On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 09:40:35PM +0100, Marcus Glocker wrote: > 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.
I have the same issue with the 7.8 install78.img. So the issue isn't related to your RPI5, but to a probably broken install image file. We're currently checking whether this can be fixed. As an alternative to the 7.8 miniroot78.img installation, you could use the snapshot install78.img for now, which is working fine.
