Latest Jessie: cannot write to disk, cannot connect Eth over USB, could before

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

Two glaring issues have occurred seemingly without cause and neither of which was present a few hours ago. The issues are only present when booting from an SD card with the latest Jessie/Debian 8.4 image (Linux beaglebone 4.4.9-ti-r25 #1 SMP Thu May 5 23:08:13 UTC 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux).

1. I am unable to write to disk. E.g. vi: "E297: Write error in swap file", "E514: Write error (file system full?)"

2. I am unable to connect over Ethernet-over-USB. On a host machine, I have

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 3:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :

   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Linux USB Ethernet/RNDIS Gadget #2

   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : A0-F6-FD-3C-F7-FF

   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Cannot ping. The USB disk still shows up as USB storage on the host, I can access it without problems.

I still have the TTY: a keyboard and output to the BB-View cape with LCD4 attached, these function.

When I boot from the eMMC with Wheezy/Debian 7.9, neither of the issues is present.

Would anyone have a suggestion on how I should debug this? Thanks!

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

Seems that I figured it out, for others' reference. The SD card with the Jessie image that I was running off was 4 GB and filled up quickly (with what? logfiles? errorlogs?), so the disk indeed became full.

[Robert Nelson]

On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 3:17 PM, Vladimir Gusiatnikov
<tundra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Seems that I figured it out, for others' reference. The SD card with the
> Jessie image that I was running off was 4 GB and filled up quickly (with
> what? logfiles? errorlogs?), so the disk indeed became full.

Did you expand the image after booting?

http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#Expanding_File_System_Partition_On_A_microSD

Regards,

--
Robert Nelson
https://rcn-ee.com/

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

I didn't expand the partition since it seemed that wouldn't accomplish anything; the image was a 4 GB image obtained from https://debian.beagleboard.org/images/bone-debian-8.4-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-13-4gb.img.xz that was actually about 3.6 GB in uncompressed size. The partition on the 4 GB SD card was slightly bigger than that. Would expanding the partition have materially changed anything?

[William Hermans]

I didn't expand the partition since it seemed that wouldn't accomplish anything; the image was a 4 GB image obtained from https://debian.beagleboard.org/images/bone-debian-8.4-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-13-4gb.img.xz that was actually about 3.6 GB in uncompressed size. The partition on the 4 GB SD card was slightly bigger than that. Would expanding the partition have materially changed anything?

If your sdcard was larger than 4G of course it would have.

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[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

So I attempted to expand the partition on my 4 GB SD card (yes these still exist) according to http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#Expanding_File_System_Partition_On_A_microSD, and got the following results. I didn't capture the output and the operation seems to have been irreversible, so sorry about the inexact report. This was while running Linux beaglebone 3.8.13-bone79 #1 SMP Tue Oct 13 20:44:55 UTC 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux from the eMMC.

Git pull didn't work because the board is not directly connected to the Internet because I am in a corporate setting and to get a hobbyist board wired to the corporate network would require multiple levels of slow approval. 

The grow_partition.sh script reported that it wrote a new partition, but failed to verify it, or something similar. Again, sorry for the lack of captured output.

After grow_partition.sh ran, Beaglebone's df reported a 7.2 GB drive with 1.9 GB used and 5.0 GB free. On this 4 GB card. Yes, I rubbed my eyes.

When I then inserted this card into an Ubuntu laptop, I got the same report out of df: 7281280 1K blocks total, 1934304 used, 4999784 available on the rootfs partition.

When I attempt to dd another image to this SD card, dd fails after 780 MB is written. When I try to erase the partitions with cfdisk and create a new one, cfdisk offers a maximum of 780 MB.

To my untrained eye it looks like grow_partition.sh has rendered this SD card partly inoperable.

[William Hermans]

What does lsblk report for that scard ?

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[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

On the Ubuntu machine:

$ lsblk /dev/sdb

lsblk: /dev/sdb: not a block device

$ lsblk /dev/sdb1

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sdb1   8:17   1  96M  0 part /media/vladimir/BEAGLEBONE

$ lsblk /dev/sdb2

NAME MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sdb2   8:18   1  7.1G  0 part /media/vladimir/rootfs

[William Hermans]

There are a couple options here.

First, you can use dd to wipe out the first 1M or more, to get rid of both partitions. But I'd use this as a last resort.

Second, you can use fdisk to delete that partition, and start over again.

If that is a 4G card, and showing a 7.1G partition. Thats definitely wrong, and needs to be dealt with. I've had it happen to me once or twice, manipulating partitions manually. Not sure how exactly, but in each case it was fixable.

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[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

Thanks! I'm sure I can wipe out the card clean and start over, and if everything fails, get a new one.

My concern is that exactly following the instructions on elinux.org/Beagleboard yields a result that is (a) contrary to expectations and (b) potentially damaging to hardware. Moreover, it is insisted that this expansion step be followed.

