Backup BBB image

General Discussion
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1

Hi,

I flashed an official image on my beaglebone black on the emmc. Then i made some changes to it as well as copied a few scripts on to it. I want to create a backup of this modified emmc as an image file so that I can flash the same on other bbb devices and make clones. So far I have tried using dd command for the same. I mounted micro sd card and used dd command to create the .img file. Then I created a bootable microsd card of this image. However this fails to flash the emmc of bbb. I also tried booting bbb from microsd and then creating .img file of emmc. This also fails when I try to flash this image from microsd card.

Is it even possible to do this?

2

A direct dd of the eMMC and microSD should atleast load up something over usart, at a minimal just fixing up fstab is all that is required…

3

Thanks a lot for the quick reply.

I’m a beginner at embedded. Could you please give me a couple of pointers as to how I can make changes to the fstab?

4

On the AM335x BeagleBone Black:

microSD → mmcblk0
eMMC → mmcblk1

So normally that’s all you need to change in etc/fstab…

But feel free to share any boot logs if you continue to have issues… Usually the biggest problem, is the eMMC being a different version of u-boot.. So you’ll grab and eMMC image from Board (A), copy it to the microSD and then wonder why Board (B) has issues, usually it’s the u-boot in Board (B)'s eMMC messing with you..

Essentially if you want to clone image from A to B, make sure eMMC is blank in Board B…

Regards,

5

My question would be did you copy the partition, or the full sd card? E.g

/dev/mmcblk1

or

/dev/mmcblk1p1

You’ll need the whole sd card, in particular the header before the first partition contains the boot loader - I would guess uboot.

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