Booting Beagle Software

Beagle Board can boot from NAND, MMC, UART, and USB. At present we support only NAND and MMC booting. The compilation steps for software components and pre-built images are described at Beagle Software Compilation Procedure
Booting u-boot on Beagle Board

The u-boot booting on NAND and MMC need another software component called x-loader. The booting procedure for x-loader as such doesn't need any detailed explanation, so this section includes x-loader booting as well.

Booting u-boot on NAND Flash
Assumption: All Beagle "Rev B" Boards come with pre-loaded u-boot on NAND flash
Do the Hardware Setup for booting u-boot over NAND Flash.
On "Powering ON" the board, u-boot 1.3.3 should boot by displaying a splash screen on DVI and playing a tone on audio out, the u-boot console should be shown as below

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.41
Starting OS Bootloader...


U-Boot 1.3.3 (Jul 8 2008 - 16:29:02)

OMAP3530-GP rev 2, CPU-OPP2 L3-165MHz
OMAP3 Beagle Board + LPDDR/NAND
DRAM: 128 MB
NAND: 256 MiB
*** Warning - bad CRC or NAND, using default environment

In: serial
Out: serial
Err: serial
Audio Tone on Speakers ... complete
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
OMAP3 beagleboard.org #

NOTE: If u-boot is not Flashed on the NAND, then refer to Beagle NAND Flash Procedure to do the same

Booting u-boot with MMC/SD Card
Do the Hardware Setup for booting u-boot over MMC/SD Card.
On "Powering ON" the board, u-boot 1.3.3 should boot by displaying a splash screen on DVI and playing a tone on audio out, the u-boot console should be shown as below

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.41
Starting on with MMC
Reading boot sector

717372 Bytes Read from MMC
Starting OS Bootloader from MMC...


U-Boot 1.3.3 (Jul 8 2008 - 19:29:48)

OMAP3530-GP rev 2, CPU-OPP2 L3-165MHz
OMAP3 Beagle Board + LPDDR/NAND
DRAM: 128 MB
NAND: 256 MiB
In: serial
Out: serial
Err: serial
Audio Tone on Speakers ... complete
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
OMAP3 beagleboard.org #

Boot the Linux Image on Beagle Board

Once you have u-boot booted over NAND or MMC, a Linux kernel image can be booted on Beagle Board.

The Linux Kernel Image (uImage) can be downloaded on to Beagle DDR memory using

UART (time consuming), MMC, NAND (if it was stored in it), USB (Not supported yet).

The Below procedure gives MMC based Linux Kernel Booting.
Complile the Linux Kernel Image "uImage".
Copy the uImage file in MMC/SD card pre-formated for FAT32.
Download the uImage
OMAP3 beagleboard.org # mmcinit
OMAP3 beagleboard.org # fatload mmc 0 0x80300000 uImage
Set/Configure the boot arguments

The filesystem to be mounted could be present in MMC, RAM (Ramdisk), NAND (if copied), Ethernet (using Ethernet over USB Dongle on USB HOST machine). The Bootargs for each of these is shown Below
Bootargs for RAMDISK File System

OMAP3 beagleboard.org # setenv bootargs console=ttyS2,115200n8 ramdisk_size=8192 root=/dev/ram0 rw rootfstype=ext2 initrd=0x81600000,8M nohz=off
Bootargs for MMC File System
OMAP3 beagleboard.org # setenv bootargs console=ttyS2,115200n8 noinitrd root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 rootfstype=ext2 rw rootdelay=1 nohz=off
Bootargs for NAND (JFFS2) File System)
TBD
Bootargs for NFS (using Ethernet over USB Dongle)
TBD
Getting File System on Beagle Board
RAMDISK File system
OMAP3 beagleboard.org # fatload mmc 0 0x81600000 rd-ext2.bin

NOTE: rd-ext2.bin should have been copied onto MMC Card.
MMC File system
Copy Filesystem on MMC/SD card.
Format an MMC/SD card for ext2/ext3 file system using Linux Machine
Mount the MMC/SD card on Host Linux Machine
UnTar the Pre-built Filesystem
Un-Mount the MMC/SD card on Host Linux Machine
Remove the MMC/SD card that had uImage, and insert the MMC/SD card that has Filesystem.
Booting the Kernel Image
OMAP3 beagleboard.org # bootm 0x80300000