[William Hermans]

Well, part of the problem is that you seem to be either mixing instructions with others, or you're using an old

 flasher image. Robert's Debian images have not used a two partition layout in quite some times now. As in ore than a year or two.

Also, check your link, as in reload the page. It no longer exists.

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[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

This is what the instructions state on http://beagleboard.org/getting-started :

Update board with latest software

Step #1: Download the latest software image

Download the desired image from https://beagleboard.org/latest-images.

and the above link, https://beagleboard.org/latest-images , is precisely where I got the image on the SD card in question from: 

Wheezy for BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black and SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green via microSD card

• Debian 7.9 (BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black, SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green - 4GB SD) 2015-11-12 - more info - bmap - sha256sum: f6e67ba01ff69d20f2c655f5e429c3e6c2398123bcd3d8d548460c597275d277

Why am I using 7.9 and not 8.4? Because I need kernel 3.8.x for the cape I am using. The cape is unsupported under 4.x kernels.

So, why do you state "Robert's Debian images have not used a two partition layout in quite some times now"? Please explain. There were two partitions on the SD card that I flashed with the 7.9 image above. The smaller partition was the FAT32 one that shows up as a drive in Windows if I connect the Beaglebone to a Windows host with a USB cable. This smaller partition has mostly getting-started documents.

If the 7.9 images are no longer supported, Beaglebone should say so and not suggest them as latest images.

Also, can you please kindly explain "check your link, as in reload the page. It no longer exists"? I didn't put in a full link below to save space. The full link to the instructions that I followed that yielded an SD card with greatly diminished capacity was provided by Robert above in the second reply to the original post, http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#Expanding_File_System_Partition_On_A_microSD

[Robert Nelson]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 1:45 PM, Vladimir Gusiatnikov
<tundra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is what the instructions state on
> http://beagleboard.org/getting-started :
>
> Update board with latest software
>
> Step #1: Download the latest software image
>
> Download the desired image from https://beagleboard.org/latest-images.
>
>
> and the above link, https://beagleboard.org/latest-images , is precisely
> where I got the image on the SD card in question from:
>
> Wheezy for BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black and SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green via
> microSD card
>
> Debian 7.9 (BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black, SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green - 4GB
> SD) 2015-11-12 - more info - bmap - sha256sum:
> f6e67ba01ff69d20f2c655f5e429c3e6c2398123bcd3d8d548460c597275d277
>
>
> Why am I using 7.9 and not 8.4? Because I need kernel 3.8.x for the cape I
> am using. The cape is unsupported under 4.x kernels.

in 8.4 you can do:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-image-3.8.13-bone79

There back to 3.8.x based kernel ;)

> So, why do you state "Robert's Debian images have not used a two partition
> layout in quite some times now"? Please explain. There were two partitions
> on the SD card that I flashed with the 7.9 image above. The smaller
> partition was the FAT32 one that shows up as a drive in Windows if I connect
> the Beaglebone to a Windows host with a USB cable. This smaller partition
> has mostly getting-started documents.

On newer image's we use an *.img file instead of a hard-coded fat32 partition...

> If the 7.9 images are no longer supported, Beaglebone should say so and not
> suggest them as latest images.

"supported" is a loose term.. If you want 100% fully supported, you'll
need to bug someone who get's paid to do this. (i don't get $ for
it.)

>
> Also, can you please kindly explain "check your link, as in reload the page.
> It no longer exists"? I didn't put in a full link below to save space. The
> full link to the instructions that I followed that yielded an SD card with
> greatly diminished capacity was provided by Robert above in the second reply
> to the original post,
> http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#Expanding_File_System_Partition_On_A_microSD

[William Hermans]

> So, why do you state "Robert's Debian images have not used a two partition
> layout in quite some times now"? Please explain. There were two partitions
> on the SD card that I flashed with the 7.9 image above. The smaller
> partition was the FAT32 one that shows up as a drive in Windows if I connect
> the Beaglebone to a Windows host with a USB cable. This smaller partition
> has mostly getting-started documents.

On newer image's we use an *.img file instead of a hard-coded fat32 partition...

I'm adding on to what Robert has already said. It's been a long time since there were two paritions on any Debian image. The main reason as I understand it is that there was a ~100M FAT partition because MLO, and u-boot.img needed a place to live. Passed that, g_multi( g_mass_storage ) *has to have* a path to export, so since the FAT partition was already needed, it was also used for that purpose.

But a long time ago, I do not remember exact time frame, but Robert probably could. Robert did away with the FAT partition because a lot of inexperienced people were deleting files, and causing their boards being unable to boot. This was done by putting MLO / u-boot.img into the MBR of the disk. So for a long time there was no FAT partition, and only one ext4 partition. As far as how Robert dealt with g_multi needing a path . .. yeah I do not know, or care. I do not use it.

