BeagleBoardDebian

Note: This guide still uses the old etch arm 'non-eabi'. I'm currently modifying it for lenny armel eabi.

This page is about running a (ARM) Debian distribution at BeagleBoard. BeagleBoard will boot the (ARM) Debian distribution from SD card. To prepare the SD card and install (ARM) 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

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.

etch 'arm' wget http://people.debian.org/~aurel32/arm-versatile/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-versatile wget http://people.debian.org/~aurel32/arm-versatile/initrd.img-2.6.18-6-versatile wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-arm/current/images/rpc/netboot/initrd.gz lenny 'armel' wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-armel/current/images/versatile/netboot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-1-versatile wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-armel/current/images/versatile/netboot/initrd.gz

Install Debian
To install (ARM) Debian inside QEMU:

etch 'arm' sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-versatile -initrd initrd.gz -hda /dev/sde -append "root=/dev/ram" lenny 'armel' sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.24-1-versatile -initrd initrd.gz -hda /dev/sde -append "root=/dev/ram" Note: sudo access is required to access /dev/sde directly.

Debian-Installer will complain that it can't find kernel modules, answer [yes] to continue the install. We will be providing our own kernel.

Running Debian
etch 'arm' sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-versatile -initrd initrd.img-2.6.18-6-versatile -hda /dev/sde -append "root=/dev/sda2" lenny 'armel' sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.24-1-versatile -hda /dev/sde -append "root=/dev/sda2" Note: Time will be incorrect. (only etch forces password change)

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

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

cd /media/disk-1/ wget http://beagleboard.googlecode.com/files/uImage_OTG

=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_OTG; bootm 0x80300000' setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 noinitrd root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext3 rw rootwait nohz=off' boot

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

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

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 MMDDHHMMSSYYYY

=Native Built Debian Kernel=

Note, this process will take some time to complete a kernel build (5-6 hours on my 2.5Ghz amd64 Debian PC). Test and verify your kernel's .config and uImage's thru the standard kernel cross compile method first. Don't forget to have the frame buffer enabled so your kernel's console will show up on the hdmi/lcd screen. (The deb's I built listed at the bottom of this wiki are missing this feature.)

qemubuilder
Install qemubuilder on your host PC. (For me, i've only had success with Debian Etch, Ubuntu 8.04 will fail during qemubuilder's 2nd stage.) apt-get install qemubuilder

Create config file: (for reference) KERNEL_IMAGE=/home/voodoo/arm/image/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-versatile INITRD=/home/voodoo/arm/image/initrd.img-2.6.18-6-versatile MIRRORSITE=http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian ARCH=arm BASEPATH=/var/cache/pbuilder/base-arm.qemu MEMORY_MEGS=256

Create qemubuilder image. qemubuilder --create --distribution etch --configfile arch.config

Login into qemubuilder image. qemubuilder --login --distribution etch --configfile arch.config

Reference: to update qemubuilder's image. qemubuilder --update --distribution etch --configfile arch.config

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

u-boot
Download sources and checkout test branch. git clone git://www.sakoman.net/git/u-boot-omap3.git u-boot_beagle cd u-boot_beagle/ etch 'arm' git checkout -b beagle test lenny 'armel' git checkout origin/test

Using nano/preferred editor, modify u-boot's Makefile, to use native gcc. CROSS_COMPILE = arm-linux- -> CROSS_COMPILE =

Build u-boot make distclean make omap3530beagle_config make

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 $PATH PATH=/home/ /u-boot_beagle/tools:"${PATH}"

Linux Kernel
Download Linux Sources, and switch to preferred branch git clone git://source.mvista.com/git/linux-omap-2.6.git etch 'arm' git checkout -b beagle v2.6.26-omap2 lenny 'armel' git checkout origin/v2.6.26-omap2

Using nano/preferred editor, modify kernel's Makefile, to use native gcc. CROSS_COMPILE ?= arm-linux- -> CROSS_COMPILE ?=

Build Linux Kernel cd linux-omap-2.6/ make distclean make omap3_beagle_defconfig make menuconfig

Create Debian linux-image* & linux-headers* Package make-kpkg clean CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=1 fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers Note: these are listed one directory up (cd ..)

U-boot Image make uImage

Transfer via ftp/etc uImage, linux-image*, & linux-headers* outside the qemubuilder machine. (qemubuilder doesn't save any contents.) Using QEMU method listed above remount the sd card and install the linux-image* & linux-header* deb files. Then remount the sd's fat file partition and add the new uImage for u-boot.

Successfully Built Images
Example Debian Kernel Images (frame buffer)