Beagleboard demo files

 Name                                                                                Last modified      Size  Description
 Parent Directory                                                                                         -   
 archive/                                                                            18-Apr-2010 10:12    -   
 broken/                                                                             22-Oct-2009 12:06    -   
 sd-images/                                                                          22-Oct-2009 12:06    -   
 untested/                                                                           07-Jun-2010 22:12    -   
 Angstrom-Beagleboard-demo-image-glibc-ipk-2010.3-beagleboard.rootfs.tar.bz2         18-Mar-2010 18:23  275M  
 config-2.6.32-r70+gitr7b8926aa626991fa087b00f6bbc1fb6b0e8269b0-beagleboard.config   18-Apr-2010 10:06   72K  
 md5sums                                                                             28-Jul-2010 17:03  1.5K  
 mkcard.txt                                                                          29-Jul-2010 10:40  1.0K  
 MLO-beagleboard-1.44+r15+gitr1c9276af4d6a5b7014a7630a1abeddf3b3177563-r15           28-Jul-2010 17:03   24K  
 modules-2.6.26-r64-beagleboard.tgz                                                  22-Oct-2009 12:06  2.7M  
 modules-2.6.27-r12-beagleboard.tgz                                                  22-Oct-2009 12:06  2.6M  
 modules-2.6.28-r17-beagleboard.tgz                                                  22-Oct-2009 12:06  2.7M  
 modules-2.6.29-r47-beagleboard.tgz                                                  22-Oct-2009 12:06  6.8M  
 modules-2.6.32-r72+gitrdc94d8db03fc6c5918960ebf069cfc81e5998665-beagleboard.tgz     04-May-2010 08:59  7.9M  
 modules.tgz                                                                         04-May-2010 08:59  7.9M  
 u-boot-beagleboard-2010.03+r59+gitrca6e1c136ddb720c3bb2cc043b99f7f06bc46c55-r59.bin 24-Jul-2010 14:12  205K  
 u-boot.bin                                                                          24-Jul-2010 14:12  205K  
 uImage                                                                              04-May-2010 08:57  3.0M  
 uImage-2.6.26-r64-beagleboard.bin                                                   22-Oct-2009 12:06  2.0M  
 uImage-2.6.27-r12-beagleboard.bin                                                   22-Oct-2009 12:06  2.1M  
 uImage-2.6.28-r17-beagleboard.bin                                                   22-Oct-2009 12:06  2.6M  
 uImage-2.6.29-r47-beagleboard.bin                                                   22-Oct-2009 12:06  2.9M  
 uImage-2.6.32-r72+gitrdc94d8db03fc6c5918960ebf069cfc81e5998665-beagleboard.bin      04-May-2010 08:57  3.0M

If you want to use the DSP, you need to add 'mem=99M@0x80000000 mem=128M@0x88000000' to bootargs for 256MB ram devices and 'mem=99M@0x80000000' for 128MB RAM devices.
If you want to flash MLO and u-boot to NAND, these are the u-boot commands you need to use:
NOTE: in recent u-boot versions (e.g. 2008.10) the 'nand ecc' command has been renamed to 'nandecc', so without a space in between to compensate for that 'mmcinit' is now 'mmc init'

mmcinit
mmc init
fatload mmc 0 82000000 MLO
nand unlock
nand ecc hw
nandecc hw
nand erase 0 80000
nand write 82000000 0 20000
nand write 82000000 20000 20000
nand write 82000000 40000 20000
nand write 82000000 60000 20000
fatload mmc 0 0x80200000 u-boot.bin
nand unlock
nand ecc sw
nandecc sw
nand erase 80000 160000
nand write 0x80200000 80000 160000

To the Beagleboard Beginner

These short notes aim to help beginners get a working Angstrom system running on the beagleboard.

How to Unpack and Boot the Demo Image

Format the SD card using mkcard.txt
Copy MLO and u-boot.bin from http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/ to the first partition
Unpack the tarball to the root partition of your Beagleboard SD card.
NOTE: superuser privileges are required when unpacking the image so that device nodes can be created on the SD card filesystem.
eg. for Linux:
```
  $ sudo tar -xjv -C /media/rootfs -f /path/to/Angstrom-Beagleboard-demo-image*rootfs.tar.bz2
```
This assumes that the SD card has the root filesystem (ext3) partition mounted as /media/rootfs.
NOTE: unpacking can take several minutes due to the amount of data.
Find the uImage-2.6.*.bin (kernel) file in /boot of the rootfs and copy the file to the boot partition as uImage.bin. This new kernel is required to boot the filesystem reliably. This will replace your existing validation kernel if it is present. Before doing this step, you may wish to rename the working validation kernel from uImage.bin to something else before you copy the Angstrom uImage.bin file.
Ensure all SD card filesystem operations have completed (ie. filesystem cache has flushed to SD card) and eject the SD card from your development machine. Most operating systems have a "Safely Remove" action to perform this from the Desktop.
Insert SD card into Beagleboard and power it up.

NOTE: Use external 5V supply and remove all USB connections from the Beagleboard when booting for the first time. Try USB later once you know it works.

What to Expect

Watch the serial port output. You should observe the following:

The U-Boot startup.
Kernel uncompresses and boots.
Lots of kernel messages for up to a minute while filesystem scanning happens and the system boots.
At the end you should see a login prompt below the Angstrom ASCII-art logo. The root password is empty (just press enter if asked for a password). You can now login to your new Angstrom demo system.

What If...

Some common problems and their fixes

The kernel panics at random points during start-up.
Use the 5V external power supply. Sometimes the current via USB is not enough.
Even with the 5V supply the kernel panics during start-up.
Ensure that you copied the uImage.bin file from the Angstrom filesystem into the boot partition. Compare md5 checksums to be sure.
USB Ethernet doesn't work at startup.
The culprit is the composite USB gadget driver. In etc/default/usb-gadget set USB_MODE='networking' and run the module reconfiguration script (name?).

The USER Button

The USER button on the beagleboard is your get-out-of-jail card. It allows reapir of a "bricked" beagleboard. If you break the software badly like writing a broken bootloader to NAND flash on the beagleboard, the USER button allows you to undo the mistake.

If you hold down the USER button at power on, the beagleboard will look for x-loader and boot loader code in the SD card instead of loading it from NAND flash. Under normal operation the the boot loader is located in NAND flash. In this normal case the kernel and filesystem still usually remain on the SD card.

Once the beagleboard has booted into the kernel, the USER button is just an input which can be used for any purpose you desire.

What Next?

Once you have a working Angstrom system you may want to connect it to:

setup networking via USB
bring the packages up-to-date via opkg
tweak the config
add your own applications

Time to visit the Angstrom User Guide.