome 4y ago
    Yeah, the pi 1 is really slow for a lot of things these days. While the post mentioned they started this on a pi 1B+, everything else is about running things on model 3 units.
    - agilob 4y ago
      Yes, regardless whether RPI1 or 3. These boards are quite weak. I wouldn't want file system to one of the biggest bottlenecks on a running system. I had BRTFS on rpi3 before and don't recommend it. Both FS are CoW.
- wil421 4y ago
  ZFS without mirrored disks is kinda pointless.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    No it's not; you still get detection of errors (just without correction), compression, arbitrary filesystems in a single pool, and snapshots. ZFS is great regardless of RAID.
    - nix23 4y ago
      Exactly, that's why my offline/off-site backups are all zfs, well and encryption and compression (zstd-19), at least i know that something is damaged an can (or not) get it from another backup.
  - modderation 4y ago
    You can always set copies=2 to work around block-level failures on important datasets. Beyond that, you still get all the other ZFS goodness for management, snapshots, compression, zvols, error detection, send/recv, and so forth. Best of all, you can always throw another disk at it and convert to a mirror if the situation changes.
  - trasz2 4y ago
    I suppose it might look pointless if you need to jump through the hoops to get it running. In FreeBSD ZFS is properly integrated, and ZFS is a perfectly fine default root filesystem; there's no reason not to use it, except eg very memory-constrained virtual machines.
- ggm 4y ago
  I'd love to know this too. I have a zfs over 4 drives with the radxa sata hat, running ubuntu and I'd much rather run FreeBSD if I could. (Pi4, 8gb) The great thing about zfs is the portability Linux to BSD and vice versa, feature flags noted. I've done it many times on racked servers. The sad thing about the radxa card is that it presents as usb. You don't want to run any raid-like fs over usb if you can avoid it.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Title is somewhat misleading IMO; the page does discuss setting up FreeBSD on a Pi, but it's mostly about setting up samba on top of that.
ggm 4y ago
Bad links inside. Should point to https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi
- klondike_klive 4y ago
  Not only that but one of those GDPR dialog boxes that forces you to untick thirty different "legitimate interest" buttons then click through to the vendor list and give up. I thought these vampires were bound by law to require one or two clicks to opt out?
codetiger 4y ago
No supply of any RPi computers in India for almost 2 years now. :(
- numpad0 4y ago
  I think it's easier to just source (used)office desktops and x86-based thin clients at this stage. There are only upsides to it e.g. no SD corruption, power adapter compatibility issues, overheating problems, etc., so long that you don't need the exact Pi form factor or Pi HAT interface compatibility.
  - tssva 4y ago
    > There are only upsides to it e.g. no SD corruption, power adapter compatibility issues, overheating problems Boot your Pi from USB and there is no SD corruption to worry about. This has been out of beta and officially supported for over 2 years now. I've never had an issue with power adapter compatibility but understand some had issues when the RPi 4 was released due to it requiring more amperage than previous models. Not really a concern with modern USB C adapters and if you are really concerned just buy the official power supply or one of the multitudes sold on Amazon as for the RPi. As for overheating, I have had a RPi 4 stuffed in a crowded wiring box with no air flow in my unconditioned garage running non-stop without overheating for a few years now. I live in a climate where it is over 90 degrees Fahrenheit every day June - early September with a good part of late July - late August being over 100. I also have a 4 node RPi cluster which has been running for years without any overheating issues. The cluster nodes do have 5v fans running at 3.3v to reduce noise. I installed these when originally setting up the cluster but would be confident removing them. At this point it just isn't worth the effort to do so.
  - wil421 4y ago
    No GPIO.
- asddubs 4y ago
  yup, seems to be a worldwide problem.
- 4y ago
psychphysic 4y ago
Here[0] is an actual link discussing freebsd on the raspberry pi. Most people can skip to the section on prebuilt images and note that the default user account is `freebsd` with the same as the password. And the `root` account has password `root`. Finally `freebsd-update`* will not work and so you must flash a new image to update. Images are updated approximately weekly. FreeBSD makes this much easier (rigid directory structure simplifies where what to backup) than if you had to do the same with Linux but it is still a chore backing up installed programs and config files. [0] https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi * apparently working as of fbsd 13 on arm64 (?rpi3+ but not on 0,1,2 this article is on the rpi1). See nreilly reply below.
- nreilly 4y ago
  FreeBSD update does work fine. This started with aarch64 being promoted to a Tier 1 architecture in FreeBSD-13.
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    That's a good point. From Rpi3 onwards then?
    - nix23 4y ago
      Yes aarm64 since RELEASE 13
- nix23 4y ago
  >Finally `freebsd-update`* will not work and so you must flash a new image to update. Images are updated approximately weekly. It works (arm64 >FBSD13), my DNS server is RPI3 and FB13.1, all Tier 1 platforms support binary updates: https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
petre 4y ago
Does WiFi work yet?
rahen 4y ago
For those interested, OpenBSD also works on the Rasp Pi. The Pi 4 is supported officially. https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html https://dev.to/spacial/installing-openbsd-7-on-raspberry-pi-3-1f98 https://dev.to/spacial/installing-openbsd-7-on-raspberry-pi-... This makes it a great choice for a small node requiring security.
- _cenw 4y ago
  Or it would, if the Pi 4 didn't have a street price of 100+ even for the 2GB model. We're getting to the point where buying a barebone x86 system on Aliexpress is cheaper than some of these ARM development boards, definitely not something I saw coming.
