Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack Debian

This page is about running the armhf port of Debian distribution at BeagleBoard. The latest beagleboard.org image can be found at: http://beagleboard.org/latest-images

= Checking The Debian Image Version =

You should check the version of the image on the microSD/eMMC by opening the ID.txt file in the FAT partition.

root@beaglebone:~# cat /boot/uboot/ID.txt BeagleBoard.org BeagleBone Debian Image 2014-03-19

This file can also be accessed via a PC (Windows/Mac/Linux) via either mounting the FAT partition directly off the microSD card or via the usb interface (flash drive).

= Installing =

Installing Java
Download: (jdk-8-linux-arm-vfp-hflt.tar.gz) http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-arm-downloads-2187472.html

Extract: sudo tar xfv jdk-8-linux-arm-vfp-hflt.tar.gz -C /opt/

Setup Environment Variables: export JAVA_HOME=/opt/jdk1.8.0/ export JRE_HOME=/opt/jdk1.8.0/jre/ export PATH=$PATH:/opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/:/opt/jdk1.8.0/jre/bin/

Verify: debian@arm:~$ java -version java version "1.8.0" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0-b132) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.0-b70, mixed mode)

= FAQ =

Expanding File System Partition On A microSD
By default the microSD image is only about 2GB in size, to fully expand the partition to the full size of your microSD card simple run.

cd /opt/scripts/tools/ git pull sudo ./grow_partition.sh sudo reboot

On the next reboot, [df -h] should show the full microSD card size.

Kernel Upgrade
We can't ship support for everything on release day, so we push out new kernels as fixes, support for new capes, etc are posted on the beagleboard.org mainline list.

cd /opt/scripts/tools/ git pull sudo ./update_kernel.sh sudo reboot

Loading custom capes
Due to limitations in debian wheezy's userspace, the use of an initramfs, and having firmware builtin to the kernel. It is currently not possible to load "custom" capes via: capemgr.enable_partno=xyz. Instead an init script has been setup to load the cape/capes as soon as possible.

Built-in Cape: capemgr.enable_partno=BB-SPIDEV1 slot #7: Requesting part number/version based 'BB-SPIDEV1-00A0.dtbo slot #7: Requesting firmware 'BB-SPIDEV1-00A0.dtbo' for board-name 'Override Board Name', version '00A0' slot #7: dtbo 'BB-SPIDEV1-00A0.dtbo' loaded; converting to live tree

Custom External Cape: capemgr.enable_partno=BB-SPI1-01 slot #7: Requesting part number/version based 'BB-SPI1-01-00A0.dtbo slot #7: Requesting firmware 'BB-SPI1-01-00A0.dtbo' for board-name 'Override Board Name', version '00A0' failed to load firmware 'BB-SPI1-01-00A0.dtbo' loader: failed to load slot-7 BB-SPI1-01:00A0 (prio 0)

Workaround: add "CAPE=BB-SPI1-01" to /etc/default/capemgr

Privileged echo
As a normal user, you can not "sudo echo 'something' >> /etc/privilegedfile"

sudo sh -c "echo 'something' >> /etc/privilegedfile"

Timezone
By default this image is setup to display time in utc mode. If you would like to change this to your local region.

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

or: echo "Europe/Zurich" > /etc/timezone dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata

= Debian Build Instructions =

You'll want a fairly beefy ARM system to run this script.

git clone git://github.com/beagleboard/image-builder.git cd image-builder ./beagleboard.org_image.sh

= Debian Releases = http://beagleboard.org/latest-images

2014-05-14
Flasher: wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/debian.beagleboard.org/images/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz (mirror) https://rcn-ee.net/deb/testing/2014-05-14/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz md5sum BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz 74615fb680af8f252c034d3807c9b4ae BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz

microSD/Standalone: wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/debian.beagleboard.org/images/bone-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz (mirror) https://rcn-ee.net/deb/testing/2014-05-14/bone-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz md5sum bone-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz 35877ce21e8ed0eb1bdc6819ad71c317 bone-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz

2014-05-14 changes
Improved flashing script kernel update: v3.8.13-bone50

2014-04-23
Flasher: wget http://debian.beagleboard.org/images/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.4-2014-04-23-2gb.img.xz (mirror) https://rcn-ee.net/deb/testing/2014-04-23/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.4-2014-04-23-2gb.img.xz md5sum BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.4-2014-04-23-2gb.img.xz 29c1e9c3e745a3966f9e749b6a89ea50 BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.4-2014-04-23-2gb.img.xz

microSD/Standalone: wget http://debian.beagleboard.org/images/bone-debian-7.4-2014-04-23-2gb.img.xz (mirror) https://rcn-ee.net/deb/testing/2014-04-23/bone-debian-7.4-2014-04-23-2gb.img.xz md5sum bone-debian-7.4-2014-04-23-2gb.img.xz b38f107faea671fc9074de5012ef82cb bone-debian-7.4-2014-04-23-2gb.img.xz