For the last couple of years, I have been successfully flashing my application image from a uSD card to production units on the Element14 BBB rev C. However this no longer works with the latest BBB's received from Element14. I believe this is because the new boards were shipped with a newer image that uses a single partition in the eMMC, which breaks the old flasher script. Specifically, we have been booting from the uSD and using /opt/scripts/tools/eMMC/init-eMMC-flasher-v3.sh to flash our boards.
My production image is based on 3.8.13-bone79 (Debian 7.9), which has separate partitions for boot and rootfs. The boards I am trying to flash have 4.1.15-ti-rt-r43 (Debian 8.3).
I have attempted to reformat the eMMC to match the format of the older board (two partitions), but this does not fix the problem.
The following is the output of fdisk -l on my older boards that work.
debian@beaglebone:/dev/disk$ fdisk -l
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 3925 MB, 3925868544 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 119808 cylinders, total 7667712 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/mmcblk0p1 * 2048 198655 98304 e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 198656 7667711 3734528 83 Linux
Disk /dev/mmcblk0boot1: 1 MB, 1048576 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 32 cylinders, total 2048 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Disk /dev/mmcblk0boot1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/mmcblk0boot0: 1 MB, 1048576 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 32 cylinders, total 2048 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Disk /dev/mmcblk0boot0 doesn't contain a valid partition table
And this is the fdisk -l output on a newer board after my attempt at reformatting (note, I have to boot from uSD to view the disk format, obviously).
root@beaglebone:/home/debian# fdisk -l Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 3.7 GiB, 3965190144 bytes, 7744512 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x0aa8d2b0 Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/mmcblk0p1 * 8192 6963199 6955008 3.3G 83 Linux Disk /dev/mmcblk1: 3.6 GiB, 3825205248 bytes, 7471104 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x894089be Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/mmcblk1p1 * 2048 198655 196608 96M e W95 FAT16 (LBA) /dev/mmcblk1p2 198656 7471103 7272448 3.5G 83 Linux Disk /dev/mmcblk1boot1: 2 MiB, 2097152 bytes, 4096 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mmcblk1boot0: 2 MiB, 2097152 bytes, 4096 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Does anyone have any ideas about why this is not working for me? I assume there is something wrong with my format, but maybe there is something else I don't understand. Since all application testing has been done on Debian 7.9, changing to a newer O/S version would be a major issue for us. This seems like it would be a common problem for anyone trying to use BBB in a production environment.
Thanks in advance for any help,
Jason
Edit
It is now clear why the flasher is not working. When booting from the old uSD card (with Debian 7.9), the eMMC device is not recognized by the O/S. Only mmcblk0 is listed in /dev and by lsblk (see below).
root@beaglebone:~# lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT mmcblk0 179:0 0 3.7G 0 disk |-mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 96M 0 part `-mmcblk0p2 179:2 0 3.6G 0 part /
However, if I boot from an uSD with a newer Debian version (say 9.2), the mmc devices look like this
debian@beaglebone:~$ lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT mmcblk0 179:0 0 3.7G 0 disk |-mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 3.3G 0 part / mmcblk1 179:8 0 3.6G 0 disk |-mmcblk1p1 179:9 0 3.6G 0 part mmcblk1boot0 179:16 0 2M 1 disk mmcblk1boot1 179:24 0 2M 1 disk
I can't figure out why this would be unless there is a hardware difference. Is there some other formatting incompatibility that is preventing the eMMC from showing up in /dev? If so, is there any way to make it readable by the older O/S?
Message was edited by: Jason Jones
