Replacing u-boot.bin on SD card

[Max Galemin]

Hi all!

At the moment I'm trying to check my version of U-Boot on Beagleboard-
xM and I have a question: is there an easy way to replace u-boot.bin
on SD card? And should I build new SD card image using "mksdimg.sh"
script each time I need to check new version of u-boot.bin? For
example now I have the next error after writing clean image, replacing
u-boot with my version and restoring original version of u-boot:

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.4.4ss (Aug 19 2010 - 02:49:27)
Beagle xM Rev A
Reading boot sector
u-boot.bin not found or blank nand contents - attempting serial
boot . . .
## Ready for binary (kermit) download to 0x80008000 at 115200 bps...


Cheers,
Max.

[Robert Nelson]

Right now it's pretty safe to just drop the latest u-boot.bin into
your fat partition of the sd card from

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/

But just a heads up. When we migrated to u-boot 2010.03 from 2009.old
there was an issue as it did require a new x-load as the old 1.4.2
would not boot the new u-boot..

So always test with a serial port on local hardware...

Regards,

--
Robert Nelson
http://www.rcn-ee.com/

[Max Galemin]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your answer. Basically I'm doing next steps:

1. On windows write beagleboard-validation-201008201549.img to the SD
card using Win32 Disk Imager;
2. Try on BB-xM that everything boots and works;
3. On windows make a backup copy of u-boot.bin from the SD card;
4. On windows delete u-boot.bin from the SD card;
5. On windows copy u-boot.bin back to the card from the backup copy
(step 3);

After step 5 I can't boot my BB. I didn't change any other files on
card, I just replaced u-boot.bin with its original copy. I know that
on previous revisions of BB MLO file should be copied first because of
a bug in the X-loader, but I was surprised that now usual replacement
of U-Boot image causes such problems with booting.

So if you say that it's safe to copy u-boot.bin to my SD card and BB
should boot I make a conclusion that something wrong with my usb SD
card-reader (or with me). :)


Cheers,
Max.


On Oct 20, 12:09 am, Robert Nelson <robertcnel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[nickg]

On Oct 19, 12:38 pm, Max Galemin <maksim.gale...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.4.4ss (Aug 19 2010 - 02:49:27)
> Beagle xM Rev A
> Reading boot sector
> u-boot.bin not found or blank nand contents - attempting serial
> boot . . .
> ## Ready for binary (kermit) download to 0x80008000 at 115200 bps...
>

Hi Max,

I ran into a similar problem after replacing u-boot.bin on a
BeagleBoard-xM. The problem, at least for me, was that u-boot.bin was
placed in the second sector of the FAT32 root directory which x-loader-
omap3 is unable to read. It's fairly straightforward to fix, and I've
put the patch on gitorious here:

http://gitorious.org/~nickg/x-load-omap3/nickg-x-load-omap3/commit/f98f7fe36d1878669f319e63e1ff0b7260dc88dd

which might be of some use to you. I think rebuilding the FAT32
partition and copying u-boot.bin on first should also work. Also this
bug does not happen if the boot partition is FAT16, so converting to
that should also fix it.


Nick