Booting BBB from eMMC raw partition

Thank you for reply Titus,

I am trying on Beaglebone Black,
Once I am successful, I will update the post.

Regards,
Ankur

Hi Ivan,

Thank you for reply,

We are planning to use raw boot from eMMC.
We don't want to load MLO from Vfat boot partition.

Meanwhile can there be two BOOT partition ? Will ROM code check two boot partition if it doesn't find MLO in first one ?

Thnak you,

Regards,
Ankur

Hi Ivan,

Thank you for reply,
Exactly, I have know how to configure header TOC header :(

Currently I tried repartitioning the eMMC and put the MLO, u-boot, uImage, dtb, uEnv.txt in boot folder but board doesn't boot.
Partition information of eMMC is as follows,

Disk /dev/mmcblk1: 1920 MB, 1920991232 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 58624 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/mmcblk1p1   *           1         978       31288   e Win95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk1p2             979       58624     1844672  83 Linux

but when i boot the board without micro MMC card, i see following output.

CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC


It means i didn't partition eMMC correctly. I have partitioned eMMC with steps same as MMC card.
if possible could you please suggest me how to partition eMMC correctly ?


Thank you,

Regards,
Ankur

Hi Ivan,

Thank you for reply,

I partitioned and formated eMMC as per the post but it didn't work,

One difference which i can see is fdisk in my BBB prints size and start & End interms of cylinders but
in your case it shows blocks. See below output,

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 58624.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/mmcblk1: 1920 MB, 1920991232 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 58624 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/mmcblk1p1   *           1         978       31288   e Win95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk1p2             979       58624     1844672  83 Linux

Command (m for help):

I am using buybox fdisk, are you also use the same ?
Any suggestion to match as yours ?

Thank you,

Regards,
Ankur

Also I'm able to see eMMC flash connected to different MMC interface.

Ivan log,

/dev/mmcblk0p1 * 2048 34815 16384 e W95 FAT16 (LBA)

/dev/mmcblk0p2 34816 3751935 1858560 83 Linux

Ankur log,

/dev/mmcblk1p1   *           1         978       31288   e Win95 FAT16 (LBA)

/dev/mmcblk1p2             979       58624     1844672  83 Linux

Ankur, so please ensure the boot mode settings for eMMC1.

Hi Titus,

Thank you for reply,

For me mmcblk0 is micro SD card.

So i have to use /dev/mmcblk1 only.

I think boot mode setting is okay, Currently i am trying this on BBB as custom board is not available yet.

@Ivan: in your case, Is it eMMC or microSD card ?

Thank you,

Regards,

Ankur

Hi Anker,

Which version of u-boot are you using?

Steve K.

Hi Ivan,

Apologies for late reply, I was allotted other high priority task so couldn't work on this.

I tried your suggestion to copy sd card to eMMC using dd but no luck,

But good news is I referred below link to write Angstrom to eMMC, firstly i followed the same steps and i was able to boot the Angstrom,
http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:Updating_The_Software#Flashing_the_eMMC

Then i observed the Partition information and figured out that C(cylinder),H(head),S(sector) values were important,
I erased the partition table and created it newly with fdisk utility as follows,

# fdisk /dev/mmcblk1
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI, OSF or GPT disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that the previous content
won't be recoverable.


The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 58624.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): m
Command Action
a       toggle a bootable flag
b       edit bsd disklabel
c       toggle the dos compatibility flag
d       delete a partition
l       list known partition types
n       add a new partition
o       create a new empty DOS partition table
p       print the partition table
q       quit without saving changes
s       create a new empty Sun disklabel
t       change a partition's system id
u       change display/entry units
v       verify the partition table
w       write table to disk and exit
x       extra functionality (experts only)

Command (m for help): x

Expert command (m for help): m
Command Action
b       move beginning of data in a partition
c       change number of cylinders
d       print the raw data in the partition table
e       list extended partitions
f       fix partition order
h       change number of heads
p       print the partition table
q       quit without saving changes
r       return to main menu
s       change number of sectors/track
v       verify the partition table
w       write table to disk and exit

Expert command (m for help): h
Number of heads (1-256, default 4): 255

Expert command (m for help): s
Number of sectors (1-63, default 16): 33
Warning: setting sector offset for DOS compatiblity

Expert command (m for help): s
Number of sectors (1-63, default 33): 63
Warning: setting sector offset for DOS compatiblity

Expert command (m for help): c
Number of cylinders (1-1048576, default 58624): 233

Expert command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table
[ 1523.497025]  mmcblk1:
# fdisk /dev/mmcblk1

