Beagleboard XM rev c and Linux
 

Folks, we have just picked up a Beagleboard XM rev 3 and we are trying to get a version on Linux (Ubuntu) to work on it. Has anyone out there a good recipe to get this to work? At this point the demo distribution works, and we are able to connect the machine to a keyboard/mouse, the net, and a HD television, but when we try to boot a Ubuntu distribution that reportedly is designed for the board (on a different SD card ofcourse) we don't get any video output to complete the installation. It may be working, but without a screen to watch the progress we are literally runnng blind. Any help the community could offer would be greatly appreciated. I am sure we are missing something "easy" but for all the googling I have done, I can't seem to find the answer.

What distribution are you running? (download link?)
How to get the hdmi or svideo output to wake up like it does in the demo distribution?

Many thanks everyone.

md

Re: Beagleboard XM rev c and Linux
 

We used the XM V3 for the CARD demo last year.

The instructions at http://www.elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbu...nfigured_Image are complete and worked for us.

This will get you a text console out the serial and HDMI. Once you have this you can install a desktop manager to get the full GUI. However, you may be better off without the desktop manager, since they use a lot of resources.

Re: Beagleboard XM rev c and Linux
 

Here's a good place to start:

http://sakoman.com/

Use the script mentioned at the bottom of the page to save yourself a lot of grief. I use Steve Sakoman's builds on similar hardware (Gumstix Overo) and think it's probably the easiest way to get started.

-Kevin

Re: Beagleboard XM rev c and Linux
 

Thanks folks. I indeed tried the method in the first response but as mentioned in my OP, the monitor does not wake up. I am not sure what options in the boot.scr or equivalent file that I need to change. I will do the mkcard.sh approach next , but I have to wait for my loaner pc to return to me since I don't have access to a linux machine right now. I can write images to sdcards using my mac but the script requires write access to the sdcard drive and a virtual linux machine can not see the hardware at the lowest level. So, stay tuned.

(Unless someone would like to post to a dropbox folder a image of their sdcard....)

md

Re: Beagleboard XM rev c and Linux
 

Did you try connecting to the serial port console. You should check if there are any issues during the boot.

Re: Beagleboard XM rev c and Linux
 

Warning LONG post, for big thanks..,

Folks: I want to thank everyone for their assistance. I can report SUCCESS!.

Now what I did to get it to work.

The instructions at http://www.elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbu...nfigured_Image

but specifically via:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/OMAP

Precise Pangolin (12.04)
Images can be downloaded at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/12.04/release/

Preinstalled desktop image

The preinstalled-desktop image allows you to unpack a preinstalled version of Ubuntu onto a target device.

There are three images available, each for a different type of computer:
Texas Instruments OMAP3 (Hard-Float) preinstalled desktop image
For OMAP3 boards. See ARM/OMAP for detailed installation information.

I was able to write the image both from my MacOS machine, but also successfully via a Ubuntu machine.

However, after creating the SD card, the symptom of not being able to see the video on my hdmi tv output remained. It was then I looked at the uEnv.txt file on the supplied demo image that came shipped with the beagleboard xm itself and saw dvimode="hd720 instead of what the file on the newly created sdcard had. It had some other resolution that obviously my tv just could not display. So, I changed it to the simple hd720 phrase and voila text now appeared on the hdmi monitor.

I also by the way did create a sdcard using the sakoman.com makecard.sh method. This ofcourse required the use of a host ubuntu machine to run the script and I must say I was very impressed with it as well. It however also did not set the dvimode correctly for me, so I also changed the dvi setting in the environment file (or copied it in if it did not exist, ( I can't remember now..) but after I did that it too worked. After about 45 minutes I watched the system complete its self configuration and boot into gnome window manager.

However I did not keep the sakoman created sdcard as my goal was to run ubuntu on the beagleboard, and not angstrom based distro that the sakomon method creates.

In short, many thanks. I have since installed a vnc server on the machine and a lightweight desktop window manager lxde as recommended in the instructions.

Yours,

Michael