How to use u-boot-beaglebone port?

[Paul Mather]

Has anyone successfully used the sysutils/u-boot-beaglebone port?

I managed to build [1] and install it today.  I tried to install it to the SD card FAT partition, as per the README, and the result was an unbootable system.

When I copied the u-boot.img file as u-boot.img (rather than the bb-uboot.img as suggested in the README), I got it to start up to the "U-Boot#" prompt.  However, it complained about not being able to load ubldr.

There isn't a ubldr installed by the u-boot-beaglebone port, so I copied the version from /boot/ubldr to the FAT partition.  That got it a little bit further, but now it hangs after reading ubldr.  This is what I get:

=====8<=====
U-Boot SPL 2014.10 (Mar 12 2015 - 14:38:55)
MMC: block number 0x100 exceeds max(0x0)
MMC: block number 0x200 exceeds max(0x0)
*** Error - No Valid Environment Area found
Using default environment

reading u-boot.img
reading u-boot.img


U-Boot 2014.10 (Mar 12 2015 - 14:38:55)

       Watchdog enabled
I2C:   ready
DRAM:  512 MiB
MMC:   OMAP SD/MMC: 0, OMAP SD/MMC: 1
reading u-boot.env

** Unable to read "u-boot.env" from mmc0:1 **
Using default environment

Net:   <ethaddr> not set. Validating first E-fuse MAC
cpsw, usb_ether
reading uEnv.txt
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0 
Booting from: mmc 0 ubldr
reading ubldr
201900 bytes read in 18 ms (10.7 MiB/s)

=====>8=====

After a while, I guess the watchdog kicks in and the whole cycle repeats.

I guess I can always restore the FAT partition to its original state, but it would be nice to know how to use the u-boot-beaglebone port files now I have them.

Cheers,

Paul.

[1] It required removing "CPUTYPE?=native" from my make.conf before devel/arm-none-eabi-gcc would build.