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 58624.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): m
Command Action
a       toggle a bootable flag
b       edit bsd disklabel
c       toggle the dos compatibility flag
d       delete a partition
l       list known partition types
n       add a new partition
o       create a new empty DOS partition table
p       print the partition table
q       quit without saving changes
s       create a new empty Sun disklabel
t       change a partition's system id
u       change display/entry units
v       verify the partition table
w       write table to disk and exit
x       extra functionality (experts only)

Command (m for help): x

Expert command (m for help): c
Number of cylinders (1-1048576, default 58624): 233

Expert command (m for help): h
Number of heads (1-256, default 4): 255

Expert command (m for help): s
Number of sectors (1-63, default 16): 63
Warning: setting sector offset for DOS compatiblity

Expert command (m for help): n
Command Action
b       move beginning of data in a partition
c       change number of cylinders
d       print the raw data in the partition table
e       list extended partitions
f       fix partition order
h       change number of heads
p       print the partition table
q       quit without saving changes
r       return to main menu
s       change number of sectors/track
v       verify the partition table
w       write table to disk and exit

Expert command (m for help): r

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-233, default 1): Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-233, default 233): 9

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): L

 0 Empty                  1b Hidden Win95 FAT32     9f BSD/OS                
 1 FAT12                  1c Hidden W95 FAT32 (LBA) a0 Thinkpad hibernation  
 4 FAT16 <32M             1e Hidden W95 FAT16 (LBA) a5 FreeBSD               
 5 Extended               3c Part.Magic recovery    a6 OpenBSD               
 6 FAT16                  41 PPC PReP Boot          a8 Darwin UFS            
 7 HPFS/NTFS              42 SFS                    a9 NetBSD                
 a OS/2 Boot Manager      63 GNU HURD or SysV       ab Darwin boot           
 b Win95 FAT32            80 Old Minix              b7 BSDI fs               
 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)      81 Minix / old Linux      b8 BSDI swap             
 e Win95 FAT16 (LBA)      82 Linux swap             be Solaris boot          
 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)      83 Linux                  eb BeOS fs               
11 Hidden FAT12           84 OS/2 hidden C: drive   ee EFI GPT               
12 Compaq diagnostics     85 Linux extended         ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)    
14 Hidden FAT16 <32M      86 NTFS volume set        f0 Linux/PA-RISC boot    
16 Hidden FAT16           87 NTFS volume set        f2 DOS secondary         
17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS       8e Linux LVM              fd Linux raid autodetect 
Hex code (type L to list codes): c
Changed system type of partition 1 to c (Win95 FAT32 (LBA))

Command (m for help): a
Partition number (1-4): 1

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 2
First cylinder (10-233, default 10): Using default value 10
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (10-233, default 233): Using default value 233

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/mmcblk1: 1920 MB, 1920991232 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 233 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/mmcblk1p1   *           1           9       72261   c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk1p2              10         233     1799280  83 Linux

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table
[ 1610.069364]  mmcblk1: p1 p2

sfdisk command to partition eMMC
--------------------------------
echo ",9,0x0C,*
,,,-" | sfdisk -D -H 255 -S 63 -C 233 /dev/mmcblk1

After partitioning I formated mmcblk1p1 and mmcblk1p2 to vfat & eMMC respectively.
And copied MLO,uEnv.txt,u-boot.img,uImage,dtb and rootfs files respectively and board is booting fine.

Well but this is the procedure to recover my board but my aim is to boot the beaglebone black from raw eMMC partition without erasing the MBR+partition table.

I written MLO and u-boot.img at offset mentioned in the below link but it didn't help :(

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Linux_Core_U-Boot_User%27s_Guide#Updating_an_SD_card_or_eMMC_with_RAW_writes

Do you have any suggestion on the booting BBB from raw eMMC partition.

Thank you,

Regards,
Ankur

Hi Ankur,

Sounds good.

Finally you made it.

Thanks for sharing the solution with details.

Hi,

I am also facing the same issue on am335x platform with sdk7. Writing data from sdcard to eMMC and gives the below error to unable to make the partition properly.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/mmcblk1p1            2048      147455       72704    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

/dev/mmcblk1p2          147456     7733247     3792896   83  Linux

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.

The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at

the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)

Syncing disks.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How did you solved the issue. please help me with detailed commands.

rgds, lofna

I have couple of suggestions,

1. When your board is booting from SDCard, check if if you see eMMC partitions being mounted, (reason: Device our resource being busy error)

    mdev/udev might automount them.

2. If any of eMMC partition is mounted, umount them and then repeat the process.

3. If that is not the issue, are deleting old partition before creating new one ? If not do that.

If that too doesn't work, you can delete old partition table by erasing initial part of eMMC using below command

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M count=10

Regards,

Ankur