FreeBSD 15 Pi 5 - BYO-NTP/recipes GitHub Wiki

The Pi 5 is not yet supported by FreeBSD but there's a mostly working workaround. You'll need a USB Ethernet adapter or an Ethernet hat. See details at the FreeBSD Forums. With that caveat out of the way...onwards!

Write the latest snapshot of FreeBSD 15 to a SD card.

export PI_IMG="FreeBSD-15.0-CURRENT-arm64-aarch64-RPI-20250515-cb205f5ed808-277278.img.xz"
fetch https://download.freebsd.org/snapshots/arm64/aarch64/ISO-IMAGES/15.0/$PI_IMG
xzcat $PI_IMG | sudo dd of=/dev/disk4 status=progress

If you're not doing this part on a macOS system, adjust /Volumes/EFI to match where the EFI partition is mounted on your OS.

• Download rpi5-uefi
• cp bcm2712-rpi-5-b.dtb RPI_EFI.fd /Volumes/EFI/
• edit /Volumes/EFI/config.txt to be this:

[pi5]
armstub=RPI_EFI.fd
device_tree_address=0x1f0000
device_tree_end=0x210000
framebuffer_depth=32
disable_overscan=1
usb_max_current_enable=1
force_turbo=0

[pi4]
arm_64bit=1
hdmi_safe=1
armstub=armstub8-gic.bin

dtparam=audio=on,i2c_arm=on,spi=on
dtoverlay=mmc
dtoverlay=disable-bt
device_tree_address=0x4000
kernel=u-boot.bin

[all]

Insert the SD card into the Pi 5 and boot onto it.

Set up root user w/ssh key access and disable password logins.

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 freebsd@pi4  # pass: freebsd
ssh freebsd@pi4
su -  # password: root
passwd root  # set the root password
mv /home/freebsd/.ssh /root/ && chown -R root:wheel /root/.ssh
sysrc sshd_flags="-o PermitRootLogin=without-password -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no"
service sshd restart
exit; exit  # disconnect
ssh root@pi4
rmuser -y freebsd

Pick and choose from the FreeBSD settings page. Some settings are fairly important (like updating).