Anyway, you have a "real" FAT living right here:

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sdb1   8:17   1  96M  0 part /media/vladimir/BEAGLEBONE

How or why, I do not know, and yes I suppose that could be an ext4 partition, but that would make far less sense. I'm pretty sure thats a FAT partition.

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[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

Indeed I get the open-source/unpaid paradigm and sincerely appreciate the contributions. But, if a version breaks something, as I here seem to have material proof, perhaps there should at least be disclaimers and not an urging to use that specific version with detailed instructions on how to do so.

So, where I got to with this particular SD card is as follows, which is beyond my knowledge of Linux, for which I apologize. I reformatted it in Windows in SD Formatter to FAT32, Windows can read and write and sees the 7.2 GB (the mystery of the extra space is perhaps simple—an 8 GB card with some bad blocks sold as 4 GB). I reformatted in every possible combination of options, then put a file on the SD card.

lsblk on Ubuntu then reports 7.2 GB on /dev/sdb1.

I can mount /dev/sdb1 on Ubuntu and read the file I wrote in Windows.

When I run sudo cfdisk /dev/sdb, I see 780 MB of free space. (Before I did the Windows reformatting, I tried reformatting sdb in Linux, and I deleted the partitions that were previously formed by dd'ing the 7.9 image).

When I run sudo cfdisk /dev/sdb1, I see 7.2 GB of free space. Yes, free space, despite being able to read, on the same machine at the same time, the file that's on the SD card.

It seems to me that partition tables are corrupted, the portions that are seen by Linux/Ubuntu, and that they were corrupted by running grow_partition.sh on the Beaglebone earlier. And, that Ubuntu is confused by these tables and does not know how to recover.

[William Hermans]

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+fdisk+delete+partition ----->>>>> http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-how-to-delete-a-partition-with-fdisk-command/

Cyberciti is a good source for information. As are many others.

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[Robert Nelson]

Sounds like a crappy microSD card, as grow_partition calls' sfdisk:

sudo sfdisk --unit M ${DISK} <<-__EOF__
1,,L,*
__EOF__

So if ^ is enough to corrupt your microSD card's, throw them away, as
they useless...

[William Hermans]

Sounds like a crappy microSD card, as grow_partition calls' sfdisk:

sudo sfdisk --unit M ${DISK} <<-__EOF__
1,,L,*
__EOF__

So if ^ is enough to corrupt your microSD card's, throw them away, as
they useless...

I ran into this problem once too Robert while manually manipulating partitions on an sdcard. It had something to do with how one of the Jessie images were laid out.

So you know the old way of growing a partition manually with fdisk right ? fdisk the block device, delete the rootfs partition, and then make a new partition in it's place to use up all the disk space right ?

Well for some reason on the Jesie images when you do this, the starting sector starts at the front of the block device, and then fidks gets some whack geometry. . .

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[Robert Nelson]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 3:16 PM, William Hermans <yyr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Sounds like a crappy microSD card, as grow_partition calls' sfdisk:
>>
>> sudo sfdisk --unit M ${DISK} <<-__EOF__
>> 1,,L,*
>> __EOF__
>>
>> So if ^ is enough to corrupt your microSD card's, throw them away, as
>> they useless...
>
>
> I ran into this problem once too Robert while manually manipulating
> partitions on an sdcard. It had something to do with how one of the Jessie
> images were laid out.
>
> So you know the old way of growing a partition manually with fdisk right ?
> fdisk the block device, delete the rootfs partition, and then make a new
> partition in it's place to use up all the disk space right ?
>
> Well for some reason on the Jesie images when you do this, the starting
> sector starts at the front of the block device, and then fidks gets some
> whack geometry. . .

Yeah, it does rely on knowing the initial geometry..

On the offical images i store it in /boot/SOC.sh

https://github.com/RobertCNelson/boot-scripts/blob/master/tools/grow_partition.sh#L91-L93

if that fails, i'm basicly guessing:

https://github.com/RobertCNelson/boot-scripts/blob/master/tools/grow_partition.sh#L50

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

Indeed I started the discussion with Jessie (8.4), but then found out my cape is not supported under 4.x kernel, so switched to Wheezy (7.9). I then tried expanding the SD card partition on the SD card with the 7.9 image according to the instructions, and got the SD card into the trouble described above.

The FAT32 partition appears to be part of the 7.9 image.

[Robert Nelson]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 4:03 PM, Vladimir Gusiatnikov
<tundra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Indeed I started the discussion with Jessie (8.4), but then found out my
> cape is not supported under 4.x kernel, so switched to Wheezy (7.9). I then
> tried expanding the SD card partition on the SD card with the 7.9 image
> according to the instructions, and got the SD card into the trouble
> described above.

bb-view is supported on 8.4, with the 4.4.x:

from /boot/uEnv.txt

dtb=am335x-boneblack-overlay.dtb
cape_enable=bone_capemgr.enable_partno=BB-VIEW-LCD4-01

then:

sudo sed -i -e 's:16:24:g' /etc/X11/xorg.conf

as it's a 24bit lcd.

