BBB Android and disabling HDMI

[Davide Birra]

Hi!

I'm trying to build and embedded system based on Beaglebone Black on BBB Android.

I've built the Android image from sources and everything worked flawlessly.

No I need the 20 pins binded to HDMI controller so i added this string

capemgr.disable_partno=BB-BONELT-HDMI,BB-BONELT-HDMIN

to mmcargs into uEnv.txt file (boot partition).

/sys/devices/bone_capemgr.9/slots file confirmed that HDMI firmware is not loaded.

root@beagleboneblack:/ # more /sys/devices/bone_capemgr.9/slots
more /sys/devices/bone_capemgr.9/slots
 0: 54:PF---
 1: 55:PF---
 2: 56:PF---
 3: 57:PF---
 4: ff:P-O-L Bone-LT-eMMC-2G,00A0,Texas Instrument,BB-BONE-EMMC-2G
 5: ff:P-O-- Bone-Black-HDMI,00A0,Texas Instrument,BB-BONELT-HDMI
 6: ff:P-O-- Bone-Black-HDMIN,00A0,Texas Instrument,BB-BONELT-HDMIN

Ok, now i have my pins free but zygote refuses to start. I guess SurfaceFlinger can't find a video output device and crashes. This is the log part complaining about that.

01-01 00:34:07.761: I/SurfaceFlinger(30258): SurfaceFlinger is starting
01-01 00:34:07.761: I/SurfaceFlinger(30258): SurfaceFlinger's main thread ready to run. Initializing graphics H/W...
01-01 00:34:07.781: E/SurfaceFlinger(30258): hwcomposer module not found
01-01 00:34:07.781: E/SurfaceFlinger(30258): ERROR: failed to open framebuffer (No such file or directory), aborting
01-01 00:34:07.781: A/libc(30258): Fatal signal 6 (SIGABRT) at 0x00007632 (code=-6), thread 30258 (surfaceflinger)

Any idea to worksround this problem? I don't need any video output at all so it would be ok to not start surfaceflinger at all, but i can't achieve this without crashing the system.