  - phoehne 4y ago
    When you add performance as a consideration, for just straight computing tasks, you might also want to consider a refurbished or used 1 liter PC. They'll have a 6th or 8th generation intel CPU and power draws usually below 60 watts. There are also some other alternatives like Orange Pi. Generally speaking, some of the other options don't have a PoE capability (my Pis are all PoE) and you lose the exposed GPIO pins. But if you're just running a web server and don't care about PoE or hooking an i2c device to it, used 1 liter machines aren't a bad way to go.
    - smcl 4y ago
      Ahh I've accidentally been referring to all of these 1 litre PCs as "NUC"s - didn't realise there was a non-intel, generic name for it
      - geerlingguy 4y ago
        Some also call them SFF (Small Form Factor) PCs but that term for me typically means the slightly larger desktop size PCs you could set a monitor on top of. The 1L PCs are more like the thin clients hospitals have bolted on their monitors. ServeTheHome has a great ongoing series on "TinyMiniMicro" computers that make great little home servers.
squarefoot 4y ago
Hopefully this will also fuel interest to have OpnSense and XigmaNAS fully ported to ARM. RasPIs scarcity aside, there are many ARM boards from other vendors that could benefit from the port. All it needs is driver support for one of these boards, or similar ones. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804400925663.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804400925663.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804337466480.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804337466480.html
heyflyguy 4y ago
Everytime I read one of these I wonder..."where'd you get a raspi?"
vital101 4y ago
Are there any Raspberry Pi competitors that people like? I've see a few referenced in different articles but I don't have any idea how reliable or useful they are.
- treesknees 4y ago
  That will depend on what your project requires. There are a large number of Pi users that could get by with a simple x86 desktop-class PC or thin client [1] which, as the article points out, can have pretty similar wattage and compute power compared to say running 3-4 Pis. It gets a little tricky when you start talking about GPIO requirements. There are things like the ASUS tinkerboard [2] but it's much more expensive than a Pi. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/used-thin-client-pcs-are-an-unsexy-readily-available-raspberry-pi-alternative/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/used-thin-client-pcs... [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WPVVZNH https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WPVVZNH
  - destitude 4y ago
    Power usage is the problem. Running a machine that uses 10x more power to accomplish same task that a Pi could is an issue.
    - oblak 4y ago
      There are a number of machines using 5800u @ 15W. That's hardly 10x more power. They are only slightly bigger but offer a quite a bit more performance, let alone features. That said, what am I talking about costs about 500. There's some overlap but it's not exactly the same market.
      - ciupicri 4y ago
        15W for the whole system or just the AMD 5800U CPU?
    - treesknees 4y ago
      To clarify, yes it takes more power than a single Pi. But for any projects where someone would be running _multiple_ Pi's, then the power usage is close if not equal. These machines are able to run the workload of 3-5 Pi's with roughly equal power budgets of 3-5 Pi's.
Sunspark 4y ago
I recently powered on my model 1 B for the first time to see what it was like. The Linux desktop experience on this single core device is horrific. What is MUCH more impressive is RiscOS on it. It flies. The whole OS is written in assembler. It's fast. It's a what-if of computing. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi if you're curious to take a look. Curiosity of RiscOS aside, those single core 700 MHz devices I would only advise using them in terminal mode, no desktop, whether Linux, FreeBSD or something else.
- sedatk 4y ago
  > The whole OS is written in assembler. That's just not true. It's full of C code, even the HAL, which is a good thing by the way: https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/HAL/HAL_OMAP5/-/blob/master/c/CLib https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/HAL/HAL_OMAP5/-...
  - lsllc 4y ago
    That's some quite nicely written C!
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  What exactly does "Linux desktop experience" mean. For example, what distribution and what version of Linux for the RPi was used in the test. Even though I had no plans to run Linux on the original Model B, I saved the "NOOBS" SD card that came with it. It contained presumably "known-to-work" versions of Arch, RaspBMC, Pidora, OpenELEC, RISC and Raspbian. I knew that those offerings would probably balloon in size, or some might possibly disappear, as the RPi project progressed.1 It was early days for the RPi and I was not sure I would be able to easily access those old versions going forward. It is wonderful see one can still conveniently get them (kudos to RPi Foundation): https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS/images/ https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS/images/ Based on past experience with computers and software, I concluded that years later the most recent versions of these OS for the RPi would not run smoothly on an old Model B. To be truthful, I still have not tried. Maybe I am wrong, but it sounds like running, e.g., the latest Raspbian on an old Model B would not be a pleasant experience. Being someone who prefers "terminal mode" over the alternatives, I have always used NetBSD. It was perhaps the first BSD to boot the RPi. It was certainly the first BSD, perhaps the first OS for the RPi, to come with sshd pre-configured so that one could use the RPi "headless" without the need for a serial cable. Most importantly, AFAIK, NetBSD was the only OS for the RPi that, by default, allowed the SD card to be removed after boot. I recall reading so many comments about SD card wear-and-tear but I have never run the RPi with an SD card mounted R/W. Normally I only use the SD card slot for booting and run the computer with the slot empty. 1. Original NOOBs was 1.1GB. Latest NOOBS is 2.7GB.

