NomadBSD 141R-20240711 released

lme · July 15, 2024, 1:04pm

Yesterday we release NomadBSD 141R-20240711 based on FreeBSD 14.1.

Changes since 140R-20240126

The base system has been changed to FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p2.
A hard link creation bug concerning unionfs has been fixed.
A calculation bug which led to an overfull UFS root partition has been fixed.
The fusefs module has been changed to reduce (and hopefully eliminate) timeout errors on unionfs.
The NomadBSD tools have been ported from Qt5 to Qt6.
Several small improvements and bugfixes.

ludensen · July 15, 2024, 1:48pm

For me the page had not yet been updated - probably a cache somewhere on the internet…
I had to use:
nomadbsd.org/download/

vladas · July 15, 2024, 2:25pm

Thanks, my network problem is almost gone!

Everything works smoothly, so I installed also XCompose, Zim, Rclone, rclone-browser, bluefish, fruler, gucharmap, graphicsmagick, dooble, ungoogled-chromium and libreoffice. Only Zim (wiki notebook) limps: it starts successfully, but can not not open any note file. Fortunately, with a detailed report asking to submit it because “Looks like you found a bug”.

Many thanks devs for your hard and smart work!

lme · July 15, 2024, 2:42pm

That was my fault. I wrote the announcement before the download page was updated. It is updated now.

lme · July 15, 2024, 2:43pm

Thank you for your feedback! I’m glad you like the new version!

vladas · July 15, 2024, 6:38pm

I have installed my remaining apps and checked their performance. The last one I checked (sniffnet) suddenly stalled the whole computer. After a reboot, the graphical environment (Xorg) no longer loads — it stops at login. Trying to manually enter sddm,

Initializing...
Starting...
No session manager found
Adding new display...
Loaded empty theme configuration
Failed to create xauth file
'sddm' terminated by signal SIGABRT (Abort)

ZFS rollback to previous saved snapshot did not help. I only destroyed all the good boot environments. Even from USB it does not boot anymore — it stops right there, before sddm. What an unseen, unbelievable disaster…

lme · July 15, 2024, 7:26pm

This sounds really odd. If you’re seeing the erorrs also when you boot from USB maybe it might be a hardware problem?

vladas · July 16, 2024, 9:07am

No evidence of a hardware defect. However, it may be that FreeBSD does not yet fully support
AMD Radeon 780M GPU features, such as hardware acceleration, 180 Hz refresh rate, HDR, adjusting screen brightness, etc.

When the graphics finally started after many failed boot attempts, the booting is now temporarily blackened and the new (or previously unnoticed by me) entry appears in the boot log, just before WiFi entry queue:

[drm] Initialized amdgpu 3.49.0 20150101 for drmn0 on minor 0
VT: Replacing driver "efifb" with new "drmfb".
[drm] DSC precompute is not needed.
[drm] REG_WAIT timeout 1us * 100000 tries - optc314_disable_crtc line:148
start FB_INFO:
height=1440 width=2560 depth=32
pbase=0x0 vbase=0xfffffe0273a00000
name=drmn0 id=amdgpudrmfb flags=0x0 stride=10240
end FB_INFO

mk1 · July 16, 2024, 3:50pm

If possible, could you please write the new image to a separate USB thumb drive to see if you can reproduce this issue? Try to reboot the system a few times, but do not install any packages.

vladas · July 16, 2024, 6:32pm

I bought a new USB-3.2 (Intenso, 256 GiB, type A), but it seems to be useless: “Error opening directory ‘/media/da0s1’: Device not configured”. The oldest 128 MiB is the most durable, but it is too small, so I use a 16 GiB Kingston USB-2.0 type-A for NomadBSD. I also have an 8 MiB Adata tiny USB-2.0 A — I use it for daily backups of my work memos and related assets. So I tested it too.

NomadBSD 14.1R-20240711 installed, rebooted, connected to the network, and after another reboot, automatically connected itself without any problems. Just very long X11 loading (probably due to the old generation and the rather tight USB drive). And wireless connection only, with no Ethernet for some reason.

Curiously, when booting from an internal SSD, the other way around — it does not connect via WiFi. Although a wired connection is always hard to get, too.

lme · July 16, 2024, 6:40pm

Wireless on FreeBSD is still not very fast and reliable unfortunately. It’s been worked on and there have been lots of patches in 14.1. Maybe also introduced new bugs?

What you could try is to run wifibox which is available as a FreeBSD package. You need a CPU capable of running bhyve hypervisor which then runs a small Alpine Linux VM which gets the host machine’s wireless device passed through. Then all traffic of the host is routed through the VM and you get Linux’ wireless speed.
It’s set up quite easily if you’re not afraid to use a terminal. See GitHub - pgj/freebsd-wifibox: wifibox: Use Linux to drive your wireless card on FreeBSD, install the package and follow the wifibox manual page.

Also please don’t forget to create a ZFS snapshot first in case you would want to rollback later.

vladas · July 16, 2024, 7:07pm

I am more concerned about retaining Ethernet settings working — a wired connection is more appropriate for a stationary computer. Anyway, thanks for the advice!

vladas · July 17, 2024, 5:48am

Are these warnings informative?