[William Hermans]

Indeed I started the discussion with Jessie (8.4), but then found out my cape is not supported under 4.x kernel, so switched to Wheezy (7.9). I then tried expanding the SD card partition on the SD card with the 7.9 image according to the instructions, and got the SD card into the trouble described above.

Which cape ? How is it not working ? As in what is happening. We may be able to help there.

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[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

I failed earlier with BB VIEW and Debian 8.4 because I downloaded a patched 3.8.13 kernel from element14 (formerly Newark). element14 is the current vendor of the BB VIEW cape. The patches are offered at 

https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-67958/l/element14-bb-view-lcd-cape-software-download-centre1 . Idiot me, I thought these were current.

I then attempted to follow instructions found on element14's bulletin boards to install the patches. Most or all of the destinations to which posters advised to install files found in http://downloads.element14.com/downloads/bb-view/BB%20VIEW%20Debian%20Image.zip?COM=BeagleBoneBlack were non-existent either in 7.9 (which pre-existed on BeagleBone Black) or in 8.4. Eventually I figured out where to install the files, however note that I most certainly ended up replacing something in 8.4 that was not meant to be replaced. It appears that the patches were targeted solely at 7.9.

What I ended up with in 8.4 was, past a display calibration screen, a working BB VIEW with LCD4. However X would not start. I only had the login prompt. So, I could not understand whether the touch was working or not. I then found a statement from someone apparently at element14 who is responsible in some way for BB VIEW. The statement was "BB-VIEW is supported (with patches [...]) on kernel 3.8.13 [...] Support for BB View on 4.1.x kernel is not yet available." https://www.element14.com/community/community/designcenter/single-board-computers/next-gen_beaglebone/blog/2015/05/20/beaglebone-black-with-the-bbview-and-the-new-beaglebone-debian-image#comment-68910

Therefore I reverted to 7.9.

I just now followed Robert's instructions. I started with the 8.4 image downloaded from https://debian.beagleboard.org/images/bone-debian-8.4-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-13-4gb.img.xz . I modified two lines in /boot/uEnv.txt as above. I didn't edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf because it said DefaultDepth 24 and contained no instances of 16. I made absolutely no changes to anything else on the distribution, only the two lines in /boot/uEnv.txt . I then booted off the SD card.

What I got was a half-screen-wide calibration screen, followed by a half-screen-wide desktop. That is, the image on the screen contained the entire Debian desktop, but was 240 px wide and 272 px tall, compressed along the x axis. The orientation was normal and the cursor tracked correctly.

Also, the Ethernet-over-USB link did not start correctly. On my Windows host, I saw the host's IP address as 169.254.240.185 and not as 192.168.7.1 as in 7.9 (with BeagleBone itself being 192.168.7.2 in 7.9).

I then rebooted the BeagleBone again, and this second time the Ethernet link came up as 192.168.7.1 / 192.168.7.2. But, I still have the half-size display image. A number of error messages are output to terminal before X starts, filling up most of the screen (this was also the case earlier with 8.4, but not with 7.9).

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[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

I failed earlier with BB VIEW and Debian 8.4 because I downloaded a patched 3.8.13 kernel from element14 (formerly Newark). element14 is the current vendor of the BB VIEW cape. The patches are offered at 

https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-67958/l/element14-bb-view-lcd-cape-software-download-centre1 . Idiot me, I thought these were current.

I then attempted to follow instructions found on element14's bulletin boards to install the patches. Most or all of the destinations to which posters advised to install files found in http://downloads.element14.com/downloads/bb-view/BB%20VIEW%20Debian%20Image.zip?COM=BeagleBoneBlack were non-existent either in 7.9 (which pre-existed on BeagleBone Black) or in 8.4. Eventually I figured out where to install the files, however note that I most certainly ended up replacing something in 8.4 that was not meant to be replaced. It appears that the patches were targeted solely at 7.9.

What I ended up with in 8.4 was, past a display calibration screen, a working BB VIEW with LCD4. However X would not start. I only had the login prompt. So, I could not understand whether the touch was working or not. I then found a statement from someone apparently at element14 who is responsible in some way for BB VIEW. The statement was "BB-VIEW is supported (with patches [...]) on kernel 3.8.13 [...] Support for BB View on 4.1.x kernel is not yet available." https://www.element14.com/community/community/designcenter/single-board-computers/next-gen_beaglebone/blog/2015/05/20/beaglebone-black-with-the-bbview-and-the-new-beaglebone-debian-image#comment-68910

Therefore I reverted to 7.9.