194 points by mariuz 4y ago

FreeBSD, LISP,Emacs, and a mountain top solitude ? Is this the Zen, we all seek even come if we don't know it ??

tosh 4y ago

I like the idea. Would there be any expected performance differences between running ZFS on a Pi using FreeBSD instead of Ubuntu?

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
That feels like something we'd need to actually benchmark for real to test.
agilob 4y ago
This is rasbperry pi 1 the post is about. It's not a super computer. Running updates and unpacking archives chokes the SD and CPU on official raspbian with ext4. It only has 512MB of memory, so ZFS would be killing it.
- tosh 4y ago
  It sounds like FreeBSD also works on the Pi 3 and Pi 4: https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi
- macshome 4y ago
  Yeah, the pi 1 is really slow for a lot of things these days. While the post mentioned they started this on a pi 1B+, everything else is about running things on model 3 units.
  - agilob 4y ago
    Yes, regardless whether RPI1 or 3. These boards are quite weak. I wouldn't want file system to one of the biggest bottlenecks on a running system. I had BRTFS on rpi3 before and don't recommend it. Both FS are CoW.
wil421 4y ago
ZFS without mirrored disks is kinda pointless.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  No it's not; you still get detection of errors (just without correction), compression, arbitrary filesystems in a single pool, and snapshots. ZFS is great regardless of RAID.
  - nix23 4y ago
    Exactly, that's why my offline/off-site backups are all zfs, well and encryption and compression (zstd-19), at least i know that something is damaged an can (or not) get it from another backup.
- modderation 4y ago
  You can always set copies=2 to work around block-level failures on important datasets. Beyond that, you still get all the other ZFS goodness for management, snapshots, compression, zvols, error detection, send/recv, and so forth. Best of all, you can always throw another disk at it and convert to a mirror if the situation changes.
- trasz2 4y ago
  I suppose it might look pointless if you need to jump through the hoops to get it running. In FreeBSD ZFS is properly integrated, and ZFS is a perfectly fine default root filesystem; there's no reason not to use it, except eg very memory-constrained virtual machines.
ggm 4y ago
I'd love to know this too. I have a zfs over 4 drives with the radxa sata hat, running ubuntu and I'd much rather run FreeBSD if I could. (Pi4, 8gb) The great thing about zfs is the portability Linux to BSD and vice versa, feature flags noted. I've done it many times on racked servers. The sad thing about the radxa card is that it presents as usb. You don't want to run any raid-like fs over usb if you can avoid it.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

