Flashing & Livebooting images on the BBB - capstonealex/Embedded GitHub Wiki

Checking current OS/kernel version

Use one of the following. They give different level of details.

  • cat /etc/os-release
  • lsb_release -a
  • hostnamectl
  • uname -r to get just kernel

Getting and flashing BBB images

  1. Get latest image from https://beagleboard.org/latest-images. The regular version has a GUI while the IOT version does not.
  2. Use etcher to install the image onto an SD card (4GB or greater). If using an alternate tool like UNetbootin, you may have to first extract the image.
  3. You can now either live boot of the SD card or flash the image onto the beagle bone.

Live booting from SD card

  1. Power off the BBB and insert the SD card.
  2. While pressing the boot button on the BBB (near the SD card), power it up. Pressing the boot button may not be required with the BBB we are using.
  3. The BBB will start up and boot the OS off the SD card. You can verify this by running lsblk. This shows all the partitions (internal and external). It shows a forward slash next to the boot partition. The SD card should be mmcblk0 and internal emmc should be mmcblk1. Livebooting will show a / next to the SD card partition and regular booting will show it next to the internal emmc partition.

Flashing the image

  1. In order to make the SD card image flashable, we need to modify the uEnv.txt file. This can be done either on the BBB or the host PC. Below instructions are for the BBB.
  2. First, live boot using the SD card.
  3. Open /boot/uEnv.txt, you may need sudo to edit the file.
  4. At the bottom of the file, uncomment the line (remove #): cmdline=init=/opt/scripts/tools/eMMC/init-eMMC-flasher-v3.sh
  5. Save file and reboot BBB. You may need to press the boot button. The beagle bone will flash the image on the SD card. This can seen by the LED light cylon pattern.
  6. NOTE: Anytime this SD card is inserted while starting up BBB, it will flash the BBB. So remember to remove the SD card once done.

Additional information

  • Editing the uEnv.txt file (to make it flashable) does not need to done from the BBB. You can just access the SD card on the host computer and edit it there as well.
  • The newer BBB images do not come with root password disabled. The default sudo password is temppwd and root password is root. Default username is debian.
  • Is using linux, the SSH may throw an authentication error after flashing new images/livebooting. To fix this, you have to clear the currently authorised key: ssh-keygen -R 192.168.7.2

Sources