Awkward booting problem with the BBB

I’m posting after reading similar topics on this Google group, none of the solutions worked. [also my problem is a bit different than the ones before, I have been struggling for about a month to get my BBB working!]

Here is the sequence of problems-failed solutions I have been through with my board :

  1. About a month back I bought a BBB from a local retailer. Worked perfectly for first two days, I was able to ssh, install pyBBIO etc.
  2. The next time I booted (tried to) my board, it failed. Only power button was on, other LED’s didn’t even start blinking. I plugged out the power, tried 5 minutes later, it worked! ssh-ed again and shut it down (sudo shutdown 0)
  3. Next time while booting, I had the same problems, removing powering and starting again did not help.
  4. I downloaded Arch Linux on a microSD card, put it into the BBB powered the board holding the boot button, within half a minute I was able to SSH again! Arch worked.
  5. I wasn’t that happy with the Arch distribution, even though it worked. So I got an Ubuntu image on my microSD. Tried booting the Black the same way holding the boot button, but all that happened was all 4 LED’s were on for ~15 minutes [ I still don’t know why this happens! ] Then the led’s started to blink, I was able to SSH. Sadly this happens every time I boot with Ubuntu (via microSD).
  6. Later I thought I would re-flash Angstrom, and got the emmc-flasher image on my microSD. Booted the board with the boot button pressed. According to the manual the lights should have started flashing, and once the image is written all 4 LED’s should turn on [http://derekmolloy.ie/write-a-new-image-to-the-beaglebone-black/ ]. But for me all the 4 LED’s were switched on from the power on stage, for ~5 min, later they started to blink, but after 10 min or so, all 4 LED’s abruptly went off. (In the instructions it says that all 4 LED’s will go on when writing is complete)
  7. But anyway hoping that writing to the eMMC was complete, I booted the board normally. USR0 switches on first followed by USR1, USR2. Then it freezes here. I’m STUCK!!

What should I do now?
also a couple more questions :

  • What does holding down the boot button do if the img in the SD card in not a emmc-flasher? Does it just boot from the SD card or does it also get written to emmc?
  • Is there some setting by which I can boot via the SD card without having to press the boot button every time and also not having to burn the image on the emmc?

regds,
Deepak

I'm posting after reading similar topics on this Google group, none of the
solutions worked. [also my problem is a bit different than the ones before,
I have been struggling for about a month to get my BBB working!]

Here is the sequence of problems-failed solutions I have been through with
my board :
1. About a month back I bought a BBB from a local retailer. Worked perfectly
for first two days, I was able to ssh, install pyBBIO etc.
2. The next time I booted (tried to) my board, it failed. Only power button
was on, other LED's didn't even start blinking. I plugged out the power,
tried 5 minutes later, it worked! ssh-ed again and shut it down (sudo
shutdown 0)
3. Next time while booting, I had the same problems, removing powering and
starting again did not help.
4. I downloaded Arch Linux on a microSD card, put it into the BBB powered
the board holding the boot button, within half a minute I was able to SSH
again! Arch worked.
5. I wasn't that happy with the Arch distribution, even though it worked. So
I got an Ubuntu image on my microSD. Tried booting the Black the same way
holding the boot button, but all that happened was all 4 LED's were on for
~15 minutes [ I still don't know why this happens! ] Then the led's started
to blink, I was able to SSH. Sadly this happens every time I boot with
Ubuntu (via microSD).
6. Later I thought I would re-flash Angstrom, and got the emmc-flasher image
on my microSD. Booted the board with the boot button pressed. According to
the manual the lights should have started flashing, and once the image is
written all 4 LED's should turn on
[Writing a new Image to the Beaglebone Black | derekmolloy.ie ]. But for
me all the 4 LED's were switched on from the power on stage, for ~5 min,
later they started to blink, but after 10 min or so, all 4 LED's abruptly
went off. (In the instructions it says that all 4 LED's will go on when
writing is complete)
7. But anyway hoping that writing to the eMMC was complete, I booted the
board normally. USR0 switches on first followed by USR1, USR2. Then it
freezes here. I'm STUCK!!

You could grab a usb-serial adapter and find out..

What should I do now?
also a couple more questions :
- What does holding down the boot button do if the img in the SD card in not
a emmc-flasher? Does it just boot from the SD card or does it also get
written to emmc?

Holding the button guarntees it'll try to load MLO/u-boot.img from the
SD card first.

- Is there some setting by which I can boot via the SD card without having
to press the boot button every time and also not having to burn the image on
the emmc?

A proper uEnv.txt in your sd card will guarntee it.. Otherwise just
"dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1" bootloader gone from eMMC...

Regards,

Hey!
I got a USB to serial adapter and tried getting text on screen, but I get random symbols - like brackets, @, # and <?>.
I don’t get whats wrong ( I followed this site http://nullr0ute.com/2013/10/serial-console-options-on-the-beagle-bone-black/ )

Also how would modifying the uEnv.txt on the SD card help? What will make the BBB look for the SD card in the first place (Given that I’m not pressing the boot button)

regds,
Deepak

Hi,

maybe your terminal setting are wrong (baudrate, start/stop bit, line termination
character, local echo) ?

Best regards,
mcc

deepak karki <deepak6k@gmail.com> [14-02-02 16:24]:

I checked with the uEnv.txt , it seems to be correct.

Yes, I crosschecked, There is something wrong with my “screen” setting. How can I figure what is wrong?

Just to check, whether your hardware setup is ok...

Use minicom as terminal program. It is a ncurses applikation and
has a menu to set all kinds of parameters.
I use this often for that purposes...
Good luck! :slight_smile:

deepak karki <deepak6k@gmail.com> [14-02-02 16:56]: