oops, messed up 'bootcmd' in u-boot environment

GoogleGroups
1

In an effort to get my BB to boot from SD card, I entered
three commands at the u-boot prompt as per the Step 4
at this URL:

To wit:

setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 console=tty0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait video=omapfb:vram:2M,vram:4M nohz=off'
setenv bootcmd 'mmcinit;fatload mmc 0 84000000 uImage;bootm 84000000'
saveenv

u-boot complained that mmcinit was an invalid command,
so I tried again without that command, viz:

setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 console=tty0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait video=omapfb:vram:2M,vram:4M nohz=off'
setenv bootcmd 'fatload mmc 0 84000000 uImage;bootm 84000000'
saveenv

u-boot accepted this but now any attempt to boot
results in:

** Can’t read from device 0 **

** Unable to use mmc 0:1 for fatload **
Wrong Image Format for bootm command
ERROR: can’t get kernel image!
OMAP3 beagleboard.org #
OMAP3 beagleboard.org #

Now I just happen to have a copy of ‘printenv’ from
when the board was working. In that copy, I see:

…
beaglerev=C4
bootcmd=if mmc rescan ${mmcdev}; then if userbutton; then setenv bootenv user.txt;fi;echo SD/MMC found on device ${mmcdev};if run loadbootenv; then echo Loaded environment from ${bootenv};run importbootenv;fi;if test -n $uenvcmd; then echo Running uenvcmd …;run uenvcmd;fi;if run loaduimage; then run mmcboot;fi;fi;run nandboot;
bootdelay=3
…

… But if I try to enter that original ‘bootcmd’ at the
u-boot prompt, it simply returns with: syntax error.

Suggestions? As it stands, my poor BB is down for
the count.

2

Yeah, those are wrong and dangerous. Do a 'nand erase.chip' to get rid of it.

3

Koen, was that advice given in jest?
I was fool enough to follow your directions.
It now appears my board is thoroughly
bricked; I'm not even getting to the u-boot
prompt. I get this, and nothing more:

40W

I don't mean to waste your time or anyone
else's time on the BB mailing list. If there's
a more appropriate forum for my stupid
newb questions, please let me know and
I'll be gone.

/Rafe

4

That means your sd card isn't formatted correctly.

5

Sorry for my tone in the last post. I put the SD
card back in its slot and pushed USER button
while powering up. Amazingly, the BB booted all
the way into the Angstrom desktop and shows
the kernel to be 3.017. (via uname -r from a
console opened from the desktop.) Yay!

But... I no longer have a shell prompt from
the BB uart channel -- the last thing I see is
"Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel."

So clearly my board isn't bricked. Whew!

I ask with all respect: is there a trustworthy
reference I should consult for setting up the
BB u-boot environment? I've been told more
than once on this mailing list that something
I've found on the web is just plain wrong.

/rafe

6

rafe_b wrote:

Koen, was that advice given in jest?
I was fool enough to follow your directions.
It now appears my board is thoroughly
bricked; I'm not even getting to the u-boot
prompt. I get this, and nothing more:

    40W

you cannot "brick" a beagleboard, by erasing
the NAND content (which very often contains
old and non working code, we spent countless
hours on IRC helping people with issues due
to ancient bootloaders in NAND) you are now
forcing the OMAP3 to boot from sdcard and
that fails.

Setup the card correctly, for which there are
instructions to be found and it will happily
boot from your sd card.