An observation about updating BBB images

GoogleGroups
1

BBB support folks,

I know you are trying hard with a new product, and I commend your efforts (I’ve been in the same situation with many products over the years). So please understand that I’m not complaining, only offering a bit of customer perspective that might make your, and your user’s, lives a bit easier.

I’ll explain by summarizing the experience I’ve had today while I’ve been trying to update the software for some new BBBs. Finding the “latest” software (as the instructions urge one to do) can be, well, a bit like going on a scavenger hunt. :wink:

I believe it would cause less confusion among users (and therefore less support questions to you) if the various BBB images were named consistently and if they could be easily found by BBB users in one place.

I started with the info that is on the BBB as it comes out of the box.

The BBB image that arrived on the bone points you (via the onboard web server) to:

http://beagleboard.org/latest-images

which gives you

BeagleBone Black (eMMC flasher)- Angstrom Distribution (BeagleBone Black) 2013-05-08 - more info - bittorrent

OK, that sounded good, so I flashed to that image.

After booting the 5-8-2103 software, I ran into the current problems re HDMI and started following the various posted threads. I then found myself here:

http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack_HDMI

which tells me about “…troubleshooting method can be used in the 5/18 software update”. Hum, Ok, but where will I find that? Off to do some googling… which eventually leads me to

http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=Updating_The_Software

Here the link labeling makes it a bit harder to understand what is what…

The page says that the “latest image” is 2013.05.08…

AND it says that there are three “production image”s with dates from 2013.05.20, 2013.05.08 and 2013.04.13.

Uh, one of those dates is later than the “latest image” date… and the (time wise) latest was not the one that I found from the on-board BB link.

That’s a tad irritating as I now had to reflash multiple BBBs for a 2nd time. That could have been avoided if the “latest image” link had served up the “latest image”.

Lookin at more of this page, there are three “eMMC Flasher_ links. The link name implies these are SD images that when booted will flash the eMMC.

Yeah, but having just done the flashing from the 5-8 production image, I suspect that the other “production releases” are also really “eMMC flashers”.

Effectively the “images” are not really “production eMMC images”, they are micro SD card images, which when run, will flash the eMMC. Therefore the flasher naming convention is probably the most appropriate of the link names.

My observation is that this would all be a lot simpler for a BBB user if

  1. the link/file naming convention was consistent and

  2. the various available “images” were all in one place and

  3. the link from the BBB web server landed you at that one place.

Just wanted to pass this along for consideration by the powers that be.

Now then, I’m off to use the 2013.05.20 file to see if I can get HDMI working, or at least use the EDID parser to get some diagnostic info.

Dave

2

Can you refresh your browser and look at the page again? Those images are listed as OLD images. We always leave the old images in case someone want to go back to them. They were at one time production images.

Gerald

3

One other excuse You caught me in the middle of updating a lot of this. We only released the 5_20 a few hours ago. So give me a few minutes and I will drop everything and get right on this.

Gerald

4

Sorry! My bad! I had already updated the HDMI page to point to the latest.

Gerald

5

+1

If only the SW documentation to start could be only on one location or at least the start.htm on the image point you directly to CircuitCo Wiki pages. On a second level if someone want’s to create an Angstrom image for the new BBB the documentation is even less; can we expect that making an Angstrom image is the same as for white BB ? or there is a new MACHINE definition for oebb.sh ?

The mbed guys deploy the mbed with a nice feature on the start page which extracts serial number from the actual device using Javascript and with that it points you to the correct link on the server. Maybe that could be useful to avoid changing the link for each P/N.

On the other side the HW documentation which we know is Gerald’s direct work is just great, better than closed devkits on the thousands range.

6

Gee, I didn’t know I had such “good” timing. I guess this was just my way of proving that Murphy’s law is alive and well… :slight_smile:
Now if I can just get the 5-20 release file - the download speed is painfully slow (100kB/sec) - has to be the server end as my net link will 25MB+/sec to me.
I guess there are lots of people wanting the new release.

BTW - the http://beagleboard.org/latest-images link is still showing the 5-8 release as the latest…

Dave

7

I get my bleeding edge stuff here

http://dominion.thruhere.net/koen/angstrom/beaglebone/?C=M;O=D

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Yes I know the link is bad. I could never get the people to update it. So, that is why I have the Wiki. I can update it 24 7.

Yes, the speed is slow. If we can stop long enough from defending the attacks we are getting out of China on our servers, we will tray to get it located some place faster.

Gerald

9

The Circuitco link download is dead for the 2nd time (no bit’s moved in over an hour).

The DL speed is why I’d love to see the beagelboard.org link updated - it served the 5-8 image up from the amazon S3 servers and they handle the load much, much better.

Dave

10

As I said. We are getting hit hard out of China. They completely wiped out the wiki on Monday. We are working toi fix it.

I am sorry, but it will take time to get this moved over to another location.

Again sorry that is is so slow.

Sorry!

Gerald

11

maybe the cubieboard boys are pissed off the beaglebone blows them out of the water

12

It is BAD. We are being hammered and having to keep replacing the Wikis. So we are looking to move it, butt that will take some time.

Not sure if I want to be as famous of a target as the FBI and the big boys! Funny, all the information is open source and free to get. I guess they don’t know what that means.

Gerald

13

sounds like the perfect use case for a blackhole.