OpenBSD on gl.inet MV-1000 (Brume)

This page describes installing OpenBSD onto a gl.inet GL-MV1000[0] (aka Brume) device.

Installing

1. Grab a an OpenBSD miniroot71.img for 7.1 or -current and write it to an sdcard (dd if=miniroot71.img of=/dev/sdXc bs=1k).

2. Grab the OEM firmware, extract armada-gl-mv1000-emmc.dtb from it (or grab it from here) and copy it to the root of the first partition of the sdcard (mount /dev/sdXi /mnt; cp armada-gl-mv1000-emmc.dtb /mnt; umount /mnt).

   Using the .dtb file that ships with OpenWRT will cause OpenBSD 7.1 to report sdhc0: base clock frequency unknown errors and not find the sdcard. This was fixed after 7.1.

   If your device still has the stock firmware you can probably skip this step and change the first "load mmc 1:1" in the bootcmd below to "load mmc 0:1" to load the vendor-supplied .dtb from the internal eMMC device.

3. Connect the serial console and ethernet to the Brume. Power it on and type "gl" into the console to interrupt the boot sequence. At the Marvel>> prompt set some variables. Firstly, if your device is using a random mac address, you may want to set it to a fixed value to prevent it eating all your DHCP addresses.

   Warning: neta@30000 (eth0) using random MAC address - 5e:f4:db:4f:af:8c
   eth0: neta@30000 [PRIME]
   Hit "gl" key to stop booting in 2 seconds
   Marvel>> setenv ethaddr 5e:f4:db:4f:af:8c
   

   In all cases, set the bootcmd variable to load the DTB file and OpenBSD bootloader from from the sdcard and run it:

   Marvel>> setenv bootcmd 'load mmc 1:1 ${fdt_addr} armada-gl-mv1000-emmc.dtb; load mmc 1:1 ${kernel_addr} efi/boot/bootaa64.efi; bootefi ${kernel_addr} ${fdt_addr}'
   Marvel>> saveenv
   

4. Boot from the sdcard by typing "boot". At this point the OpenBSD bsd.rd should boot from the sdcard and you can perform a normal network installation back to the sdcard (which should be sd0 in the installer, but will be sd1 when the system reboots). Leave the "i" partition on the sdcard and all of the internal eMMC unchanged. If you make a mistake after you start writing to the sdcard you'll need to to start again at step 1.

   Support status

   The good:
   • seems stable and survived a kernel build just fine
   • ethernet (mvneta) and SD card (sdhc) work (both eMMC and removable).
   • the USB interface doesn't work with 7.1. This was fixed after 7.1 and works in -current.

   The ok:

   • the internal 4 port (3 external) ethernet switch works but is only supported in unmanaged mode (mvsw). All three ports are effectively mvneta0 and you can't reasonably use it as a router. There is some work going on to address this with an driver (mvsport or eport) but at the time of writing this has not been committed.

   The bad:

   • it won't reboot cleanly (shuts down OK but doesn't reset), probably due to SoC bugs (for example, the Turris MOC, which uses the same SoC has had 4 firmware revisions attempting to get it to reset reliably).

   References

   Vendor U-Boot fork on github

   Stock firmware boot log

   OpenBSD boot log

   eeprom -p when booted with armada-gl-mv1000-emmc.dtb

   eeprom -p when booted with armada-3720-gl-mv1000.dtb