I just purchased an X15 and the EMMC memory is rapidly filling up.
Is there a way to boot from an external USB hard drive?
or
Can someone provide more detail directions on switching boot sequence to boot directly from eSATA?
The reference manual is very vague on this. You need to unsolder and resolder resistors to act as jumpers? There are perforated holes in the circuit board where the resistors and jumpers are supposed to be. Are the resistors supplied? Are they on the board? If so where are they? What are their values in Ohms? How are the perforations on the board numbered 1-3 from left to right or right to left? This needs to be much more detailed. Why would you design a board that make switching the boot sequence so difficult? How about just putting in some removable jumpers!
Any detailed help and direction would be appreciated.
Check the schematic Page 13. There is a table showing where the jumpers go to affect the booting sequence. All you have to do is solder a wire into those holes to change the setting. For SATA you just need to install one wire in J3 position 1-2 and remove R444. The lines in read show the default which is set by the resistors onboard.
Check the schematic Page 13. There is a table showing where the jumpers go to affect the booting sequence. All you have to do is solder a wire into those holes to change the setting. For SATA you just need to install one wire in J3 position 1-2 and remove R444. The lines in read show the default which is set by the resistors onboard.
Thank you for the quick reply. Can you review the image attached and confirm this is what I should do? Please refer to highlights in bright green. Any suggestions on unsoldering R444? Looks impossibly microscopic to remove or even unsolder without doing damage to the contiguous components.
Thanks for the reply. Can you tell me what to put into the /boot/uEnv.txt file to do this? Do I install debian/OS image to the USB hard drive and just link to uEnv.txt to that? I would like to just install another image/OS on the USB drive and have the EMMC boot refer to that? Please advise on the best may to proceed.
As to small, there are smaller. You can take a soldering iron and heat one side and use the solder iron to lift the part up off the board. Takes about 30 seconds if you have done it before.
If not, you may want to find someone that has done it before.
I removed the resistor and placed a jumper between J3 1-2 attached a sata drive with a new debian image written via dd and am unable to boot. I’m getting a blank screen and the power LED comes on and the LED between the power connector and the RAM illuminates for just a few seconds and goes off. The status LEDs never illumitate. Am I fogetting something or did I just fry my X15?
I doubt you have fried it, but sounds like the SW is not writing to a register that keeps the board active, something that was put in place due to a silicon bug in the HW. I suspect you do not have the correct UBoot or it is not reading the SATA correctly. It will time out and then shutdown.
Sounds like I may missing something. I’m assuming u-boot would be on the debian image written to the SATA drive via dd? Do I need to install this separetly? The Beagle Bone Black is pretty straight foreward with good documentation. The X15 is not. Are there any more detailed instructions on-line that can take me through the install/boot process via eSATA. The reference manual documentation is not adequate.
All I can do is say what the symptoms you are seeing could be caused by, not setting a register in the PMIC on boot up. I cannot answer as to what the SW is or is not doing in your installation.
Sounds like I may missing something. I'm assuming u-boot would be on the
debian image written to the SATA drive via dd?
Sure, if you "patch" u-boot and "build" it for that situation, it
would work. The current U-Boot binary we ship for the debian images
does NOT support booting from the esata drive. Initially we did
support loading u-boot from the microSD and then scanning the sata for
a secondary rootfs but ran into compatibly problems with crappy sata
drives..
Do I need to install this
separetly? The Beagle Bone Black is pretty straight foreward with good
documentation. The X15 is not. Are there any more detailed instructions
on-line that can take me through the install/boot process via eSATA. The
reference manual documentation is not adequate.
Here's the documentation:
What you "can" do, start with our image on the eMMC, run the
'mv_rootfs_dev_sda.sh" script found under
/opt/scripts/tools/non-mmc-rootfs/
After this you have two options to load from the sata drive:
Option 1: (u-boot, kernel, device tree is loaded from eMMC/microSD,
but rootfs = sata)
Then edit /boot/uEnv.txt and have the uuid=ZYZ point to your /dev/sda1
partition.
Option 2: (u-boot, is loaded from eMMC/microSD, but sata = kernel,
device tree, rootfs)
and the U-Boot loaded over the microSD/eMMC will scan the usb bus and
sata bus.. (usb bus powers the sata bus, so it has to be run first)..
But be forewarned, Option 2 turned out to be a little un-reliable,
especially which cheap sata drives... (things might get better when
we jump from u-boot v2017.01 -> v2017.11 in the coming weeks)
Thank you for the reply. Let me first make sure that I have followed the correct procedure for booting from eSATA. Please review and let me know if I did anything wrong or I missed a step…
R444 resistor removed
Jumper placed on J3 between 1-2 and soldered
X15 debian image downloaded unzipped and image written to SATA via dd.
eSATA cable connected to X15 and SATA drive and attempted to power on and boot.
This procedure failed as I mentioned in the original post. Thre is mention of removing R442-R444 in the reference manual. Was I supposed to remove R442 R443 and R444 and just place the single jumper on J3 between 1 and 2? This is what the reference manual implied and I’m interpretting the reference manual to place jumpers on J4 between 2-3 and on J6 between 2-3. This is how I am interpretting the instructions on the official reference manual. However, I was advised by another post to just remove the R444 resistor and jump J3 between 1-2.
