Beagleboard + Angstrom Demo image

1. First thing that you need to do is partition the SD Card on your development machine as per the guide given below :
http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/LinuxBootDiskFormat

Once done with partitioning please remove and reinsert the SD Card in the development machine.

2. Now download the following files from http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/ and copy them to the first partition (FAT32) of the SD Card (Please note to first copy the MLO file before anything else, since this file needs to be in the first sector of the partition)

- MLO
- u-boot.bin
- x-load.bin.ift

3. Now donwload the Angstrom-Beagleboard-demo-image-glibc-ipk-2011.1-beagleboard.rootfs.tar.bz2 or whatever is the latest version from http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/. This is the root filesystem for the device. You need to extract it to the second partition (ext3) of the SD Card.

Alternatively you can generate the root filesystem from http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/narcissus/. Select "beagleboard" as machine type, also it is recommended for first timers to choose complexity as "simple" and environment as "console", later on you can select more advance options.

$sudo tar -C /media/second-ext3-partition -jxvf Angstrom-Beagleboard-demo-image-glibc-ipk-2011.1-beagleboard.rootfs.tar.bz2

Note: Please remember to change the path of the second partition (ext3) as per your setup and also the root-fs filename in the above command.


4. Unmount both the partition of the SD Card and insert it into the beagleboard.

$sudo sync
$sudo umount /media/first-partition
$sudo umount /media/second-partition

Beagleboard + Debian

We are going to use the demo image as available on http://rcn-ee.net/

1. Download the debian demo image

$wget http://rcn-ee.net/deb/rootfs/unstable/unstable-minimal-armhf-omap-2011-08-11.tar.xz

2. Verify the image

$md5sum unstable-minimal-armhf-omap-2011-08-11.tar.xz
7020abf7c80e8e75eb54ba214ed9c849  unstable-minimal-armhf-omap-2011-08-11.tar.xz

2. Extract the image

tar xJf unstable-minimal-armhf-omap-2011-08-11.tar.xz
cd unstable-minimal-armhf-omap-2011-08-11

3. Install the image

Beagle Bx :

sudo ./setup_sdcard.sh --mmc /dev/sdX --uboot beagle_bx

Beagle Cx, xM A/B/C :

sudo ./setup_sdcard.sh --mmc /dev/sdX --uboot beagle

Panda :

sudo ./setup_sdcard.sh --mmc /dev/sdX --uboot panda

Note: Replace the /dev/sdX with the sd card device name in the above commands

3. Insert the sd card into the beagleboard and reboot it, you will have debian running on the board.

The login details are :

username : root
password : root

username : debian
password : temppwd

4. To setup the network configuration, login as root and edit the /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf (please note that for Beagleboard xM the network device is eth0)

Link : http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian#Debian_armhf_port