I just now followed Robert's instructions. I started with the 8.4 image downloaded from https://debian.beagleboard.org/images/bone-debian-8.4-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-13-4gb.img.xz . I modified two lines in /boot/uEnv.txt as above. I didn't edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf because it said DefaultDepth 24 and contained no instances of 16. I made absolutely no changes to anything else on the distribution, only the two lines in /boot/uEnv.txt . I then booted off the SD card.

What I got was a half-screen-wide calibration screen, followed by a half-screen-wide desktop. That is, the image on the screen contained the entire Debian desktop, but was 240 px wide and 272 px tall, compressed along the x axis. The orientation was normal and the cursor tracked correctly.

Also, the Ethernet-over-USB link did not start correctly. On my Windows host, I saw the host's IP address as 169.254.240.185 and not as 192.168.7.1 as in 7.9 (with BeagleBone itself being 192.168.7.2 in 7.9).

I then rebooted the BeagleBone again, and this second time the Ethernet link came up as 192.168.7.1 / 192.168.7.2. But, I still have the half-size display image. A number of error messages are output to terminal before X starts, filling up most of the screen (this was also the case earlier with 8.4, but not with 7.9).

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

And this is what happens when I ran grow_partition.sh on this brand new 8 GB SD card that I just brought from the store and imaged with 8.4. Note the error message. After rebooting, df shows 4.1 GB of available space, 3.1 GB used.

root@beaglebone:/opt/scripts/tools# ./grow_partition.sh

Media: [/dev/mmcblk0]

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 243200 cylinders, 4 heads, 16 sectors/track

Old situation:

sfdisk: Warning: The partition table looks like it was made

  for C/H/S=*/112/62 (instead of 243200/4/16).

For this listing I'll assume that geometry.

Units: 1MiB = 1024*1024 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start   End    MiB    #blocks   Id  System

/dev/mmcblk0p1   *     1   3399   3399    3480576   83  Linux

                start: (c,h,s) expected (0,33,3) found (0,32,33)

                end: (c,h,s) expected (1002,85,42) found (433,111,62)

/dev/mmcblk0p2         0      -      0          0    0  Empty

/dev/mmcblk0p3         0      -      0          0    0  Empty

/dev/mmcblk0p4         0      -      0          0    0  Empty

New situation:

Units: 1MiB = 1024*1024 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start   End    MiB    #blocks   Id  System

/dev/mmcblk0p1   *     1   7599   7599    7781376   83  Linux

/dev/mmcblk0p2         0      -      0          0    0  Empty

/dev/mmcblk0p3         0      -      0          0    0  Empty

/dev/mmcblk0p4         0      -      0          0    0  Empty

Successfully wrote the new partition table

Re-reading the partition table ...

sfdisk: BLKRRPART: Device or resource busy

sfdisk: The command to re-read the partition table failed.

Run partprobe(8), kpartx(8) or reboot your system now,

before using mkfs

sfdisk: If you created or changed a DOS partition, /dev/foo7, say, then use dd(1)

to zero the first 512 bytes:  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/foo7 bs=512 count=1

(See fdisk(8).)

[Robert Nelson]

That sounds like 16bit mode..

Which is default:

https://github.com/RobertCNelson/omap-image-builder/blob/master/target/chroot/beagleboard.org-jessie.sh#L121

run:

sudo sed -i -e 's:16:24:g' /etc/X11/xorg.conf




>

> Also, the Ethernet-over-USB link did not start correctly. On my Windows
> host, I saw the host's IP address as 169.254.240.185 and not as 192.168.7.1
> as in 7.9 (with BeagleBone itself being 192.168.7.2 in 7.9).
>
> I then rebooted the BeagleBone again, and this second time the Ethernet link
> came up as 192.168.7.1 / 192.168.7.2. But, I still have the half-size
> display image. A number of error messages are output to terminal before X
> starts, filling up most of the screen (this was also the case earlier with
> 8.4, but not with 7.9).

[Robert Nelson]

This is the normal (no actual error above) ... Just reboot..

I haven't cared enough too force sfdisk's output to /dev/null

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

Yes, /etc/X11/xorg.conf said DefaultDepth 16. Earlier, before the first boot, the same file on the SD card image said DefaultDepth 24. So, it appears that the edit has to happen after the first boot.

I changed DefaultDepth to 24 and got a nice-looking KDE desktop, but now the touchscreen calibration is off. I was unable to find a reference to commanding a run of touchscreen calibration. 

On Friday, June 10, 2016 at 7:58:47 PM UTC-7, RobertCNelson wrote:

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 8:14 PM, Vladimir Gusiatnikov
<tundra...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

I am getting the exact same behavior on an Ubuntu machine for an SD card that has been expanded with grow_partition.sh. Ubuntu does not see more than 780 MB on the card. This is a brand new 8 GB card. I strongly suspect that the script is rendering SD cards unusable.

