[Freedombox-discuss] HELP! The dist-upgrade bricked my FreedomBox and new images don't boot.

[Sunil Mohan Adapa]

On 9/14/25 14:09, A. F. Cano wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 10, 2025 at 08:14:38PM -0700, Sunil Mohan Adapa wrote:
>>> ...
>>> New Images not working
>>> ----------------------
>>>
>>> Regarding new images not booting on apu2 and apu1d4, please note that the
>>> newer images for amd64 require UEFI for booting. I don't know if the APUs
>>> support UEFI booting. They likely do. Reach the BIOS of the machine (connect
>>> to a monitor and keyboard, start the machine, and press the BIOS key which is
>>> F1, F8, F10, F12 or DEL keys usually), then find the booting options and
> 
> Tried this on the apu2.  Since it only has 2 USB ports and one has to be
> used for the SD card (via a USB to SD adapter) since the internal slot
> doesn't boot, I had to use a USB HUB where I plugged a keyboard and a
> USB to DVI adapter and to that a monitor.
> 
> The monitor never displays anything and never gets out of sleep mode.
> The keyboard has no effect no matter what combination of keys I hit.
> 
> Is there anything I have to do that I haven't done?
> 
> Using a bootable Debian USB stick does the same thing.  The LED on it
> blinks but nothing else happens.
> 
> I suspect the apu2's BIOS is not smart enough to detect the monitor and
> keyboard.  If anyone knows to the contrary, please let me know.

I took a second look at the APU specs and just realized that APUs don't 
actually have any display output ports. I wonder if this USB to DVI 
setup is actually supported by them. However, I found that in order to 
do UEFI based booting, PCEngines offers a different firmware 
altogether[1]. Installation instructions for the ROM show that it can 
done using any running Linux OS[2]. Please see if you can perform this.

Links:

1) https://docs.dasharo.com/variants/pc_engines/releases_uefi/

2) https://docs.dasharo.com/variants/pc_engines/initial-deployment/

-- 
Sunil
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