Booting the New Beaglebone Black Board

Dear Sir,

I have the following:

  1. BBB Board : BeagleBone® Black - BeagleBoard and tried several images from Latest Software Images - BeagleBoard but almost 5/6 images among which latest AM335x 11.7 2023-09-02 4GB microSD IoT - BeagleBoard I tried, based on Beagle Bone Black Firmware Source Code - #22 by Ankur as per earlier suggestion and received the error screenshot has been attached.
  2. Testing process I used as below:
    1. Power off the board
    2. Insert the flashed SD Card.
    3. Plug the usb cable at both ends i.e. board and ubuntu 20.04 laptop.
    4. Wait for 2 minutes.
    5. Gertting screenshot attached
    6. Double clicked on mounted BEAGLEBONE (Orange).
    7. Received the error- screenshot below:

Kindly suggest following:

  1. If opting wrong image the which exact Image I should try with BBB Board.
  2. If some booting process is not correct, please suggest what should I correct.
  3. I want to skill up device drivers programming at uboot and kernel with yocto too hence please give references of each three i.e. yocto, uboot, kernel customization. So that I can working three sdcards :
    A. Image from Latest Software Images - BeagleBoard.
    B. Yocto sdcard.
    C. Cutomized uboot and linux kernel sdcard.

Will be great help if i can have early suggestion.

Thanks.

Ankur

supposedly the later versions of Etcher do not work. if you search this site for Etcher you’ll see comments. i use an older version 1.5.70 and it works. @RobertCNelson posted the other day the last version that seemed to work. He recommended using some RPI imager, not sure what it’s called.

I need bit more help, for the activities, I requested in my post.

Do anybody else having some more idea should I use dd or some other software ?

dd command should work, my experience is that it’s not 100% reliable. it does not verify the image after the copy.
this is the rpi one, never used it.
sudo apt install rpi-imager

But rpi-imager is basically for RPI Board, can u share further details to flash BBB Board from same . Although I have worked with rpi-imager but with RPI CM4 Board.

it’s like the Etcher, just a different GUI visually, select your image, sdcard and then click the write button.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-imager-imaging-utility/

https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/

just played with it, for choosing the image, select “use custom” at the bottom of the “choose os” list, then the sdcard, then click write.

The last good version of etcher i’ve ‘trusted’ is v1.18.12: Release v1.18.12 · balena-io/etcher · GitHub but you can use rpi-imager in custom *.img mode

Regards,

Hi Robert,

I uninstall old balena and reinstall new from your given link afterwards I flash new sdcard with am335x-debian-11.7-iot-armhf-2023-09-02-4gb.img.xz image, but again same problem Missing partition table when clicked on START.htm. How should I fix this issue ?

My doubt is img.xz file also, which exact file should I use here ?

Regards.
Ankur

No Belena/etc has nothing to do with the final image… I need to look at am335x-debian-11.7-iot-armhf-2023-09-02-4gb.img.xz and see what we actually ‘export’ over USB-flash emulation…

Yeap, this is the default image that will show up over the usb-flash drive:

Why is ‘etcher’ opening when you double click the “BeagleBone” ‘flash’ drive…

the “usb-flash” drive from the BeagleBone is a small emulated usb-flash image… it’s Read Only…

sde           8:64   1    18M  1 disk 
└─sde1        8:65   1    17M  1 part /media/voodoo/BEAGLEBONE

Regards,

1 Like

If this is the image problem, from which image , i should try ? and how can u kindly give the process to suit with latest…regds.

I think this is the very point: @Ankur your Ubuntu is somewhat misconfigured, open that HTML file with a browser of your choice.

Furthermore, you might want to get into the beaglebone. I don’t remember exactly the login credentials (root / empty pw?), but the usb connection should also offer you a new network connection, which you can use to ssh into the beaglebone: ssh root@192.168.7.1

That’s right this was a bug in etcher… Etcher AppImage registers itself as default text/html mime handler · Issue #3374 · balena-io/etcher · GitHub

so it takes over all html…

another reason to not use it anymore…

Regards,

Hi Robert,

I have following observation :
Usually in bootable oendrive / sdcards there are two partition i.e. root and boot, here image itself is having only one partition which inturn mean no boot partition is available. I feel this is the root of cause here.

If i can have the correct image with boot and root, i think this issue may be sort it out. thats y i asked which exact image…but in that page, i tried approximately 6 image, all having same issue, none is having the boot partition.

Earlier also I tested BBB board i.e. some 2 years back that time Robert you yourself give the image link Beagle Bone Black Firmware Source Code - #22 by Ankur,


yourself given this, but that time it worked well, but now i m not able to find the same image, adjacent i tried but facing this issue.

I feel there are two points if we can identify following :

  1. correct image.
  2. Testing procedure.

Initial test bed setup task will be finished.

Regards.
Ankur

While i’m bringing back the ‘fat’ partition for EU/UK cyberlaws (sysconf.txt), we have not had a ‘boot’ partition for over 10 years on BeagleBone Black / am335x devices images.

The issue why “etcher” complains after you click the “readme.html” is a bug in etcher taking over *.html links on your system.

Next time, right click on the “*.html” file, select “properties” and “open with” back to firefox/etc (or reset to system defaults)…

Regards,

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your reply.

I will try and let you know,in case of any issue.

But I want to know one things from your side also, I want to have following excercise:

  1. I want to customized boot partition by customizing uboot in same card. Can this be possible on BBB ?

  2. Same in kernel too , many aspects of driver performance tuning.

  3. Actually I want to have a bootable sdcard having uboot and kernel which can boot two boards I.e. BBB and say RPI3 B+ , then how this can be possible?

Kindly suggest on above.

Regards.
Ankur

U-boot is dd’ed in the MBR before the partition so go ahead and change/rebuild etc…

Kernel, change what ever you want, just need to rebuild the kernel and install it as a deb package

As for both devices one card… No…