[Robert Nelson]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 2:50 PM, Vladimir Gusiatnikov
<tundra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am getting the exact same behavior on an Ubuntu machine for an SD card
> that has been expanded with grow_partition.sh. Ubuntu does not see more than
> 780 MB on the card. This is a brand new 8 GB card. I strongly suspect that
> the script is rendering SD cards unusable.

I strongly disagree, the script works fine: Looks like a bug on your end..

#history:
https://github.com/RobertCNelson/boot-scripts/commits/master/tools/grow_partition.sh

debian@beaglebone:~$ uname -r
4.4.12-ti-r30

debian@beaglebone:~$ cat /etc/dogtag
BeagleBoard.org Debian Image 2016-06-13

debian@beaglebone:~$ lsblk

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT

mmcblk1boot0 179:16 0 2M 1 disk
mmcblk1boot1 179:24 0 2M 1 disk
mmcblk0 179:0 0 7.4G 0 disk
└─mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 3.3G 0 part /
mmcblk1 179:8 0 3.6G 0 disk
└─mmcblk1p1 179:9 0 3.6G 0 part

debian@beaglebone:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 10M 0 10M 0% /dev
tmpfs 99M 8.4M 91M 9% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p1 3.3G 2.6G 510M 84% /
tmpfs 247M 0 247M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 247M 0 247M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 50M 0 50M 0% /run/user/1000

debian@beaglebone:/opt/scripts/tools$ sudo ./grow_partition.sh
Media: [/dev/mmcblk0]

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 242560 cylinders, 4 heads, 16 sectors/track

Old situation:
sfdisk: Warning: The partition table looks like it was made

for C/H/S=*/112/62 (instead of 242560/4/16).

For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units: 1MiB = 1024*1024 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End MiB #blocks Id System
/dev/mmcblk0p1 * 1 3399 3399 3480576 83 Linux
start: (c,h,s) expected (0,33,3) found (0,32,33)
end: (c,h,s) expected (1002,85,42) found (433,111,62)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/mmcblk0p3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/mmcblk0p4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
New situation:
Units: 1MiB = 1024*1024 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End MiB #blocks Id System

/dev/mmcblk0p1 * 1 7579 7579 7760896 83 Linux

/dev/mmcblk0p2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/mmcblk0p3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/mmcblk0p4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
Successfully wrote the new partition table

Re-reading the partition table ...
sfdisk: BLKRRPART: Device or resource busy
sfdisk: The command to re-read the partition table failed.
Run partprobe(8), kpartx(8) or reboot your system now,
before using mkfs
sfdisk: If you created or changed a DOS partition, /dev/foo7, say,
then use dd(1)
to zero the first 512 bytes: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/foo7 bs=512 count=1
(See fdisk(8).)

#reboot:

debian@beaglebone:~$ lsblk

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT

mmcblk1boot0 179:16 0 2M 1 disk
mmcblk1boot1 179:24 0 2M 1 disk
mmcblk0 179:0 0 7.4G 0 disk
└─mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 7.4G 0 part /
mmcblk1 179:8 0 3.6G 0 disk
└─mmcblk1p1 179:9 0 3.6G 0 part

debian@beaglebone:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 10M 0 10M 0% /dev
tmpfs 99M 4.4M 95M 5% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p1 7.3G 2.6G 4.4G 37% /
tmpfs 247M 0 247M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 247M 0 247M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 50M 0 50M 0% /run/user/1000

#Debian x86/amd64:

voodoo@hades:/opt/github/npm-package-node-red$ uname -r
4.7.0-rc2

voodoo@hades:/opt/github/npm-package-node-red$ dmesg | tail
[23848.747325] sd 8:0:0:1: [sdk] Attached SCSI removable disk
[23848.748076] sd 8:0:0:2: [sdl] Write Protect is off
[23848.748079] sd 8:0:0:2: [sdl] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[23848.748836] sd 8:0:0:2: [sdl] No Caching mode page found
[23848.748841] sd 8:0:0:2: [sdl] Assuming drive cache: write through
[23848.755012] sd 8:0:0:3: [sdm] Attached SCSI removable disk
[23848.774910] sdl: sdl1
[23848.781467] sd 8:0:0:2: [sdl] Attached SCSI removable disk
[23896.961030] EXT4-fs (sdl1): recovery complete
[23896.962771] EXT4-fs (sdl1): mounted filesystem with ordered data
mode. Opts: (null)

voodoo@hades:/opt/github/npm-package-node-red$ lsblk | grep sdl
sdl 8:176 1 7.4G 0 disk
└─sdl1 8:177 1 7.4G 0 part /media/voodoo/rootfs2

voodoo@hades:/opt/github/npm-package-node-red$ df -h | grep sdl
/dev/sdl1 7.3G 2.6G 4.4G 37% /media/voodoo/rootfs2


Works as designed:

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

Thank you for your help and time. We have chosen a different board for our development project.

