Unable to deploy Android image on beaglebone black

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1

Hello,

I am trying to deploy Android image on beaglebone black as mentioned in http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:Android this URL. But after following the steps mentioned, User LED’s are not blinking. So i am not able to deploy the image on beaglebone black. kindly help to sort this issue.
I am using following tools for deployment:

Host machine - 32 bit Windows XP service pack 3
Beaglebone black - rev 00A5 S/N 2014BBBK0661 running BoneScript 0.2.4 at 192.168.7.2
OS on eMMC - Debian
Supply - 5V 2A Adapter
SD card used for Android image deployment - 8GB class 4 SanDisk Micro SD card

2

There is a newer version of Android available. The version referenced on the elinux.org page is JellyBean 4.2.2, and the newer one is KitKat 4.4.4. You can get the newer one at bbbandroid.org.

The easiest way to troubleshoot this sort of thing is to use an FTDI cable to monitor the BBB during boot. This will allow you to capture the debug output from the bootloader and the kernel. Since you are using Windows XP, you won’t be able to natively mount the partitions of your microSD card and look at them to ensure that you wrote the image properly. You could try using an application like Linux Reader to see the partitions on your Win32 machine: http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader.

You need to verify two things:

  1. Did you write the image properly to the microSD card? There can be a few causes for this, including not decompressing the image prior to writing and getting a bad write to the microSD card. If you can see the four partitions (one VFAT, three EXT4), then you probably wrote the image OK.

  2. Is the bootloader at least getting into kernel boot? You’ll need to see the FTDI output to determine this.

Andrew

3

Since you are using Windows XP, you won’t be able to natively mount the partitions of your microSD card and look at them to ensure that you wrote the image properly.

4

Hello,

Thanks for your immediate response. I follow the steps mentioned by you and try to deploy latest image on sd card. Now i am able to boot Android 4.4 Kitkat on my Beagelbone black through Micro SD card. I follow the steps mentioned in http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:Android but unable to deploy image from micro sd card to eMMC. Could you help me to solve this issue?

Is there any other way to deploy android image on eMMC?

Kindly reply as early as possible. Awaiting for your response.

5

You can certainly write the Android image to the eMMC, though I have not set up the scripts to perform the partitioning and writing. You’ll also be limited to the 4GB of the newest BBB’s eMMC. Because the AOSP KitKat includes more software than JellyBean does, I don’t think you’ll be able to fit it onto the 2GB eMMC of earlier BBB revisions without removing some packages. I follow the Rowboat project’s partitioning scheme, which is a bit different than the default partitioning scheme of AOSP. I combine the rootfs and system partitions into one, for example. My suggestion would be to take a look at Chris Simmonds’s fine tutorial to install KitKat to the eMMC and then change the kernel and bootloader to the ones from my image (with a modified uEnv.txt for eMMC booting and disabling SGX). Take a look at his readme here to see how to get things set up: https://github.com/csimmonds/bbb-android-device-files/tree/kk4.4-fastboot

I have not looked into the details of writing Android to the eMMC because I try to package my Android images for ease of prototyping. This means that you should be able to have multiple copies of Android on various microSD cards and be able to swap them quickly and easily to try different things. It also means that you can always mount the microSD card on a desktop Linux system to make any modifications that you want without fighting to get into the eMMC to make your changes. So, I don’t have any plans to add writing to the eMMC in the immediate future.

Andrew