FreeBSD 12.x on IBM POWER9 AC922

[Londo]

Hello folks,

I just wanted to drop a line and see if anyone knows why my AC922 does not see the FreeBSD USB boot key I've been making for it. I'm using the Win32 imager, but also using dd just to make sure my writes to the flash drive were not an issue. The FreeBSD boot key never shows anything in the AC922's Petitboot menu, and I have burned the ppc64 images for both FreeBSD 11.x and 12.x.

I did get Ubuntu to boot quite easily and the Linux kernel reports the architecture to be ppc64le / little endian - but I'm not a Linux guy and would be far more comfortable using FreeBSD on this machine. I did notice that the Ubuntu image seems to have a PReP boot partition - perhaps this is why it loads and FreeBSD does not?

Any thoughts or explanations would be appreciated even if it doesn't lead to a solution. Thanks much!

 

[nwhitehorn]

Did you use the memstick image or the disc1 image? The memstick (and I realize this isn't documented well) is for old macs only and is going away soon; the disc1 image is a hybrid memstick/CD image that can, the name notwithstanding, be dd'ed to a memstick and will work on your AC922.

 

[Londo]

Hello, thanks for the reply! This helps out a lot. Let me try to copy the CD image onto a key, grab another AC922 out of the pile, and see if it will start up. I'll keep you posted, and thanks again!

 

[Londo]

Status Update:

Burning the dvd1 image to a USB stick did allow PetitBoot to see the FreeBSD installer, so problem #1 is now solved.

I tried FreeBSD 13 powerpc64le, powerpc64, and FreeBSD 12 powerpc64. Each of them ended in a CPU checkstop during boot (no FreeBSD messages were ever posted to the screen) accompanied by an automatic system power cycle and re-IPL. I'm attaching photos of the screen taken right after the istep process completes, which shows the previous boot error.

Thank you for the USB image advice.
Once again, any help is greatly appreciated!