Some issue with Angstrom

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 23, 2012, 10:23am

Hello,
I was able to boot an sd-card with an Angstrom image built with Narcissus (latest kernel).
While booting I see a lot of errors on the serial output, like these:

Configuring policykit.
addgroup: Only root may add a group to the system.
adduser: Only root may add a user or group to the system.
chown: /etc/polkit-1/localauthority: Operation not permitted
chown: /var/lib/polkit-1: Operation not permitted
chown: /usr/libexec/polkit-agent-helper-1: Operation not permitted
chown: /usr/bin/pkexec: Operation not permitted
Configuring hal.
addgroup: Only root may add a group to the system.
adduser: Only root may add a user or group to the system.
chown: /var/volatile/cache: Operation not permitted
/etc/init.d/populate-volatile.sh: eval: line 1: can’t create /dev/tty0: Permissi
on denied
chown: /var/volatile/lock: Operation not permitted
/etc/init.d/populate-volatile.sh: eval: line 1: can’t create /dev/tty0: Permissi
on denied
chown: /var/volatile/log: Operation not permitted
/etc/init.d/populate-volatile.sh: eval: line 1: can’t create /dev/tty0: Permissi
on denied
chown: /var/volatile/run: Operation not permitted
/etc/init.d/populate-volatile.sh: eval: line 1: can’t create /dev/tty0: Permissi
on denied
chown: /var/volatile/tmp: Operation not permitted
/etc/init.d/populate-volatile.sh: eval: line 1: can’t create /dev/tty0: Permissi
on denied
chown: /var/lock/subsys: Operation not permitted
/etc/init.d/populate-volatile.sh: eval: line 1: can’t create /dev/tty0: Permissi
on denied
chown: /var/log/wtmp: Operation not permitted
/etc/init.d/populate-volatile.sh: eval: line 1: can’t create /dev/tty0: Permissi
on denied

and:

Starting syslogd/klogd: done

Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon: avahi-daemon
Timeout reached while wating for return value
*[fail]t receive return value from daemon process.
open /dev/fb0: Permission denied
open /dev/fb0: Permission denied
/usr/bin/cputype: line 11: can’t open /proc/cpuinfo: no such file
/usr/bin/cputype: line 11: can’t open /proc/cpuinfo: no such file
Error at line 73, file devmem2.c (13) [Permission denied]
expr: syntax error

No SGX hardware, not starting PVR

The screen remains black with the BB logo only.
The image I built hasn’t the X server because I’m going to use the frame-buffer.

I don’t understand why I get those errors. I’ve just followed the instructions.
Thanks again
Marco

mentorel · July 23, 2012, 11:03am

what board??

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 23, 2012, 11:04am

BeagleBoard XM rev. C

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 23, 2012, 1:16pm

I made a lot of other trials with no success
The last two: from http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/ I downloaded the latest files:

[Angstrom-systemd-image-eglibc-ipk-v2012.05-beagleboard.rootfs.tar.bz2](http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/Angstrom-systemd-image-eglibc-ipk-v2012.05-beagleboard.rootfs.tar.bz2) 
[MLO-beagleboard-2011.12](http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/MLO-beagleboard-2011.12) 
[modules-3.0.17+-r115a-beagleboard.tgz](http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/modules-3.0.17+-r115a-beagleboard.tgz) 
[u-boot-beagleboard-2011.12-r4.img](http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/u-boot-beagleboard-2011.12-r4.img) 
[uImage-3.0.17-r115c-beagleboard-20120125152700.bin](http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/uImage-3.0.17-r115c-beagleboard-20120125152700.bin) 

With these files Angstrom boots correctly but the keyboard is not powered (even if it's recognized). Several users reported this and it seems related to the differences among bb versions.
I read there are some patches, but also that building from Narcissus leads to avoid them.

Well, once more time I restart the whole procedure from the beginning and setup the sd-card with a fresh image from Narcissus.
I copied to the first partition the three files provided in the boot directory (MLO for first, I know) but I got the error u-boot.bin not found.
Of course... the file is called u-boot.img. Renaming it leads to:

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.4.4ss (Mar  8 2011 - 10:21:21)                     
Beagle xM                                                                       
Reading boot sector                                                             
Loading u-boot.bin from mmc 

And nothing else.

I'm trying to get my bb_xm working since several days.
I followed the guides but I still have some issues.
Furthermore, each guide suggest different files or different way to do the same thing. For a newbie it's quite confusing!

Please, may you tell me **exactly** which files I should download in order to install a recent version of Angstrom (kernel 3.x) with no X server?

Thanks
Marco

mentorel · July 23, 2012, 1:40pm

you need to copy to a SD card: MLO and u-boot.img (not .bin)
uImage goes to /boot directory at ext3 partition

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 23, 2012, 1:59pm

you need to copy to a SD card: MLO and u-boot.img (not .bin)
uImage goes to /boot directory at ext3 partition

I’m sorry, but I’m more confused now. Here I read:

http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard#MMC.2FSD_boot

U-Boot booting

If your MMC/SD card formatting is correct and you put MLO, u-boot.bin and uImage on the card you should get a u-boot prompt after booting beagle board. E.g. (output from terminal program with 115200 8N1):

And here:

Setup the boot partition:

There are only three files that are mandatory for boot partition. The following lines will extract the files from the download build and copy those to the boot partition on the sd-card.
# extract the files to the ./boot directory
tar --wildcards -xjvf [YOUR-DOWNLOAD-FILE].tar.bz2 ./boot/*

# copy the files to sc-card boot partition.
cp boot/MLO-* /media/boot/MLO
cp boot/uImage-* /media/boot/uImage
cp boot/u-boot-*.bin /media/boot/u-boot.bin
sync

Anyway, if I copy only the MLO and u-boot.img I get this on the serial output:

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.4.4ss (Mar 8 2011 - 10:21:21)
Beagle xM
Reading boot sector
u-boot.bin not found or blank nand contents - attempting serial boot . . .

