Error with SPI and universal-cape

Hi everyone,

obviously it is a little newbie-problem, but after hours of searching and trying I didnt get it to work.

root@beaglebone:~# uname -a
Linux beaglebone 3.8.13-bone70 #1 SMP Fri Jan 23 02:15:42 UTC 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

I have a little project, and I would like to run a dogm-204a-display with the BBB over SPI and python. When I run the following line…

root@beaglebone:~# config-pin -f owncape2.bbio
overlaycape-universaln
Invalid mode: default
root@beaglebone:~# cat /sys/devices/bone_capemgr.*/slots
0: 54:PF—
1: 55:PF—
2: 56:PF—
3: 57:PF—
4: ff:P-O-L Bone-LT-eMMC-2G,00A0,Texas Instrument,BB-BONE-EMMC-2G
5: ff:P-O-- Bone-Black-HDMI,00A0,Texas Instrument,BB-BONELT-HDMI
6: ff:P-O-- Bone-Black-HDMIN,00A0,Texas Instrument,BB-BONELT-HDMIN
7: ff:P-O-L Override Board Name,00A0,Override Manuf,cape-universaln

everything runs without an error. Then I’m trying to run spidev in python, and get the following error:

root@beaglebone:~# python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Jun 21 2016, 21:00:47)
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux2
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.

from bbio import*
PyBBIO initialized

SPI1.begin()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in
File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/bbio/platform/beaglebone/spi.py”, line 38, in begin
self.open()
File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/bbio/platform/beaglebone/spi.py”, line 18, in open
cape_manager.load(overlay, auto_unload=False)
File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/bbio/platform/beaglebone/cape_manager.py”, line 27, in load
f.write(overlay)
IOError: [Errno 17] File exists

The universal overlay already loads the SPI driver, but apparently
your PyBBIO is trying to load it's own overlay as well. You can
either disable the PyBBIO overlay loading and let the SPI get setup by
the universal overly, or craft a custom device tree for whatever
specific pins your cape needs that doesn't overlap with the SPI pins.