If I made the hardware modifications correctly this leaves me with the issue of a board that does not boot and there is no way of going back to soldering the original resistor (destroyed during removal). No access to eMMC and a dead board. I have not tried burning the same image to an SD card and hope it boots. I can try that next but I have a gut feeling that would fail as well. So, I don’t have a way of implementing your instructions above without a functional eMMC and ability to boot from SATA or potentially inability to boot from SD either?
Will future debian images include the boot software instead of having to install them? This may be my only option.
Any other advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again for your intruction and response.
Thank you for the reply. Let me first make sure that I have followed the
correct procedure for booting from eSATA. Please review and let me know if I
did anything wrong or I missed a step...
1. R444 resistor removed
2. Jumper placed on J3 between 1-2 and soldered
3. X15 debian image downloaded unzipped and image written to SATA via dd.
4. eSATA cable connected to X15 and SATA drive and attempted to power on and
boot.
This procedure failed as I mentioned in the original post. Thre is mention
of removing R442-R444 in the reference manual. Was I supposed to remove R442
R443 and R444 and just place the single jumper on J3 between 1 and 2? This
is what the reference manual implied and I'm interpretting the reference
manual to place jumpers on J4 between 2-3 and on J6 between 2-3. This is how
I am interpretting the instructions on the official reference manual.
However, I was advised by another post to just remove the R444 resistor and
jump J3 between 1-2.
Honestly, you can get a replacement R444 for like a penny (or even 10
for a penny)...
TI doesn't even "fully" support this configuration yet..
If I made the hardware modifications correctly this leaves me with the issue
of a board that does not boot and there is no way of going back to soldering
the original resistor (destroyed during removal). No access to eMMC and a
dead board. I have not tried burning the same image to an SD card and hope
it boots. I can try that next but I have a gut feeling that would fail as
well. So, I don't have a way of implementing your instructions above without
a functional eMMC and ability to boot from SATA or potentially inability to
boot from SD either?
Will future debian images include the boot software instead of having to
install them? This may be my only option.
When v2017.11-rc1 get's tagged, i will re-enable it, so we will see.
One of the issues we ran into with v2017.01 when this option was
enabled, some board/esata combations would "lock-up" on poweron..
Thus the image was broken on more boards then users who used the
esata...
Any other advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again for your
intruction and response.
While the "boot" room, supports loading files from the sata drive at
bootup. It's not fully enabled/tested in U-Boot yet..
Is the R444 a reference to the resistor number or is this actually a surface mount with a resistance of 444 ohms?
I’m not sure I have the dexterity or vision to solder that small of a component back on and I’m not that old.
It sounds like my best bet would be to wait for 2017.11 to be released (I assume this translates to Nov-2017 release?) and dd the image to the SATA drive and try again.
You may have mentioned this already but will the current Debian X15 image work on the board if I dd it to an SD card and try to boot. My current configuration is set to SATA then SD so I am hoping it will just default to the SD for boot once the SATA fails
I am new to the X15. I have an XM since it came out and have done many projects with it. I have recently purchased and X15. My desire is to boot from a SATA drive connected to the ESATA port. I have verified when booted from the MMC card the SATA drive is bootable, can mount and it works well. I imaged the SATA drive with the X15 image, In my case SDA1 is the first partition created. I have removed R444 and placed a jumper I believe what is J3 pins 1-2 and have left the R444 resister solder points/mounts empty. When I try to boot off of the SATA drive the board times out and powers down. The instructions are a little vague on the on instructions with in the user manual. I had a similar problem when the partition was enlarged on the MMC card to 32 gigs, the boot process would timeout. I used the grow_partition.sh script which fixed the time out issue with the MMC card. If I hold the X15 board orienting J3, J4,J6 at the upper right corner hand corner, And join pins 1-2 – most left hole moving right towards the center pin, there orientation is horizontal I believe. The board as I mention powers up and then times out and shuts down. I have tried with the MMC in and out no avail. I have also purchased two boards at a pretty steep price and would like to pass them out to family members with the hopes of purchasing additional boards. But the ESATA/SATA issue is stopping me and I don’t want to return the second board to DIGIKEY. I cant return the first board well because I modified it by removing the resistor.
Is the image I used on the SATA drive incorrect or need an adjustment? Are the PIN orientation as I understand it incorrect.
Held the X15 so that the ON switch is the upper left and jumpers are upper right hand corner.
The drive spins up when I power up the board. So I know the ESATA port is powering up with the board.
1 2 3
Ethernet | | XX0 | J3 Short 1 and 2
Connector> > 000 | J4
000 | J6
Drive Manufacturer is the SEAGATE IRON WOLF.
Image:
bbx15-debian-9.0-lxqt-armhf-2017-07-02-4gb.img.xz,
I have also run ( apt-get -y update && and apt-get -y upgrade )
Can you please help? Is there an alternate way of booting off of the ESATA port
Hello Angel,
Mine is still collecting dust after my failed attempt at booting off the eSATA and making the modifications you have also done. Very disappointing since it was an expensive purchase. I am also awaiting a solution. The directions on booting from eSATA were not very clear.
I read that someone did manage to get the X15 to boot from esata when using a powered esata interface. Apparently the power to the esata connector isn’t available during uboot and hence the need for a powered esata interface. I haven’t tried this myself, but I do recall someone on the ARM Linux forum working on this.