Ready for binary (kermit) download to 0x80008000 at 115200 bps…

Thank you for your patience!

mentorel · July 23, 2012, 4:27pm

You use ancient MLO and ancient u-boot

Why don't you dd image from CircuitCo? It is the only available, alive
and stable image for the Beagleboard. Other stuff is buggy and
unstable. Tested on myself

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 24, 2012, 6:35am

I didn't know CircuitCo provides Angstrom images!
In the guides is not mentioned at all.
I think the official doc should be updated to avoid to spend a lot of time with the "other stuff".

In the next weekend I'll try to dd the image from CircuitCo.

Thanks

Koen_Kooi · July 24, 2012, 7:04am

Those are the exact same images as on the angstrom website, in case anyone is wondering.

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 24, 2012, 7:06am

So they contains the same "ancient" MLO and u-boot files?

Koen_Kooi · July 24, 2012, 7:35am

I don't know what you're talking about. The images are the exact same, so they will both have the same MLO and u-boot.

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 24, 2012, 7:39am

Please, read the answer of Maxim Podbereznyy in this thread:

"You use ancient MLO and ancient u-boot

Why don't you dd image from CircuitCo? It is the only available, alive
and stable image for the Beagleboard. Other stuff is buggy and
unstable. Tested on myself"

You both are saying opposite things!

Koen_Kooi · July 24, 2012, 7:55am

And one of us is both a circuitco employee and maintainer of the angstrom distribution. You take your pick on who to believe.

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 24, 2012, 7:57am

Good!
So might you help me about my difficulties, please?

johnny_zed · July 26, 2012, 1:18am

I’m in the same boat… not sure exactly which MLO uboot and ubin to use…
my post SD card problems has my results.
really wish there was a clear outline of which were the right files for each board…

RobertCNelson · July 26, 2012, 2:21am

Thing is, all these guides on the u-boot/MLO are outdated anyway, as
mainline u-boot pretty much fully supports the BeagleBoard and
BeagleBoard xM out of the box... The only thing you need to do is
provide a proper uEnv.txt file to boot whatever you want to boot..

Regards,

Koen_Kooi · July 26, 2012, 6:25am

It's really easy. All the files you need are in the same directory: http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/

Badri_Narayanan · July 26, 2012, 7:24am

hi fellas… why dont you use narcissus for building images? after you build, you will have to go to boot directory and there you will find MLO.hope this helps. thats how I tested my beagleboard xm.Regards.

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 26, 2012, 11:43am

@Koen, Badri
please read the whole thread.
With the Narcissus image I got the errors reported in the first post.

By the way, some friends (lisarden for example) say I need u-boot.img but Narcissus provides u-boot.bin… why?

Do not be angry, but I think there is too much confusion in the documentation to use beagleboard for production.
I’m new to bb, but I use embedded boards since several years and I never had a lot of troubles like now!

@Robert,
the guides don’t say I must create the uEnv.txt. Ok, you said the guides are not updated - I know.
But where the newbye could find an updated and reliable document that clearly explain how-what-why about beagleboard?

Thanks
Marco

Marco_Trapanese1 · July 26, 2012, 3:40pm

And one of us is both a circuitco employee and maintainer of the angstrom distribution.

In the meanwhile we all are waiting to understand better all the stuff, I tried to use your image files.
At http://www.circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=Circuitco_Support_Wiki I read:

To initialize your card under Linux, you can do the following:

1.wget http://circuitco.com/support/files/BeagleboardxM/xMc_3_30.zip or wget http://circuitco.com/support/files/BeagleboardxM/xMc_4_25.zip
2.zcat BeagleboardxM/xMc_4_25.zip | dd of=/dev/your/sd/card bs=8225280

zcat fails with the following error:

$ zcat xMc_4_25.zip
gzip: xMc_4_25.zip: first entry not deflated or stored -- use unzip

The command I have to type is:

$ unzip -p xMc_4_25.zip | dd=of/dev/sdc bs=8225280

Does it happen only to me or also this guide should be updated?

Furthermore, you said the images hosted on your website are the same of http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/.
I trust you because you said you are both a circuitco employee and maintainer of the angstrom distribution. But I can't understand something:

the sd-card created from xMc_4_25.zip contains:

MLO, apr 19 2011, 22232 bytes
U-BOOT.BIN, apr 19 2011, 284788 bytes
uEnv.txt, apr 19 2011, 134 bytes
UIMAGE, apr 19 2011, 3194256 bytes

while in the angstrom-distribution there are (in the root folder):

MLO-beagleboard-2011.12, gen 29 2012, 43048 bytes (is different)
u-boot.beagleboard-2011.12-r4.img, gen 29 2012, 329056 bytes (is different)
uEnv.txt is missing
Uimage-3.0.17-r115c-beagleboard-20120125152700.bin, gen 25 2012, 3373136 bytes (is different)

Then there are several other images (cloud9 IDE, TI, systemd: btw, where are described the differences among them?) but I cannot find the same files reported above.

Please, may you clarify also this point? Better, which are the files at angstrom-distribution that match the ones at your website?

Thank you very much

Marco