NetBSD on Raspberry Pi!

February 21, 2025 — Nico Cartron

The basics

burn the img to micro SD card
boot the RPi, it will resize then reboot
once booted, NetBSD login
login: root / (no password)
create user:
- useradd -m -G wheel _user_
- passwd _user_

Networking

I did the initial setup with an Ethernet cable plugged into the RPi,
For WiFi, NetBSD detected the RPi Wifi card as bwfm0
- add the below to /etc/rc.conf:
```
ifconfig_bwfm0="up"
wpa_supplicant=YES
```
- modify /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf with your Wifi settings, e.g.:
```
network={
    ssid="MY_SSID"
    scan_ssid=0
    psk="MYPASSWORD"
    priority=5
}
```

Configure packages

set the env variables as below:

# PATH="/usr/pkg/sbin:/usr/pkg/bin:$PATH"
# PKG_PATH="https://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages"
# PKG_PATH="$PKG_PATH/NetBSD/aarch64/10.0/All/"
# export PATH PKG_PATH

add pkgin with pkg_add pkgin to be able to install packages
we really only need a decent web browser, let's go for Surf:
```
pkg_add surf
```

Testing

login with that user
startx works straight away

Current issue

The only real issue I have so far is that NetBSD does not use the entirety of the screen - see picas below:

I'm still figuring it out and will post an update - or write an article about it!

Going further

This article is a good summary of my experience with NetBSD:

NetBSD is a lightweight, compact, finely engineered system. It doesn't get
as much attention as its BSD cousins, not to mention Linux, but I just cannot
overstate how pleasant it is to use.

Tags: FreeBSD