Title is somewhat misleading IMO; the page does discuss setting up FreeBSD on a Pi, but it's mostly about setting up samba on top of that.

ggm 4y ago

Bad links inside. Should point to https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi

klondike_klive 4y ago
Not only that but one of those GDPR dialog boxes that forces you to untick thirty different "legitimate interest" buttons then click through to the vendor list and give up. I thought these vampires were bound by law to require one or two clicks to opt out?

codetiger 4y ago

No supply of any RPi computers in India for almost 2 years now. :(

numpad0 4y ago
I think it's easier to just source (used)office desktops and x86-based thin clients at this stage. There are only upsides to it e.g. no SD corruption, power adapter compatibility issues, overheating problems, etc., so long that you don't need the exact Pi form factor or Pi HAT interface compatibility.
- tssva 4y ago
  > There are only upsides to it e.g. no SD corruption, power adapter compatibility issues, overheating problems Boot your Pi from USB and there is no SD corruption to worry about. This has been out of beta and officially supported for over 2 years now. I've never had an issue with power adapter compatibility but understand some had issues when the RPi 4 was released due to it requiring more amperage than previous models. Not really a concern with modern USB C adapters and if you are really concerned just buy the official power supply or one of the multitudes sold on Amazon as for the RPi. As for overheating, I have had a RPi 4 stuffed in a crowded wiring box with no air flow in my unconditioned garage running non-stop without overheating for a few years now. I live in a climate where it is over 90 degrees Fahrenheit every day June - early September with a good part of late July - late August being over 100. I also have a 4 node RPi cluster which has been running for years without any overheating issues. The cluster nodes do have 5v fans running at 3.3v to reduce noise. I installed these when originally setting up the cluster but would be confident removing them. At this point it just isn't worth the effort to do so.
- wil421 4y ago
  No GPIO.
asddubs 4y ago
yup, seems to be a worldwide problem.
4y ago

psychphysic 4y ago

Here[0] is an actual link discussing freebsd on the raspberry pi. Most people can skip to the section on prebuilt images and note that the default user account is `freebsd` with the same as the password. And the `root` account has password `root`. Finally `freebsd-update`* will not work and so you must flash a new image to update. Images are updated approximately weekly. FreeBSD makes this much easier (rigid directory structure simplifies where what to backup) than if you had to do the same with Linux but it is still a chore backing up installed programs and config files. [0] https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi * apparently working as of fbsd 13 on arm64 (?rpi3+ but not on 0,1,2 this article is on the rpi1). See nreilly reply below.

nreilly 4y ago
FreeBSD update does work fine. This started with aarch64 being promoted to a Tier 1 architecture in FreeBSD-13.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  That's a good point. From Rpi3 onwards then?
  - nix23 4y ago
    Yes aarm64 since RELEASE 13
nix23 4y ago
>Finally `freebsd-update`* will not work and so you must flash a new image to update. Images are updated approximately weekly. It works (arm64 >FBSD13), my DNS server is RPI3 and FB13.1, all Tier 1 platforms support binary updates: https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

petre 4y ago

Does WiFi work yet?

rahen 4y ago

For those interested, OpenBSD also works on the Rasp Pi. The Pi 4 is supported officially. https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html https://dev.to/spacial/installing-openbsd-7-on-raspberry-pi-3-1f98 https://dev.to/spacial/installing-openbsd-7-on-raspberry-pi-... This makes it a great choice for a small node requiring security.

_cenw 4y ago
Or it would, if the Pi 4 didn't have a street price of 100+ even for the 2GB model. We're getting to the point where buying a barebone x86 system on Aliexpress is cheaper than some of these ARM development boards, definitely not something I saw coming.
- phoehne 4y ago
  When you add performance as a consideration, for just straight computing tasks, you might also want to consider a refurbished or used 1 liter PC. They'll have a 6th or 8th generation intel CPU and power draws usually below 60 watts. There are also some other alternatives like Orange Pi. Generally speaking, some of the other options don't have a PoE capability (my Pis are all PoE) and you lose the exposed GPIO pins. But if you're just running a web server and don't care about PoE or hooking an i2c device to it, used 1 liter machines aren't a bad way to go.
  - smcl 4y ago
    Ahh I've accidentally been referring to all of these 1 litre PCs as "NUC"s - didn't realise there was a non-intel, generic name for it
    - geerlingguy 4y ago
      Some also call them SFF (Small Form Factor) PCs but that term for me typically means the slightly larger desktop size PCs you could set a monitor on top of. The 1L PCs are more like the thin clients hospitals have bolted on their monitors. ServeTheHome has a great ongoing series on "TinyMiniMicro" computers that make great little home servers.

