alt Hacker NewsNeat! I didn't know OpenBSD had any Raspberry Pi support, anyone around with any experience? I have an extra 4 or to and "do stuff with OpenBSD" has been on my list for a while.
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Heads-up: OpenBSD does not yet support power-saving on anything Arm64. The CPU will be running at full throttle the entire time, which will be a showstopper in some cases.
Current release (7.7) and previous (7.6) worked great on my Pi 4. There were a few extra setup steps due to the unique firmware boot setup, but after it works exactly like any other OpenBSD system. I rarely think about it being ARM64.
Runs great even in a passive enclosure. It's gotten it quite hot before when left it running in a backpack by mistake... but it remained perfectly stable and I could SSH into it (though I didn't dare touch it).
Couple of caveats:
1. Last I tried about 9mo. ago on a Pi 4, you still need 3rd party firmware to make use of >3gb RAM. Unfortunately, I couldn't get that to work.
2. Even though the full image has the complete software set, the installer can't see it; you have to either use the network (I have a datacap, it's a pain point with FOSS sometimes), or load another drive with the sets.
Besides reading documentation, before installing, you should ensure you have:
- Latest firmware installed (much easier to upgrade them from Linux)
- UEFI.
Yes. I run my mail server on a Raspberry Pi 4 on OpenBSD. Aside from having to flash an SD card (and having the install program install the sets to… itself) everythhing works exactly as you expect on any other OpenBSD install. You can’t really stray far outside the list of supported hardware unless you plan to roll things yourself, however. Eg, I’ve discovered that Waveshare carrier boards for the CM4 are hit or miss. NetBSD has much more comprehensive support for Raspberry Pis and the various accoutrements.
Pretty excited about Pi 5 support!