Open issues for FreeBSD (not the Unmatched guys)

HiFive Unmatched
1

Lastly, what remains to be done on FreeBSD w.r.t. the unmatched? My unmatched is talking through the network and through a vt220 I had kicking around… so…

  1. FreeBSD needs to have the DRM stuff enabled and fixed on the riscv64 architecture. We need to explore which video cards have no binary blobs and can be supported by software-only drivers.
  2. FreeBSD needs to revamp it’s SPI stuff s.t. it’s possible to talk to the SDCard.

I’m trying to figure out what the “most open source” compatible video card is that is also cheap to purchase (new or used). There were some opensource video card efforts back-in-the-day, but none of them have updated in the last 6 or so years. nVidia 710’s are cheap — but I’m not sure of the state of the NV driver. 5450’s also seem cheap — so maybe some of you have tried things on the linux side.

That’s for #1. For #2, the SPI code apparently needs refactoring. I’ve ordered some raw SPI SDCard holders and I’ll probably spin up an RPI to have a working platform to hack on. Dunno how far I’ll get.

1 Like
2

I’m sorry to “revive” an old thread, but this post is still relevant (I think). Did anyone manage to get Xorg up and running on the Unmatched (using FreeBSD)? I can’t seem to get past compiling mesa-libs (runtime dependency on libdrm_radeon not satisfied). I guess I shouldn’t have

# pkg install drm-kmod

? Can I then just

# pkg delete drm-kmod

and be done with it then…?

3

There’s quite a bit to be done here, unfortunately. DRM (which has a kernel and a library component) is disabled in the FreeBSD build. I gather that this is primarily due to lack of hardware for testing and whatnot.

This was on my list after getting things like rust and java running (which involves generating a bootstrap that works), but the roadblocks there and a bit of real life have prevented me from completing that — which has prevented me from starting on DRM.

jrtc commented to me that it might be as easy as enabling DRM in the build — I my experiences so far cast shadows on that. Obviously anyone’s welcome to try :).

4

Thank you for a very swift reply! I’ll just have to wait until someone takes a shot at it then, since it’s way above my technical capabilities to dive into something like this. But still - it’s pretty cool to have FreeBSD running on the Unmatched…