Invalid TXQ idiwl_mvm_tx_mpdu:1204
…
1 arguments were passed to a non-method ACPI object (Buffer)
driver bug: Unable to set devclass (class: ppc devname: (unknown))

The full context from boot log:

re0: <Realtek PCIe 2.5GbE Family Controller> port 0xf000-0xf0ff mem 0xdce00000-0xdce0ffff,0xdce10000-0xdce13fff at device 0.0 on pci2
re0: Using Memory Mapping!
re0: Using 1 MSI-X message
re0: ASPM disabled
re0: version:1.100.00
re0: Ethernet address: 70:70:fc:05:ca:90
This product is covered by one or more of the following patents:            
US6,570,884, US6,115,776, and US6,327,625.
re0: Using defaults for TSO: 65518/35/2048
re0: Ethernet address: 70:70:fc:05:ca:90
[...]
[drm] Initialized amdgpu 3.49.0 20150101 for drmn0 on minor 0
VT: Replacing driver "efifb" with new "drmfb".
[drm] DSC precompute is not needed.
[drm] REG_WAIT timeout 1us * 100000 tries - optc314_disable_crtc line:148
start FB_INFO:
height=1440 width=2560 depth=32
pbase=0x0 vbase=0xfffffe0273a00000
name=drmn0 id=amdgpudrmfb flags=0x0 stride=10240
end FB_INFO
Intel(R) Wireless WiFi based driver for FreeBSD
intsmb0: <AMD FCH SMBus Controller> at device 20.0 on pci0
intsmb0: Could not allocate I/O space
device_attach: intsmb0 attach returned 6
iwlwifi0: <iwlwifi> mem 0xdcd00000-0xdcd03fff at device 0.0 on pci3
iwlwifi0: Detected crf-id 0x3617, cnv-id 0x100530 wfpm id 0x80000000
iwlwifi0: PCI dev 2723/0084, rev=0x340, rfid=0x10a100
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-cc-a0-77.ucode'
iwlwifi0: api flags index 2 larger than supported by driver
iwlwifi0: TLV_FW_FSEQ_VERSION: FSEQ Version: 89.3.35.37
iwlwifi0: loaded firmware version 77.2df8986f.0 cc-a0-77.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
iwlwifi0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz, REV=0x340
iwlwifi0: Detected RF HR B3, rfid=0x10a100
iwlwifi0: base HW address: e4:c7:67:40:34:90
intsmb0: <AMD FCH SMBus Controller> port 0xff00-0xff0f at device 20.0 on pci0
intsmb0: Could not allocate I/O space
device_attach: intsmb0 attach returned 6
intsmb0: <AMD FCH SMBus Controller> port 0xff00-0xff0f at device 20.0 on pci0
intsmb0: Could not allocate I/O space
device_attach: intsmb0 attach returned 6
acpi_wmi0: <ACPI-WMI mapping> on acpi0
acpi_wmi0: Embedded MOF found
ACPI: \134AOD.WQBA: 1 arguments were passed to a non-method ACPI object (Buffer) (20221020/nsarguments-361)
driver bug: Unable to set devclass (class: ppc devname: (unknown))
wlan0: Ethernet address: e4:c7:67:40:34:90
Created wlan(4) interfaces: wlan0.
lo0: link state changed to UP
re0: link state changed to UP
Starting wpa_supplicant.
Invalid TXQ idiwl_mvm_tx_mpdu:1204: fc 0x00b0 tid 8 txq_id 65535 mvm 0xfffffe016b24d4c8 skb 0xfffff8000ff69000 { len 30 } info 0xfffffe00dab3fcd8 sta 0xfffff8000ff6b880 (if you see this please report to PR 274382)
iwl_mvm_tx_mpdu:1204: fc 0x00b0 tid 8 txq_id 65535 mvm 0xfffffe016b24d4c8 skb 0xfffff8000ff69000 { len 30 } info 0xfffffe00dab3fcd8 sta 0xfffff8000ff6b880 (if you see this please report to PR 274382)
wlan0: link state changed to UP
Starting Network: lo0 re0 wlan0.
lo0: flags=1008049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 16384
options=680003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,LINKSTATE,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
groups: lo
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
re0: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=60251b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,TSO4,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
ether 70:70:fc:05:ca:90
inet 192.168.1.107 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
inet6 fe80::7270:fcff:fe05:ca90%re0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
status: active
nd6 options=23<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
wlan0: flags=8c43<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,DRV_OACTIVE,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=0
ether e4:c7:67:40:34:90
inet 192.168.1.106 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
inet6 fe80::e6c7:67ff:fe40:3490%wlan0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
groups: wlan
ssid "" channel 11 (2462 MHz 11g)
regdomain ETSI country LT authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
deftxkey UNDEF txpower 30 bmiss 7 scanva…

I still cannot find a reliable way to enable Ethernet (or WiFi) connectivity and prevent it from being disabled.

mameko · July 20, 2024, 10:52pm

I’m back again with 141R-20240711. On my older gaming laptop (ASUS Tuf Gaming 705GM) everything works now out of the box. WiFi, Sound, FN-Keys for sound. I only had to install “Gammy” to adjust the display brightness.
Thanks for this new release and the good work of the devs.