EBC Getting Exercise Support Materials

Embedded Linux Class by Mark A. Yoder

You need to download some reference manuals and set up your Beagle with some extra files. Here's what to do.

Download Reference Manuals

There are two important hardware reference manuals you need to have, the System Reference Manual (SRM) and the Technical Reference Manual (TRM) for the ARM processor. Here's where to find them.

1. Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack has the official reference materials for the Bone. Take a look through it to see what all is there. Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#Hardware_Files takes you to the hardware section. Here you will find a link to a pdf file with the SRM. Download it.
2. Finding the TRM is a bit trickier. Open the SRM you found in the previous step and find what processor it is using. (Hint: page 54) You'll find a link to a TI site that has the manual. Be sure you have the right one, it's some 22M and nearly 5,000 pages long!

Keep both of these in an easy to find place, we'll reference them now and then.

Set Up Git

Many of the following exercises require some extra files on the BeagleBoard. These files are stored in a git repository. We'll learn more about using git later. Here I'll just show you how to get the files.

Run the following to install git. Be sure to replace my name and email address with yours.

host$ sudo apt-get install git
host$ git config --global user.name "Mark A. Yoder"
host$ git config --global user.email Mark.A.Yoder@Rose-Hulman.edu
host$ git config --global color.ui true
host$ git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=300'

Optional: Go to https://github.com/ and set up your own repository. If you are in the USA, go to github's edu request page and ask for a free upgrade.

Now you are ready to use github.

Get the Files

It only takes one command to pull down all the files.

host$ git clone https://github.com/MarkAYoder/BeagleBoard-exercises.git exercises
host$ cd exercises
host$ git checkout -b myBranch

This will take a while since it's getting all the course files, including pdf files of the course PowerPoint. You only have to clone once for each computer. If your Bone is on the Internet you can do the same on it. (See EBC_Setup_Scripts for getting your Bone connected.)

bone$ git clone https://github.com/MarkAYoder/BeagleBoard-exercises.git exercises
bone$ cd exercises
bone$ git checkout -b myBranch

The git checkout lets you make changes to your local file and still be able to access new files that I'll add later. It will be discussed in detail later.

Now take a look at what you got.

host$ ls
host$ cd pptx

P8 and P9 Header Files

The BeagleBone Black has two headers, P8 and P9, that have lots of IO. There are two pdf files that have lots of information about the headers in this git repository. Here's how to get them

host$ git clone https://github.com/derekmolloy/boneDeviceTree.git
host$ cd boneDeviceTree/docs
host$ ls
BeagleboneBlackP8HeaderTable.pdf  BeagleboneBlackP9HeaderTable.pdf

Put these where you can find them again.

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Embedded Linux Class by Mark A. Yoder