[John Syne]

Everyone here is a volunteer, giving their time freely and doing their best to help. I have seen this type of problem before and it has to do with a corrupt MBR. Best to erase the MBR and create a new partition table. 

I don’t know anything about your project, but in most cases, you would be hard pressed to find a better board and support environment that the one offered by BeagleBoard.org. 

Regards,

John

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[William Hermans]

I'd like to point out to others who happen to read these post in the future that this script hs been around for ~2.5 years, and this is the only person i remember seeing complain about it.

Additionally, if one would take 5 minutes to google "Linux how to grow partition", you'll be greeted by many *good*article on how to do this manually from the command line.

For the love of god people, you're using Linux, learn how to use it properly . . . I chock this problem on this post up to user error for lack of understanding how to use the OS they want to use . . .

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[evilwulfie]

I use 8 GB SD cards from Samsung with no issues. Sorry you are having issues. good luck.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/10F6A836-B443-43E1-AD57-F90183CF9180%40gmail.com.

[evilwulfie]

Everything here is a linux issue / user issue nothing to do with a beaglebone error.

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[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

No, my goal is not to learn how to use Linux properly. My goal is to get a small app going in Android on a development board that uses BB as user interface. I think I know how to write an app in Android, but I'll be the first one to agree that I don't have even a satisfactory-level understanding of Linux. Nor do I have the time or desire to gain it; I have been able to achieve my goal in the past without this knowledge.

I was hoping the combination of BeagleBone Black, BB VIEW, and an Android distribution would work out of the box, but it's crystal clear it doesn't (there's not apparently even a distribution of Android that works with BB VIEW).

Thanks to the "nurturing" support environment for validating my decision to stay away from BeagleBone.

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[Robert Nelson]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 5:13 PM, Vladimir Gusiatnikov
<tundra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> No, my goal is not to learn how to use Linux properly. My goal is to get a
> small app going in Android on a development board that uses BB as user
> interface. I think I know how to write an app in Android, but I'll be the
> first one to agree that I don't have even a satisfactory-level understanding
> of Linux. Nor do I have the time or desire to gain it; I have been able to
> achieve my goal in the past without this knowledge.
>
> I was hoping the combination of BeagleBone Black, BB VIEW, and an Android
> distribution would work out of the box, but it's crystal clear it doesn't
> (there's not apparently even a distribution of Android that works with BB
> VIEW).

The company that developed the "bb-view" is in their own little world.
They had their own distro, with a special kernel build. They ignored
the beaglebone doc's and stuck an led on the pins reserved for the
cape eeprom, thus no cape eeprom for identification.

I've hacked it enough to get the display working.. Touch screen still
need's calibration, via xinput-calibrator on bootup.

I'd say it's 95% there, I'll look into it again in the future if i
find free time, but i'm working on other projects with oem's that care
about working directly with the community..

[evilwulfie]

Robert, why would you even bother. I design my things that use the BBB
always with the SRM in mind.
People that design hardware that does not follow the SRM should be on
their own.

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

The BB VIEW was the only display cape option that was in stock when I ordered a couple months ago. 4D Systems' capes were out of stock just about everywhere. They are in stock now at some distributors.

For someone clueless like me there did not seem to be a difference between these until digging deeper, and there isn't a reason to dig deeper until things don't work. I didn't know who follows the hardware paradigm, who is in their own little world, who cares, and who is working directly with the community; now I do. 

 

[William Hermans]

No, my goal is not to learn how to use Linux properly. My goal is to get a small app going in Android on a development board that uses BB as user interface. I think I know how to write an app in Android, but I'll be the first one to agree that I don't have even a satisfactory-level understanding of Linux. Nor do I have the time or desire to gain it; I have been able to achieve my goal in the past without this knowledge.

I was hoping the combination of BeagleBone Black, BB VIEW, and an Android distribution would work out of the box, but it's crystal clear it doesn't (there's not apparently even a distribution of Android that works with BB VIEW).

Thanks to the "nurturing" support environment for validating my decision to stay away from BeagleBone.

4 Days, and 28 posts all for you, and that's not "nurturing" enough ?

Sorry buddy, but if you can not step up to the plate, and learn what you need to learn. IN order to get things done. I do not care what board you're going to use. You'll never get anything working.

Anyway, do you see the thanks those of us who volunteer our time to help such nice people as yourself gets us ? A flipping kick in the teeth. Good riddance.

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[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

On Monday, June 13, 2016 at 4:56:26 PM UTC-7, William Hermans wrote:

No, my goal is not to learn how to use Linux properly. My goal is to get a small app going in Android on a development board that uses BB as user interface. I think I know how to write an app in Android, but I'll be the first one to agree that I don't have even a satisfactory-level understanding of Linux. Nor do I have the time or desire to gain it; I have been able to achieve my goal in the past without this knowledge.

I was hoping the combination of BeagleBone Black, BB VIEW, and an Android distribution would work out of the box, but it's crystal clear it doesn't (there's not apparently even a distribution of Android that works with BB VIEW).

Thanks to the "nurturing" support environment for validating my decision to stay away from BeagleBone.

4 Days, and 28 posts all for you, and that's not "nurturing" enough ?

Sorry buddy, but if you can not step up to the plate, and learn what you need to learn. IN order to get things done. I do not care what board you're going to use. You'll never get anything working.

Anyway, do you see the thanks those of us who volunteer our time to help such nice people as yourself gets us ? A flipping kick in the teeth. Good riddance.

 Au contraire, I actually got everything I needed for this stage of my project done over the past few days, on the same BeagleBone, once I got past the non-working BB-View and the damaged SD cards. I receive data over UART from another circuit board and serve it over http to localhost, making a nice UI in Chrome; works fine even with my limited knowledge of Linux. It's a stopgap and inefficient solution, I'll be looking forward to making the concept work in Android that should give finer control over the UI, but will suffice for now.

Many thanks for Robert's clear advice; people over at the element14 community board seemed surprised and thankful for his recipe that makes their seemingly inoperable BB-Views function.

I can live with the script damaging my SD cards, they aren't that expensive. I just wondered if BeagleBoard community may be interested in this apparent, reproducible fault.

It should be obvious from William's message immediately above why we will not use BeagleBone going forward. His messages were unhelpful and I don't see why I should be thankful for ridicule.

For an allegory that may be of some relevance, the knowledge of Maxwell's equations isn't necessary to turn on a light bulb. Many people in this world only need a light bulb. That doesn't make them worthless. I'm certainly glad you can derive the equations, but all I need is light from the bulb, and I sure appreciate working electrical power and a working light switch.

[William Hermans]

It should be obvious from William's message immediately above why we will not use BeagleBone going forward. His messages were unhelpful and I don't see why I should be thankful for ridicule.

Now you're just being spiteful, and silly. Anyone with half a brain can read up on this topic and see that I was trying to help you. Only the last 2-3 posts have I posted anything negative to, or about you.

It's also very simple for anyone to see that you're playing into this like a hurt drama queen. "Wah, wah ! you're not going to do my work for me, so I'm not going to use your product . . . wah wah."

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[William Hermans]

So let me share with you my perspective. Everything was all fine and dandy until you starting talking smack about the instructions to grow your partition. Which I tried explaining to everyone, is not the instructions, but the tools used in the instructions. At which point I tried to make it perfectly clear to anyone who reads this post that this problem you experienced is a very rare outside corner case issue. It's happened to me personally *ONCE* in 3.5 years. Then when it happened to me, it was while not using anyone script at all. Just me using fdisk from the cmd line.

At which point you decided to get all snotty, and imply that we were of zero help, and you're moving to a different hardware platform because of that. When in fact, if you understood the tools, as I tried to point out to you. This would have been a non issue. At which point I did turn hostile towards you.

Anyway, ask anyone on this group, I have no problems trying to help anyone with just about any problem with their beaglebone, when I can. But you can also ask anyone here if *ANYONE* get snotty to anyone in the community, on these groups. I have zero qualms putting that person in their place. And I will not be kind about it one bit.

Me, I do not care about. You can think whatever you like I could give two rats behinds. But when you start talking about other community members, and their instructions, especially when you clearly do not understand the tools, or process, You're going to get a 'beat down' by me. At minimum.

You're the one who is wrong. The sooner you realize that, the better off you will be.

[Vladimir Gusiatnikov]

On Friday, June 17, 2016 at 11:46:59 AM UTC-7, William Hermans wrote:

It should be obvious from William's message immediately above why we will not use BeagleBone going forward. His messages were unhelpful and I don't see why I should be thankful for ridicule.

Now you're just being spiteful, and silly. Anyone with half a brain can read up on this topic and see that I was trying to help you. Only the last 2-3 posts have I posted anything negative to, or about you.

It's also very simple for anyone to see that you're playing into this like a hurt drama queen. "Wah, wah ! you're not going to do my work for me, so I'm not going to use your product . . . wah wah."

I certainly hope that as many engineers who are unfamiliar with BeagleBoard and are considering it as a development path see your message as possible. 

[Manavendra Nath Manav]

I see an argument being made in terms of Vladimir being an "end user" from userspace and William being a "developer" from kernelspace. William obviously assumed Vladimir to be a developer, while in fact Vladimir is the end-user who expects solutions to work out of box. So, both are right in their viewpoints.

Regards
Manav

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