Computer/BeagleBone Black
Contents
1 Device information
TODO
2 Upstream status
For the supported versions:
| Software | Status |
|---|---|
| Linux |
Linux has pretty good support for the Beaglebones, very few things are lacking:
|
| u-boot (bootloader) |
|
3 Booting
The bootloader cannot be installed on all storage devices, as the bootrom only supports loading it from certain storage devices.
See the table below to see which storage devices you can install the booloader on:
| Storage device | Bootloader can be installed |
|---|---|
| MicroSD | Yes |
| eMMC | Yes |
| USB keys, USB Hard drive, etc | No |
Once the bootloader runs, it can access files on USB keys, USB HDD / SSD, etc.
However ARM bootloaders like u-boot often lags behind Linux:
- u-boot doesn't support all the newer ext4 filesystem features
- u-boot cannot open encrypted partitions
The installation instructions already takes all that into account, so you will either need to format the ext4 filesystem in a special way or convert it to not use certain features.
4 Installation
Available bootloaders:
Additionally Scripts for installing Parabola on the internal 4GB EMMC can be found at the knochenreiter repository.
The BeagleBone Black can also be bought with Parabola already install on it at Phreedom2600.
5 Free software status
- To use it you probably need a microSD and potentially other mass storage devices. MicroSD and most of the mass storage devices (HDD, SSD, eMMC, USB keys, etc) have a firmware inside.
- The GPU doesn't work with free software. Additionally it's way more complicated to reverse engineer and it has a nonfree firmware, so it's unlikely to work anytime soon (or at all).
- I'm unsure if the DSP can work with free software or not as it requires a firmware. There are many firmwares for it out there and it's probably possible to write your own but I don't know if that still depends on nonfree software (like DSP BIOS) or not.
6 Technical references
| dts | TODO |
|---|---|
| u-boot configuration | TODO |
