Hi Anirudh,

Since the Beaglebone black was switched from Angstrom to Debian I dont
know, whether Debian now runs with a fixed IP-adress or uses dhcp...
That is: You need to figure that out.
ok...lets hack your beaglebone.
You need: Duck Tape, a Swiss Army knife, some chewing gum...
...wrong movie......I am joking, sorry... 8)
You need: Ethernet cables (CAT5), a Linux PC which can talk
to the internet, your beaglebone and a
switch/hub.
Connect your PC to the switch/hub. Connect your beaglebone to
the switch, connect the LAN cable, which ends in your DSL modem
with the hub/switch. Power the hub/switch. Power the PC. Wait
until ypu can login (and do that
then power your beaglebone
and wait until it seems to be up.
Install nmap on your linux box.
Call
ifconfig
. You will see something like this:
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.XXX.XXX netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.XXX.XXX
ether XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets nnnnnn bytes nnnnnnnnnn (nnn nnn)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets nnnnnn bytes nnnnnnnn (nnnn nnn)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
device interrupt 36
lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
loop txqueuelen 0 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 1144 bytes 1941206 (1.8 MiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 1144 bytes 1941206 (1.8 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
(the counts of package will surely differ...)
"lo" is your loopback device, which is not needed here.
eth0 (or eth1) is your ethernet interface.
The "X"s after the word "inet" is the IP-adress of your Linux box.
inet XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
often they start with 192.168..., which indicates a private network.
There are certain IP-address ranges which are for private use only,
which means: There will be no server outside in the wild, wild
internet, which have an IP-address of these ranges.
OK...now you have to scan you network. Be sure, nothing else is
connected to your Linux box (LAN-wise), since accidentally
scanning networks in the wild wild internet may...hrrrrmmm...
irritate some people... 
Assuming the IP-address of your Linux box is
192.168.100.200
you need to call
nmap -v -sn 169.168.100.1-255
. For this you need to be root...
Nmap will then scan for hosts in the range of
169.168.100.1.........169.168.100.255
and report any host it will find.
It will report your Linux box...and with some luck the IP-address
of your beaglebone.
If a host is found it looks like:
Nmap scan report for ariettaa (192.168.10.10)
Host is up (0.00067s latency).
This is for my Arietta G25 (also a small emebedded linux
system 5.5cmx2.5cm...
The given IP-adress is the one you are looking for. Please
dont confuse this with the IP-adress reported for your Linux PC...
This means:
You Beaglebone is up and running and (somehow) ready to accept a
connection.
If not already done:
Install openssh and follow the configuration instructions. Create
a private and public key.
Start sshd then.
Now connect to you beaglebone this way:
ssh root@<IP-adsress of your beaglebone>
If asked for a passwort, enter nothing (the default
password is blank according to this:
http://beagleboard.org/getting-started
means: hit <return>
Thats it...you have logged into your beaglebone.
BUT:
If NO other running host is reported by nmap things are becoming
a little more complicated.
Two possibilities:
Your beaglebone is dead, bricked or what else. You need a RMA
and send it back for repair.
OR:
It uses a fixed IP-address which does not fit into the address
range of your PC.
You need either a second ethernet card or a Linux PC...ha! Wait...
you _*HAVE*_ a Linux PC...
According to this:
http://beagleboard.org/getting-started
the IP-address of your Beaglebone board is 192.168.7.2 (but I dont
know, whether this information is dated before or after the switch
from Angstrom to Debian...)
First you need a second ethernet interface ... and since this is
Linux, you dont need a second ethernet card for this to work.
Assuming, your first ethernet interface (as reported previously by
ifconfig) is eth0 , then as root enter
ifconfig eth0:2 192.168.7.10
which gives your PC another IP address...but one of the range of your
beaglebone.
Then try to ping your beaglebone with
ping 192.168.7.2
. If it answers, try to login via ssh as described above, but use
192.168.7.2 instead.
And if this doesn't help, try to scan the address range with
nmap and the address range of 192.168.7.1-255. Again, your
Linux PC will also be reported.
If this will also fail...my storage of ideas is emptied...
You need a sdcard to boot from then...
HTH!
Good luck! 8)
Best
Meino
Anirudh Jonnadula <anirudh985@gmail.com> [14-12-16 19:08]: