From owner-freebsd-arm@freebsd.org Mon Dec 28 03:10:19 2015 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arm@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 23FEBA4D316 for ; Mon, 28 Dec 2015 03:10:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ian@freebsd.org) Received: from pmta2.delivery6.ore.mailhop.org (pmta2.delivery6.ore.mailhop.org [54.200.129.228]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 086CE145B for ; Mon, 28 Dec 2015 03:10:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ian@freebsd.org) Received: from ilsoft.org (unknown [73.34.117.227]) by outbound2.ore.mailhop.org (Halon Mail Gateway) with ESMTPSA; Mon, 28 Dec 2015 03:10:41 +0000 (UTC) Received: from rev (rev [172.22.42.240]) by ilsoft.org (8.14.9/8.14.9) with ESMTP id tBS3AGme013085; Sun, 27 Dec 2015 20:10:16 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from ian@freebsd.org) Message-ID: <1451272216.1369.25.camel@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Getting started with freebsd-arm on Cubox-i2 From: Ian Lepore To: Brett Glass , freebsd-arm@freebsd.org Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2015 20:10:16 -0700 In-Reply-To: <201512280230.TAA01501@mail.lariat.net> References: <201512272145.OAA28860@mail.lariat.net> <1451264046.1369.21.camel@freebsd.org> <201512280230.TAA01501@mail.lariat.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Mailer: Evolution 3.16.5 FreeBSD GNOME Team Port Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-arm@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: "Porting FreeBSD to ARM processors." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2015 03:10:19 -0000 On Sun, 2015-12-27 at 19:30 -0700, Brett Glass wrote: > Ian: > > Thank you! Interestingly, when I plugged in a USB cable from a > Windows computer, it recognized the USB serial port (which means > that the USB-serial chip was getting power) but did not seem to be > powering the CuBox. But when I connected a separate 5V power > supply, I got a bootstrap and was able to log in as root with > PuTTY, using the password "root". > > About half of the applications I will have for these boards will > not require video support, and so I may want to do builds that are > serial-only. On the CuBox-i2 which I have here, top(8) reports > > Mem: 11M Active, 10M Inact, 19M Wired, 4081K Buf, 956M Free > > which accounts for only 1000M of the 1024M -- suggesting that the > remaining 24M are reserved for video. Or are they? On this chipset, > is it possible to recover the video buffer RAM for general use in a > "headless" system? Yeah, you can't power it via the usb, the system needs more power than that, especially when graphics is enabled. Since there are no video drivers in the image you're running, there's no memory wasted on a framebuffer. The remaining memory is the kernel itself and page tables and other things that aren't accounted for by the vm system, which is where the numbers in top come from. -- Ian