Booting Jessie on Beagleboard C3

[Jacek Radzikowski]

Hello,

Following instructions from
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian#Debian_NetInstall I built an SD
card for Beagleboard rev C3. The build went smoothly, the board booted
to u-boot, but all activity ceases after the system attempts to load
ramdisk image.
The board is powered from an external 5V/2A power supply, and the boot
disk has been built using the following command:
sudo ./mk_mmc.sh --mmc /dev/sdh --dtb omap3-beagle --distro jessie --serial-mode

Boot log from serial terminal in the attached file.

Is the original Beagleboard still supported by current debian builds?

Thanks,
Jacek.

--
Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier

[Robert Nelson]

On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 6:18 PM, Jacek Radzikowski <jacek.ra...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

Following instructions from
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian#Debian_NetInstall I built an SD
card for Beagleboard rev C3. The build went smoothly, the board booted
to u-boot, but all activity ceases after the system attempts to load
ramdisk image.
The board is powered from an external 5V/2A power supply, and the boot
disk has been built using the following command:
sudo ./mk_mmc.sh --mmc /dev/sdh --dtb omap3-beagle --distro jessie --serial-mode

Boot log from serial terminal in the attached file.

Is the original Beagleboard still supported by current debian builds?

So, i'm pretty sure this is a u-boot bug...

2 week ago, i tried bisecting from v4.6.x to all my old releases down to v3.14.x.. None booted..

The bb-xm jessie image posted here, does work:

http://beagleboard.org/latest-images

Regards,

--

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

[Jacek Radzikowski]

Which image do you recommend? I checked
beaglexm-debian-8.3-console-2016-02-11-2gb.img, with similar result

Jacek

[David Goldsmith]

Hello,
I am also having this exact same issue. Installed the 2016-02-11 image from
http://beagleboard.org/latest-images (https://debian.beagleboard.org/images/)
as suggested, got stopped at loading the ramdisk, just like you. Waited 15
minutes before assuming nothing was going to happen.
Then I tried the 2016-06-09 image from https://rcn-ee.com/rootfs/2016-06-
09/microsd/ (which I believe is Robert's personal website)
Same thing, stuck at "Loading Ramdisk to 8f5da000, end 8ffff61c ..."
("8f6ac000, end 8ffff105" for the 2016-02-11 image)
According to archive.org the 2016-02-11 was the first and only copy that ever
existed.
Did Robert ever get back to you with a suggestion?

[Jacek Radzikowski]

No. I'm assuming the original Beabgleboard is no longer actively supported.

Jacek

[David Goldsmith]

Jacek Radzikowski <jacek.radzikowski@...> writes:

I'm trying in the BeagleBoard IRC channel as well; was told that rcn knows
his stuff and has all the boards for testing on, so if he says it works then
it should work. If support is no longer active I'd be fine with that, just
someone tell me I'm wasting my time at least.
For lack of Debian I'd gladly just try and get Angstrom working again but
even that information seems to have disappeared; pages I know used to exist
with instructions are now gone, either 404 or replaced with "new"
instructions that aren't applicable. I can keep using my current install for
now, but it's only a matter of time until my SD card completely fails, and
then my BeagleBoard with be a BeagleBrick, not because it's broken but just
because the information required to get it running has been lost, and that
makes me sad.

[Jacek Radzikowski]

> I'm trying in the BeagleBoard IRC channel as well; was told that rcn knows
> his stuff and has all the boards for testing on, so if he says it works then
> it should work. If support is no longer active I'd be fine with that, just
> someone tell me I'm wasting my time at least.
> For lack of Debian I'd gladly just try and get Angstrom working again but
> even that information seems to have disappeared; pages I know used to exist
> with instructions are now gone, either 404 or replaced with "new"
> instructions that aren't applicable. I can keep using my current install for
> now, but it's only a matter of time until my SD card completely fails, and
> then my BeagleBoard with be a BeagleBrick, not because it's broken but just
> because the information required to get it running has been lost, and that
> makes me sad.

RCN is a great hacker and probably one of the very few people outside
of TI with such great level of familiarity with processors used on
Beagle boards. If there are problems with the system, it is certainly
not because he can not make it work, but because his time is a limited
resource and it's much more advantageous to dedicate it to work on
current iteration of Beaglebone, of the new Beagleboard, than to fix
bugs on deprecated platforms.
I think the only future for original Beagleboard is to stick to old
kernels, or start using it as a paperweight.

Jacek.