Saitama

Hi Jimmay. No progress yet. Since my post here I've spent time learning the basics of u-boot and reviewed some files/scripts located on the latest pfsense plus image, which contains the necessary device tree (dtb) files for both of our netgate appliances. To my understanding, those dtb files are required for a custom armbian image or probably more luck with freebsd. If you have access to the latest pfsense plus image ( you need to contact netgate TAC and provide the netgate appliance ID/serial), you could check out the content of the dtb files and the netgate recovery script found under /etc/rc.recovery, which seem to do the magic by setting up u-boot, format partition and flash the image (pfsense plus), Doubtful if it would work work to build a generic Armbian image for personal use with the dtb files? Will give it a few more tries and if all fails, I sell the damn thing and get supported hardware instead 😀

Wondering if it is possible to replace pfsense (freebsd 14) with Armbian on a netgate sg-2100 appliance? https://shop.telappliant.com/product/sg-2100-pfsense-security-gateway-appliance/ I have the version with an additional 32GB M.2 SSD and it looks like the mvebu_armada-37xx board is supported by the generic Armbian, but I struggle to get from u-boot to starting the installer from usb (used the Armbian_23.5.1_Uefi-arm64_bookworm_current_6.1.30_minimal.img), with the usbboot command. Below is the current u-boot environment. I have masked some parts with "xxxxx" and probably won't need half of these variables, as they are very vendor specific, for example netgateid etc. If possible, I would like to flash/replace the boot loader that is not specific for pfsense, but I am a total beginner with arm boards and boot loaders. Not as easy as installing various Linux distros... Marvell>> printenv arch=arm baudrate=115200 board=mvebu_armada-37xx board_name=mvebu_armada-37xx boot_file=efi/boot/bootaa64.efi bootcmd=run setLED; run mmcboot; run scsiboot; run usbboot; run net; bootdelay=2 cpu=armv8 dmi_board_mfg=Silicom dmi_board_name=xxxxxxxx dmi_board_serial=xxxxxxxx dmi_board_ver=R301 dmi_chassis_mfg=Silicom dmi_chassis_serial=xxxxxxxx dmi_chassis_ver=R301 dmi_sys_mfg=Silicom dmi_sys_name=SG-2100 dmi_sys_serial=xxxxxxxx dmi_sys_ver=R301 dtb_name=armada-3720-sg2100.dtb eth1addr=xxxxxxxx ethact=neta@xxxxxxxx ethaddr=xxxxxxxx ethprime=eth0 fdt_addr_r=0xc00000 fdtcontroladdr=7f623360 gatewayip=xxxxxxxx ipaddr=0.0.0.0 kernel_addr_r=0x1000000 load_dev=usb loadaddr=0x1000000 mmcboot=mmc rescan; setenv load_dev mmc; if fatls ${load_dev} 0:2 /; then run pfsenseboot; fi; net=dhcp; tftp ${fdt_addr_r} ${dtb_name}; tftp ${kernel_addr_r} loader.efi; fdt addr ${fdt_addr_r}; fdt set / sn ${dmi_sys_serial}; bootefi ${kernel_addr_r} ${fdt_addr_r}; netgateid=xxxxxxxx netmask=255.255.255.0 pfsenseboot=load ${load_dev} 0:2 ${fdt_addr_r} ${dtb_name}; load ${load_dev} 0:1 ${kernel_addr_r} ${boot_file}; fdt addr ${fdt_addr_r}; fdt set / sn ${dmi_sys_serial}; bootefi ${kernel_addr_r} ${fdt_addr_r}; pxefile_addr_r=0x2000 ramdisk_addr_r=0x2000000 rootpath=/srv/nfs/ scsiboot=scsi reset; setenv load_dev scsi; if fatls ${load_dev} 0:2 /; then run pfsenseboot; fi; serverip=0.0.0.0 setLED=i2c dev 1; i2c reset; i2c mw 67 ff 0; i2c mw 67 0 1; i2c mw 67 f 20; i2c mw 67 3 40; i2c mw 67 26 0; i2c mw 67 10 0; soc=mvebu stderr=serial@12000 stdin=serial@12000 stdout=serial@12000 usb_pgood_delay=4000 usbboot=usb reset; setenv load_dev usb; if fatls ${load_dev} 0:2 /; then run pfsenseboot; fi; usbrecovery=mmc erase 0 400000; run usbboot vendor=Marvell