Chromebook-FreeBSD.md

FreeBSD Chromebook

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Chromebook

C720 (Arch wiki)

http://blog.grem.de/pages/c720.html

• D1741: Improve memory detection in biosmem.c
• Call for testers, change BIOS memory detection
• ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/11.0/

Background:

• Bug 195744 Unable to boot FreeBSD 10.1 memstick image; readin failed
  • chromebook_pixel_linux.txt note: mem=4G
  • SeaBIOS mem: Google Chromebook C720
• FreeBSD on Acer C710 Chromebook
  • Chromium OS - Disk Format
• DragonFly now runs on the Acer c720 (Haswell) Chromebook
• State of C720* Chromebooks for FreeBSD-CURRENT?

Dell Chromebook 11 (Arch wiki)

• FreeBSD-11.0-CURRENT-amd64-20151102-r290273-memstick.img (includes patches from the C720 ^ that are also needed, notably for atkbdc)
• John Lewis: Corebook+SeaBIOS: Full ROM rel-1.8.0-183-gfa7545a-11/11/15-johnlewis.ie
• Boot menu steps "Welcome to FreeBSD" - necessary for the keyboard atkbdc to work:
  1. "3. Escapte to loader prompt"
  2. show - look for "smbios.*" items
  3. set smbios.chassis.maker=Acer
  4. set smbios.system.maker=Acer
  5. set smbios.system.product=Peppy
  6. (verify with show) ... boot
• Alternatively: patch coreboot sections to match Dell/Wolf quirks and recompile.
• Follow same setup steps for C720 - notably: http://blog.grem.de/pages/c720.html

Background:

SeaBIOS and SeaVGABIOS on the stock version appear to have several bugs related to both the VGA and also the memory probelms present in C720. Flashing the latest "Full ROM" from John Lewis (or compiling the latest coreboot and SeaBIOS) allows for FreeBSD to boot normally on the device. (note: this does disable the ability to boot ChromeOS as it overwrites the default firmware).

• SeaBIOS - Problems booting legacy OSes on Chromebook Pixel 2015 - cbmem output
• Qemu-devel - *BSD kernel crash at boot in qemu with seabios 1.7.4 (bisected)
• SeaBIOS - FreeBSD VESA console not working with SeaBIOS

Trackpad: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D2372