[newbie] First attempt to boot my beagleboard fails

GoogleGroups
1

Hi,

I'd like to boot my Beagleboard for the first time using a dual boot
2GB SD card.
I've followed these steps:

1 - http://wiki.davincidsp.com/index.php?title=MMC_Boot_Format

The card is now so configured:

Platte /dev/sdc: 2007 MByte, 2007498752 Byte

255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 244 Zylinder

Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes

Disk identifier: 0x43bee4a9

   Gerät boot. Anfang Ende Blöcke Id System

/dev/sdc1 * 1 244 1959898+ 83 Linux

2 - http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/LinuxBootDiskFormat

I end with this partition table:

Platte /dev/sdc: 2007 MByte, 2007498752 Byte

255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 244 Zylinder

Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes

Disk identifier: 0x43bee4a9

   Gerät boot. Anfang Ende Blöcke Id System

/dev/sdc1 * 1 50 401593+ c W95 FAT32
(LBA)

/dev/sdc2 51 244 1558305 83 Linux

Then I format it:

mpoullet@lu84-mpoullet:/mnt$ sudo mkfs.msdos -F 32 /dev/sdc1 -n omap3

mkfs.msdos 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)

mpoullet@lu84-mpoullet:/mnt$ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdc2

mke2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)

Dateisystem-Label=

OS-Typ: Linux

Blockgröße=4096 (log=2)

Fragmentgröße=4096 (log=2)

97536 Inodes, 389576 Blöcke

19478 Blöcke (5.00%) reserviert für den Superuser

Erster Datenblock=0

Maximale Dateisystem-Blöcke=402653184

12 Blockgruppen

32768 Blöcke pro Gruppe, 32768 Fragmente pro Gruppe

8128 Inodes pro Gruppe

Superblock-Sicherungskopien gespeichert in den Blöcken:

  32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912

Schreibe Inode-Tabellen: erledigt

Erstelle Journal (8192 Blöcke): erledigt

Schreibe Superblöcke und Dateisystem-Accountinginformationen: erledigt

3 - http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleBootHwSetup

"
Beagle Boad Setup for Booting over MMC /SD Card"

cp ~/MLO_revb /mnt/sd
/MLO
cp ~/flash-uboot.bin /mnt/sd
/u-boot.bin

Then I insert the card and nothing happens: no X-Loader, no U-Boot,
nothing...
The only thing that I see is "4 T" coming on the serial line when I
click on the reset button.

What have I done wrong?

Regards,
Matthieu.

2

mpoullet wrote:

Hi,

I'd like to boot my Beagleboard for the first time using a dual boot
2GB SD card.
I've followed these steps:

1 - http://wiki.davincidsp.com/index.php?title=MMC_Boot_Format

Try to first use only this, i.e. only one (boot FAT) partition on the
complete card and check if you are able to boot from this *before*
creating a dual partition card.

I had some issues creating a dual partition card, too, while the
single FAT partition card always worked for me. After some
experimenting, dual partition card then worked. Unfortunately, I'm not
able to say what the issue was. See issue #18

http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/issues/detail?id=18&can=1

too.

Best regards

Dirk

P.S.: Please let us know if you can find out more what's the issue
with your dual partition system.

3

The Rev B4 boards are shipping with x-load and u-boot programmed into
the flash. Are you seeing the u-boot prompt?

You are seeing the "40T", so that should tell you that MMC/SD is read
at least (without booting the NAND first). Are you reaching that
point by holding the USER button when you press-and-release RESET?

If you don't hold the USER button, does the u-boot prompt show up
again?

4

Hi,

I've followed Dirk ideas:
1 - Reformat both partitions
2 - Delete all partitions
3 - Re-create only one VFAT according to http://wiki.davincidsp.com/index.php?title=MMC_Boot_Format
4 - cp MLO_revb /media/omap3/MLO

Then insert the card, press reset, press user, release reset, release
user, then I got the XLoader.

5 - cp flash-uboot.bin /media/omap3/u-boot.bin

Then I got the U-Boot prompt working.

6 - Reflash the NAND following http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleNANDFlashing

At this point U-Boot starts on powering the Beagle without MMC card
inserted. I think that my board NAND was simply not or not correctly
flashed.

Then I've taken a new fresh MMC and redo the dual partitions setup,
change the u-boot parameters, put a GIT kernel on vfat and the BusyBox
FS with ALSA libraries on the ext3 and it works fine.

So I'm not really sure what exactly the problem was.

Thanks all for helping me,
Matthieu.

5

So I'm not really sure what exactly the problem was.

I had similar problems the first time I tried to set up and boot from
the dual partition.

One thing that seems to be critical is that MLO must be the first file
in the FAT32 partition (#1) and occupy the first sectors. At one
point I deleted all the files in Partition 1, and recopied them and
BeagleBoard still failed to boot from MMC. What finally worked was to
reformat Partition 1 on a Windows machine to delete all files and then
recopy them starting with MLO. It seems that merely deleting files
was not enough. If I were more interested I'd take a closer look at
FAT and see what it's really doing.