I have just received all the hardware I need to assemble my new Ampere Altra based server. I managed to get the rare ASRock Rack ALTRAD8UD2-1L2Q motherboard (with SFP28 and better placement for the CMOS battery) and an Ampere Altra Q64-30 CPU.
All my hardware seems to be recognized just fine, and I managed to boot successfully on Ubuntu 25.10 desktop.
However, my operating system of choice is FreeBSD, and I was hoping to install that directly on the hardware. Following the usual procedure I’m accustomed to from Intel machines, I downloaded FreeBSD-15.0-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-memstick.img, copied its contents to a USB thumb drive, and tried to start the installer.
I do manage to get into the boot loader just fine, but then it’s consistently stuck after loading the kernel and identifying some information about the EFI framebuffer. Here’s what it looks like in the console:
\ _____ ____ ____ ____ ___ _ _ _
| ___| __ ___ ___| __ ) ___|| _ \ |_ _|_ __ ___| |_ __ _| | | ___ _ __
| |_ | '__/ _ \/ _ \ _ \___ \| | | | | || '_ \/ __| __/ _` | | |/ _ \ '__|
| _|| | | __/ __/ |_) |__) | |_| | | || | | \__ \ || (_| | | | __/ |
|_| |_| \___|\___|____/____/|____/ |___|_| |_|___/\__\__,_|_|_|\___|_|
/-------- Welcome to FreeBSD ----------\ ``` `
| | s` `.....---.......--.``` -/
| 1. Boot Installer [Enter] | +o .--` /y:` +.
| 2. Boot Single user | yo`:. :o `+-
| 3. Escape to loader prompt | y/ -/` -o/
| 4. Reboot | .- ::/sy+:.
| 5. Cons: Dual (Video primary) | / `-- /
| | `: :`
| Kernel: | `: :`
| 6. kernel (1 of 1) | / /
| | .- -.
| Options: | -- -.
| 7. Boot Options | `:` `:`
| | .-- `--.
\--------------------------------------/ .---.....----.
Loading kernel...seconds. [Space] to pause
/boot/kernel/kernel text=0x318 text=0xa62b58 text=0x281508 data=0x16b460 data=0x0+0x2c3000 0x8+0x160938+0x8+0x189ef1-
Loading configured modules...
can't find '/boot/entropy'
can't find '/etc/hostid'
Loading splash ok
No valid device tree blob found!
WARNING! Trying to fire up the kernel, but no device tree blob found!
EFI framebuffer information:
addr, size 0x10000000, 0x1d4c00
dimensions 800 x 600
stride 800
masks 0x00ff0000, 0x0000ff00, 0x000000ff, 0xff000000
_
But that cursor never gives way to the familiar <<BOOT>> message that signals a successful handoff to the FreeBSD kernel.
Does anyone have any idea as to how I could diagnose this further?
By the way, it looks like @bexcran somehow managed to get FreeBSD installed on a somewhat similar setup. Did you need to apply any special trick at the level of the boot loader for the installer?