BeagleBoardDebian

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This page is about running a (ARM EABI) Debian distribution at BeagleBoard. BeagleBoard will boot the (ARM EABI) Debian distribution from SD card. To prepare the SD card and install (ARM EABI) Debian on it, QEMU on host PC will be used, following Aurélien Jarno's excellent Debian on an emulated ARM machine howto.

Note: Debian armel deb's are compiled for armv4t, this allows debian to support a larger number of arm devices with a single port, at only the sacrifice of speed. For a more optimized and faster system checkout: Mojo Project (armv5el & armv6el-vfp editions). The OMAP3530 on the Beagle Board is armv7-a. See Handhelds Mojo (ARM) at BeagleBoard (formerly known as Ubuntu (ARM)) page, too.

QEMU

Install QEMU on your host PC. This assumes that your host PC is running Debian as well. If not, install QEMU the way your host PC distribution uses.

apt-get install qemu

Note: If your debian armel image crashes while fscking the partition, rebuild qemu from trunk.

Format SD Card

You will need a 1GB SD card or greater.

Standard System : ~455MB
+ Desktop environment (GNOME) : ~2.9GB

Starting with an empty SD card and using gparted, create:

50 MiB Primary Partition, fat32
Leave remaining space for the Debian-Installer

Preparation

Create a working directory to keep your files organized.

mkdir debian-armel
cd debian-armel/
wget ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-armel/current/images/versatile/netboot/initrd.gz
wget ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-armel/current/images/versatile/netboot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-1-versatile

Install Debian

Quick Note: Debian Lenny is undergoing Beta/RC testing so these debian installers are currently way out of date, so it will tell you their are unavailable kernel modules, just ignore the question and continue. These modules will be provided later, with the provided linux-image deb.

To install (ARM EABI) Debian inside QEMU:

sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.24-1-versatile -initrd initrd.gz -m 256 -hda /dev/sdX -append "root=/dev/ram mem=256M"

Note: root/sudo access is required to access /dev/sde directly & verify /dev/sdX with fdisk -l

Partition disks, default settings should work for most: Guided - use the largest continuous free space

Beagleboarddebian-partitiondisk.png

Running Debian

sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.24-1-versatile -m 256 -hda /dev/sde -append "root=/dev/sda2 mem=256M"

Note: Time will be incorrect.

sudo apt-get install ntpdate
ntpdate pool.ntp.org

Install default deb packages for linux-image & linux-headers.

Stable 2.6.26
wget http://www.rcn-ee.com/deb/lenny/2.6.26-lenny-oer64/linux-image-2.6.26-lenny-oer64_oer64_armel.deb
wget http://www.rcn-ee.com/deb/lenny/2.6.26-lenny-oer64/linux-headers-2.6.26-lenny-oer64_oer64_armel.deb
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Testing 2.6.27
wget http://www.rcn-ee.com/deb/lenny/v2.6.27-2a3408b-oer1/linux-image-2.6.27-oer1_1.0lenny_armel.deb

Note: It's easier to download these straight to the sd card after you've mounted the SD card to copy uImage to the FAT partition.

Linux Kernel Preparation

Install uboot-mkimage utility

sudo apt-get install uboot-mkimage 

Remount SD card, Ubuntu remounts SD card like this:

/media/disk/ <fat32>
/media/disk-1/ <ext3>

Download Kernel-Image

cd /media/disk-1/home/<user>/ 
wget http://www.rcn-ee.com/deb/lenny/v2.6.27-2a3408b-oer1/linux-image-2.6.27-oer1_1.0lenny_armel.deb

Extract linux-image's vmlinuz-*

dpkg -x linux-image* ./temp

Build uboot compatiable image and copy to /media/disk/ <fat32 boot partition>

mkimage -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x80008000 -e 0x80008000 -n "Linux" -d ./temp/boot/vmlinuz-*  /media/disk/uImage

Clean up

rm -rfd temp

Sync, umount Partitions and Install sd card in beagleboard

Beagleboard

Insert SD Card and power up Beagleboard.

Boot

Using a terminal program, stop u-boot and add these commands:

setenv bootcmd 'mmcinit; fatload mmc 0:1 0x80300000 uImage; bootm 0x80300000'
setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 console=tty0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootdelay=2 rootfstype=ext3 ro video=omapfb:vram:2M,vram:4M:1280x720@60,vxres=1280,vyres=720'
saveenv
boot
video=omapfb:vram:2M,vram:4M,mode:1280x720@60,vxres=1280,vyres=720
Modes:
640x480@60""800x600@60""1024x768@60""1280x720@60"480p60""576p50""720p50""720p60""1080p24""1080p25""1080p30",

The Beagleboard will reboot 3-4 times while the ext3 filesystem is repaired. (may have to remove power etc)

Upgrading u-boot (2.6.27's and later)

Using gparted, create a new 50MB Primary fat32 Parition on blank SD card.

wget http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/u-boot.bin
cp u-boot.bin /media/disk

uboot

mmcinit
fatload mmc 0 0x80200000 u-boot.bin
nand unlock
nand ecc sw
nand erase 80000 160000
nand write.i 0x80200000 80000 160000
reset

Debian on Beagleboard

Debian on BeagleBoard uses the following configuration:

  • Console log = Serial Terminal
  • User Console = HDMI port + usb (keyboard, mouse, etc)

If you want to log in with the serial port, you will have to add to /etc/inittab

 S:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 115200 ttyS2

And if you want to log in as root on the serial port, add ttyS2 to /etc/securetty.

Xorg

Modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device" 
	Option		"UseFBDev"		"true"
	Driver		"fbdev"
EndSection

Beagleboarddebian-GNOME.jpg

Note: 'fbdev' is normally *slow* since it completely relies on the system cpu to update the framebuffer. Once the video processing core's driver is released this will no longer be an issue.

Current Issues

  1. Swap disabled: change /dev/hda5 -> /dev/mmcblk0p5 in /etc/fstab (artifact of qemu install to /dev/hdaX)
  2. RTC seems to be not enabled: use ntpdate when ethernet works, or issue date MMDDHHMMYYYY

Building a Native Debian Kernel with QEMU

Install Dependencies

apt-get install git-core kernel-package fakeroot build-essential curl libncurses-dev

u-boot

There is a debian package for this now:

apt-get install uboot-mkimage 

If you must build from upstream:

wget -nc http://beagleboard.googlecode.com/files/u-boot_beagle_revb.tar.gz
tar -xf u-boot_beagle_revb.tar.gz
cd u-boot/
make CROSS_COMPILE= distclean
make CROSS_COMPILE= omap3530beagle_config
make CROSS_COMPILE= tools

Add /tools/ to $PATH

PATH=/home/<user>/u-boot/tools:"${PATH}"

Linux Kernel

git clone git://git2.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tmlind/linux-omap-2.6.git
cd linux-omap-2.6/
git checkout -b beagle <tag>

Patch Kernel as you see fit

patch -p1 < ../patches/*.patch

Setup Kernel .config

make CROSS_COMPILE= distclean
make CROSS_COMPILE= omap3_beagle_defconfig

Create Debian linux-image* & linux-headers* Package

make-kpkg --cross_compile - clean
CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=1 fakeroot make-kpkg --cross_compile - --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers

Create U-boot uImage

make CROSS_COMPILE= uImage

Issues:

Debian's gcc-4.3 will fail to build a bootable uImage, so use gcc-4.2 as gcc thru 'update-alternatives'

deb builder

Auto builds for lenny, sid, and mojo's; linux-image and linux-headers's in appropriate schroot's.

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