BeagleBoardDebian

This page is about running a (ARM EABI) Debian distribution at BeagleBoard. BeagleBoard will boot the (ARM EABI) Debian distribution from SD card. To prepare the SD card and install (ARM EABI) Debian on it, QEMU on host PC will be used, following Aurélien Jarno's excellent Debian on an emulated ARM machine howto.

= QEMU =

Install QEMU on your host PC. This assumes that your host PC is running Debian as well. If not, install QEMU the way your host PC distribution uses. apt-get install qemu Note: If your debian armel image crashes while fscking the partition, rebuild qemu from trunk.

Format SD Card
You need a SD card 1GB or greater.

Currently (Aug 15, 2008) ext2load doesn't seem to work in the current u-boot beagle board git repo. For the moment follow the LinuxBootDisk guide to setup a 50-100MB FAT partition on your SD Card to use u-boot's fatload.

For reference, this is a 2GB sd card after installing Debian:

Disk /dev/sde: 2032 MB, 2032664576 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 247 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000ab123 Device Boot     Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sde1              1           6       48163+   6  FAT16 /dev/sde2 *            7         228     1783215   83  Linux /dev/sde3            229         247      152617+   5  Extended /dev/sde5            229         247      152586   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Preparation
To stay organized create working directory.

wget ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-armel/current/images/versatile/netboot/initrd.gz wget ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-armel/current/images/versatile/netboot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-1-versatile

Install Debian
To install (ARM EABI) Debian inside QEMU:

sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.24-1-versatile -initrd initrd.gz -m 256 -hda /dev/sde -append "root=/dev/ram mem=256M" Note: sudo access is required to access /dev/sde directly.

Running Debian
sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.24-1-versatile -m 256 -hda /dev/sde -append "root=/dev/sda2 mem=256M"

Note: Time will be incorrect.

login as root, change password apt-get install ntpdate ntpdate pool.ntp.org reboot.. relogin change password...

Install default deb packages for linux-image & linux-headers wget ..(currently building, but not needed as long as you build in the modules you need into your uImage.)

Stop QEMU and remount SD card to copy uImage to FAT partition:

cd /media/disk-1/ wget http://www.rcn-ee.com/code/beagle/debian/lenny/Linux-2.6.22.18-omap3/gcc-4.2/uImage

=Beagleboard=

Insert SD Card and power up Beagleboard.

Boot
Using a serial program, stop u-boot and add these commands:

setenv bootcmd 'mmcinit; fatload mmc 0:1 0x80300000 uImage; bootm 0x80300000' setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 noinitrd root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext3 rw rootdelay=5 nohz=off' boot

To force the Beagleboard to always boot the sd card image:

setenv bootcmd 'mmcinit; fatload mmc 0:1 0x80300000 uImage; bootm 0x80300000' setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 noinitrd root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext3 rw rootdelay=5 nohz=off' saveenv boot

Note: 'rootwait' only works with newer kernels, for 2.6.22.18-omap3 use 'rootdelay=5', otherwise this error: VFS: Cannot open root device "mmcblk0p2" or unknown-block(2,0) Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions: 1f00       512 mtdblock01f00        512 mtdblock0 (driver?) 1f01      1920 mtdblock11f01       1920 mtdblock1 (driver?) 1f02       128 mtdblock21f02        128 mtdblock2 (driver?) 1f03      5120 mtdblock31f03       5120 mtdblock3 (driver?) 1f04    254464 mtdblock41f04     254464 mtdblock4 (driver?)

Debian on Beagleboard
Debian on BeagleBoard uses the following configuration:


 * Console log = Serial Terminal
 * User Console = HDMI port + usb (keyboard,etc)

=Current Issues=


 * 1) Swap disabled: change /dev/hda5 -> /dev/mmcblk0p5 in /etc/fstab (artifact of qemu install to /dev/hdaX)
 * 2) RTC seems to be not enabled: use ntpdate when ethernet works, or issue date MMDDHHMMYYYY

=Building a Native Debian Kernel with QEMU=

Install Dependencies
apt-get install git-core kernel-package fakeroot build-essential curl libncurses-dev

u-boot
wget -nc http://beagleboard.googlecode.com/files/u-boot_beagle_revb.tar.gz tar -xf u-boot_beagle_revb.tar.gz cd u-boot/ make CROSS_COMPILE= distclean make CROSS_COMPILE= omap3530beagle_config make CROSS_COMPILE=

Note: this should eventually error out. The goal isn't to build a native u-boot but just the u-boot's 'mkimage' such that a u-boot compatible uImage can be build later.

Add /tools/ to $PATH PATH=/home/ /u-boot/tools:"${PATH}"

Linux Kernel
wget -nc http://www.beagleboard.org/uploads/2.6_kernel_revb-v2.tar.gz wget -nc http://www.rcn-ee.com/code/beagle/debian/lenny/2.6_kernel_revb-v2-debian-gcc-4.3.1-armel-v1.patch tar -xf 2.6_kernel_revb-v2.tar.gz

Patch Kernel cd 2.6_kernel/ patch -p1 < ../2.6_kernel_revb-v2-debian-gcc-4.3.1-armel-v1.patch

Setup Kernel .config make CROSS_COMPILE= distclean make CROSS_COMPILE= omap3_beagle_defconfig

Create Debian linux-image* & linux-headers* Package make-kpkg --cross_compile - clean CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=1 fakeroot make-kpkg --cross_compile - --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers

Create U-boot uImage make CROSS_COMPILE= uImage

Issues: Debian's gcc-4.3 will fail to build a bootable uImage, so use gcc-4.2 as gcc thru 'update-alternatives'

Successfully Built Images
Example Debian Kernel Images