Deploy Ubuntu Beagle Bone Black Image From USB SSD using Powered USB hub

Chris_Clinton · November 4, 2019, 3:12pm

I am attempting to do the following using the Beagle Bone Black Rev C:

Boot the Beagle Bone Black from a USB hard drive.
Run autorun.sh automatically to apply a Ubuntu-18.04.img.gz image file to the Beagle Board Black.
Reboot into Unbuntu after the image has been applied.
Note: My end goal is to have the Beagle Bone Black configure so it can be recovered using a .img.gz file from a USB SSD without using a micro SD card since they can be easily lost. A micro SD card can be used to configure the board initially if necessary.

Problems:

Can someone recommend a way to force u-boot to start USB automatically and attempt to boot from USB SSD every time? Note: I am using a powered USB hub.
BuildRoot executes /etc/init.d/S99autorun and looks for the autorun.sh on a micro SD card. Can someone recommend a way to edit this file so it points to sda1?

I have successfully completed the following using the USB serial connector:

Power on the Beagle Bone Black and press spacebar to abort autoboot.
Manually execute the following commands from uboot to boot from a USB hard drive formatted as FAT32.

usb start
bootpart=0:1
bootdir=/
fatload usb 0:1 ${loadaddr} /uImage
fatload usb 0:1 ${fdtaddr} /am335x-boneblack.dtb
setenv bootargs console=${console} ${optargs}
bootm ${loadaddr} - ${fdtaddr}1. Execute the following commands in autorun.sh file:
echo timer > /sys/class/leds/beaglebone:green:usr0/trigger
dd if=/dev/sda1 bs=16M |gzip -c > /mnt/Ubuntu-18.04.img.gz
sync
echo default-on > /sys/class/leds/beaglebone:green:usr0/trigger- 4. Reboot Beagle Bone Black into Unbuntu.
I downloaded the files for applying the image from the following link:
https://elinux.org/BeagleBone_Black_Extracting_eMMC_contents