squarefoot 4y ago

Hopefully this will also fuel interest to have OpnSense and XigmaNAS fully ported to ARM. RasPIs scarcity aside, there are many ARM boards from other vendors that could benefit from the port. All it needs is driver support for one of these boards, or similar ones. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804400925663.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804400925663.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804337466480.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804337466480.html

heyflyguy 4y ago

Everytime I read one of these I wonder..."where'd you get a raspi?"

vital101 4y ago

Are there any Raspberry Pi competitors that people like? I've see a few referenced in different articles but I don't have any idea how reliable or useful they are.

treesknees 4y ago
That will depend on what your project requires. There are a large number of Pi users that could get by with a simple x86 desktop-class PC or thin client [1] which, as the article points out, can have pretty similar wattage and compute power compared to say running 3-4 Pis. It gets a little tricky when you start talking about GPIO requirements. There are things like the ASUS tinkerboard [2] but it's much more expensive than a Pi. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/used-thin-client-pcs-are-an-unsexy-readily-available-raspberry-pi-alternative/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/used-thin-client-pcs... [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WPVVZNH https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WPVVZNH
- destitude 4y ago
  Power usage is the problem. Running a machine that uses 10x more power to accomplish same task that a Pi could is an issue.
  - oblak 4y ago
    There are a number of machines using 5800u @ 15W. That's hardly 10x more power. They are only slightly bigger but offer a quite a bit more performance, let alone features. That said, what am I talking about costs about 500. There's some overlap but it's not exactly the same market.
    - ciupicri 4y ago
      15W for the whole system or just the AMD 5800U CPU?
  - treesknees 4y ago
    To clarify, yes it takes more power than a single Pi. But for any projects where someone would be running _multiple_ Pi's, then the power usage is close if not equal. These machines are able to run the workload of 3-5 Pi's with roughly equal power budgets of 3-5 Pi's.

Sunspark 4y ago

I recently powered on my model 1 B for the first time to see what it was like. The Linux desktop experience on this single core device is horrific. What is MUCH more impressive is RiscOS on it. It flies. The whole OS is written in assembler. It's fast. It's a what-if of computing. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi if you're curious to take a look. Curiosity of RiscOS aside, those single core 700 MHz devices I would only advise using them in terminal mode, no desktop, whether Linux, FreeBSD or something else.

sedatk 4y ago
> The whole OS is written in assembler. That's just not true. It's full of C code, even the HAL, which is a good thing by the way: https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/HAL/HAL_OMAP5/-/blob/master/c/CLib https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/HAL/HAL_OMAP5/-...
- lsllc 4y ago
  That's some quite nicely written C!
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
What exactly does "Linux desktop experience" mean. For example, what distribution and what version of Linux for the RPi was used in the test. Even though I had no plans to run Linux on the original Model B, I saved the "NOOBS" SD card that came with it. It contained presumably "known-to-work" versions of Arch, RaspBMC, Pidora, OpenELEC, RISC and Raspbian. I knew that those offerings would probably balloon in size, or some might possibly disappear, as the RPi project progressed.1 It was early days for the RPi and I was not sure I would be able to easily access those old versions going forward. It is wonderful see one can still conveniently get them (kudos to RPi Foundation): https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS/images/ https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS/images/ Based on past experience with computers and software, I concluded that years later the most recent versions of these OS for the RPi would not run smoothly on an old Model B. To be truthful, I still have not tried. Maybe I am wrong, but it sounds like running, e.g., the latest Raspbian on an old Model B would not be a pleasant experience. Being someone who prefers "terminal mode" over the alternatives, I have always used NetBSD. It was perhaps the first BSD to boot the RPi. It was certainly the first BSD, perhaps the first OS for the RPi, to come with sshd pre-configured so that one could use the RPi "headless" without the need for a serial cable. Most importantly, AFAIK, NetBSD was the only OS for the RPi that, by default, allowed the SD card to be removed after boot. I recall reading so many comments about SD card wear-and-tear but I have never run the RPi with an SD card mounted R/W. Normally I only use the SD card slot for booting and run the computer with the slot empty. 1. Original NOOBs was 1.1GB. Latest NOOBS is 2.7GB.