How to create a Boot SD Card for the BeagleBo... https://github.com/linneman/planck/wiki/How-to...

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How to create a Boot SD Card for the BeagleBone black

Otto Linnemann edited this page on 23 Jan 2016 3 revisions

The most straight forward way of applying the Linux image to the BeagleBone is by booting the Pages 4
system up from an external SD card. Since the BeagleBone black seems to be kind of a reference
platform for the YoctoProject, it provides a good instruction how to flash the image. The following Home
instruction is widely taken from this: How to boot the BeagleBone
black from an SD Card

How to create a Boot SD Card

Table of Contents for the BeagleBone black

How to flash the BeagleBone's

Preconditions
internal EMMC Flash
Partition and Format the SD Card
Identify SD Device File
Clone this wiki locally
Setup Partitions on SD Card
https://github.com/linneman/planck.wiki.gi
Format the Partitions
Create Mount Point Directories
Mount Partitions on SD Card
Install the Image Data
Boot Loaders
Root File System
Unmount the SD Card

Preconditions

You need a Linux host PC, a micro SD card and USB SD card reader in order to prepare the
image. Most of the following commands require root priviledges so it is recommended to execute
them as user root.

Partition and Format the SD Card

These steps need to be done only once. The SD card needs to provide two primary partitions. The
first one carries the bootloader, the second one the Linux kernel and the user land file system.

Identify SD Device File

Before you insert the card reader equipped with the SD card where the new image is going to be
installed, open up a shell on the Linux host and enter

tail -f /var/log/kern.log

Insert the card reader to the Linux host and observe the log output which shall be similar to this:

kernel: sd 35:0:0:0: [sdb] 61497344 512-byte logical blocks: (31.4 GB/29.3 GiB)
kernel: sd 35:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
...
kernel: sdb: sdb1 sdb2

That means the SD card can be accessed under /dev/sdb. In the example above the card has
been already partitioned which is the reason why sdb1 and sdb2 are present as well. Nevertheless

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How to create a Boot SD Card for the BeagleBo... https://github.com/linneman/planck/wiki/How-to...

the following two steps taken from http://www.armhf.com/boards/beaglebone-black/bbb-sd-install/

explain this.

Setup Partitions on SD Card

Start the fdisk console application with the following command:

fdisk /dev/sdX

where /dev/sdX denotes the device file as indicated under point 1. Now create the a new partition
table by following these steps:

1. Initialize a new partition table by selecting o, then verify the partition table is empty by
selecting p.
2. Create a boot partition by selecting n for new, then p for primary, and 1 to specify the first
partition. Press enter to accept the default first sector and specify +72261K for specifying the
size in kilobytes.
3. Change the partition type to FAT16 by selecting t for type and c for W95 FAT32 (LBA).
4. Set the partition bootable by selecting a then 1.
5. Next, create the data partition for the root filesystem by selecting n for new, then p for
primary, and 2 to specify the second partition. Accept the default values for the first and last
sectors by pressing enter twice.
6. Press p to print the partition table. It should look similar to the one below.
7. Finally, commit the changes by selecting w to write the partition table and exit fdisk.

Disk /dev/sdb: 7948 MB, 7948206080 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 966 cylinders, total 15523840 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xafb3f87b
.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 146569 72261 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2 146570 15759359 7806395 83 Linux

Format the Partitions

Before formatting unplug and plug again the SD card respectively the USB card reader to allow the
driver stack to correctly discover the filesystem partitions. Check that the SD card does still use the
same device files as in the given example /dev/sdb by watching the output of tail -f /var/log
/messages.Then enter the following commands to create the required filesystems:

mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n "boot" /dev/sdb1

mke2fs -j -L "root" /dev/sdb2

Create Mount Point Directories

In order to mount the filesystems of newly created partitions on the SD card to the filesystem on
the Linux host you need to create two mount point directories. We recommend to put them under
the directory mount with the following commands:

mkdir /mnt/sd1
mkdir /mnt/sd2

Mount Partitions on SD Card

Whenever you insert the SD card or after having successfully executed the steps above you have
to mount the directories on the SD card by the following commands:

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sd1

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mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/sd2

In case the partitions on the SD cards contain already some data you might want to remove it first
before actually applying a new or updated image:

rm -rf /mnt/sd1/*
rm -rf /mnt/sd2/*

IN the majority of the cases you will exclusively change the Linux kernel or the content on the
Linux file system image. In this case you can keep the first parition as it is and only update the
content of the second one.

Install the Image Data

The following instructions assume that your SD card partitions can be accessed under /dev/sdb1
and /dev/sdb2 as in the example above. It is possible that the SD card uses a different device file
on your system which in this case must be used instead. Refer to the first step for further details.

After successfull build all image data can be found under

##project_root_folder##/build/tmp-eglibc/deploy/images/

Boot Loaders
Install the boot loaders:

cp MLO-beaglebone /mnt/sd1/MLO
cp u-boot-beaglebone.img /mnt/sd1/u-boot.img

Root File System

Install the root filesystem:

tar x -C /mnt/sd2 -f $IMAGE_TYPE-beaglebone.tar.gz

where $IMAGE_TYPE currently denotes to ltenad2 for the standard CDC-RNDIS configuration
used with the manufactures images for BeagleBone black or ltenad2-cdc-ncm for the more
efficient and modified CDC-NCM drivers as used in connectivity modules based on MDM9640.

Unmount the SD Card

Whenever you remove the SD card from the host PC you have to unmount its partitions with the
following commands:

umount /mnt/sd1
umount /mnt/sd2

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