On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 11:13:49AM -0700, Paul Richards wrote:
> I wasn't able to find a similar report so I'm putting this together.
>
> I've been trying to install OBSD7.8 on a Raspberry PI 5 (8Gb) for a while
> now without successfully booting the installer image.
> I've tried booting from both micro-SD and USB storage, and used different
> media and different imaging programs to make sure the boot image is valid.
>
> The media correctly boots the U-boot bootloader and interfaces fine with the
> serial port (using the RPi debug probe).
> U-boot successfully loads the OpenBSD bootloader and it sees the boot
> media.?? An "ls" command shows the proper "bsd" and "bsd.rd" files in the
> root of the partition 0 filesystem.
>
> Unfortunately, the OpenBSD bootloader will not load either of those image
> files.?? It fails with this error:
>
> >> OpenBSD/arm64 BOOTAA64 1.22
> boot>
> cannot open sd0a:/etc/random.seed: No such file or directory
> booting sd0a:/bsd: sd0a:/bsd: Inappropriate file type or format
> ??failed(79). will try /bsd
> boot>
> cannot open sd0a:/etc/random.seed: No such file or directory
> booting sd0a:/bsd: sd0a:/bsd: Inappropriate file type or format
> ??failed(79). will try /bsd
> Turning timeout off.
> boot>
>
> I've attached the full boot log from the serial port for your reference.
>
> Checksums of the image files from the .IMG and .ISO match, so I don't think
> my download from the distribution site is bad.
> Any ideas other than trying another host such as an RPi4 and rebuilding the
> distribution?
>
> Thanks,
> -Paul
I've just re-tested the installation procedure with 7.8 on my rpi5 over
micro-SD, and it works fine.
Have you tried to write the miniroot78.img with dd(1) to an micro-SD,
for example by using another OpenBSD machine, or some other UNIX system?
The dd command would look something like:
doas dd if=miniroot78.img of=/dev/rsd0c bs=1m
Make sure the output device is matching your micro-SD.
