Setting Up FreeBSD on BeagleBone Black: An Easy Installation Guide

Setting up FreeBSD on BeagleBone Black can be straightforward. However, you need to follow the correct steps. In addition, the process requires some basic knowledge of FreeBSD and BeagleBone.

Prerequisites for Installing FreeBSD on Beaglebone Black

• Beaglebone black.
• 5v power supply or Mini-USB cable.
• Micro-SDHC card 16GB or larger.
• USB to Serial (TTL) Converter.
• BalenaEtcher installed on windows Or Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS or Latest
• Download FreeBSD-13.4-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img from https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/13.4/FreeBSD-13.4-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img.xz

Flashing the FreeBSD Image to SD Card

Extract the downloaded image and Open balena Etcher

Select target as SD Card

Flash the Image

You should see Flash completed if there is no error.

Now SD card is ready with FreeBSD image

Alternatively this command can be used to flash image on sd card using ubuntu. Change SD card device and image name as per your device.

sudo dd if=FreeBSD-13.4-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress

Booting FreeBSD on Beaglebone Black

• Connect USB to TTL as shown below

• Insert SD Card to BeagleBoneBlack
• Open minicom on ubuntu or teraterm on windows. For windows you might have to search for usb to ttl drivers, we are using minicom on ubuntu to avoid that

• Press and hold boot button on Beaglebone Black and plugin the power source

• FreeBSD should boot from SD Card
• Login with username/password as root/root