No networking and no video with BeagleV-Ahead Ubuntu 24.04 Xfce rootfs build

BeagleV
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Note: I posted this same question in the Discord a few days ago, but have not received any replies, so I thought I’d try the forum, too.

I installed the rootfs build of Ubuntu Xfce for the BeagleV-Ahead, but there are 2 problems once I login:

(1) There is no useful networking available (no eth0 , no wifi, etc). "ip a " only reveals loopback, dummy0 , and sit0 .
(2) "sudo startxfce4 " fails with this message: /usr/bin/startxfce4: 126: exec: xinit: not found .

Please let me know if you have any suggestions to fix these issues. Here are the steps I followed:

  1. Downloaded Ubuntu 24.04 artifact: xuantie-ubuntu-v6.15.x-ubuntu-2404-riscv64-10730947412.zip
  2. Extracted artifact and installed by the usual fastboot procedure.
  3. Formatted and partitioned microSD card using this technique, stopping after completing step 7.
  4. Downloaded and unpacked this Ubuntu 24.04 Xfce tarball.
  5. Followed these rootfs installation instructions as closely as I could to copy the rootfs to the third partition of a microSD card.
  6. Attempted to boot with the microSD installed in the BVA, but boot halted.
  7. Modified the microSD /etc/fstab as shown below to mount the eMMC boot partition at /boot/firmware/ and to also add debugfs (though I don’t know if debugfs is actually needed).

# UNCONFIGURED FSTAB FOR BASE SYSTEM
/dev/mmcblk0p2 /boot/firmware/ auto defaults 0 2
/dev/mmcblk1p3 / auto errors=remount-ro 0 1
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs mode=755,uid=root,gid=gpio,defaults 0 0

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(post deleted by author)

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for ethernet,
looks like the rootfs does not contain any modules
modprobe: FATAL: Module dwmac_thead not found in directory /lib/modules/6.14.11-20250730+

lsmod does not show any modules loaded
where as the emmc rootfs has 11 modules loaded.

@RobertCNelson
can you verify that the image at
rcn-ee.net/rootfs/ubuntu-riscv64-24.04-xfce
contain the modules in the rootfs?

Thanks

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Those rootfs do not contain the kernel, just a base rootfs to copy a new kernel to…

Regards,

2 Likes
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thanks, that explains the issue of no ethernet or modules found.

1 Like
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Yes, it was the kernel modules issue. The following is also posted on Discord:

The problem was that I did not copy the /lib/modules/6.15.7-20250718+ folder to the rootfs, so there were no kernel modules to load. I copied the folder from my eMMC and rebooted, and now networking works fine.

That happened because I hadn’t run the last step in the microSD readme which extracts ./deploy/5.10.113+-modules.tar.gz. I could not find that file anywhere. My assumption is that the tarball is present if you build the kernel (which I did not do).

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“sudo startxfce4” still fails, but as I understand it, there is no video support in the xuantie-ubuntu repo yet, so it’s not surprising that the command fails.

I’ll wait for video support to go live before pursuing this further.

(the above is also posted on Discord)

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Thanks guys for helping and for confirming that it is intentional that rootfs does not include the kernel modules.

1 Like
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Here’s where all the active riscv development is being posted: https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-riscv/

Regards,

1 Like