Computers/BeagleBone Black

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: The 3D acceleration is unsupported but the display controller works The cape support is not in Linux upstream (it was there before in Parabola due to patches from Arch) I'm unsure if the PRU are supported, we need to check I'm unsure if the DSP typically used for video and audio decoding acceleration can work with only free software
u-boot (bootloader)	(Almost) complete support in u-boot. I'm unsure if HDMI displays and USB keyboards work in u-boot as I don't have an adapter (yet) to test.

Here's the user interface status:

	Display	USB Keyboard	UART	USB OTG	Ethernet
Bootrom	Unsupported	Unsupported	?	recovery mode only under certain circumstances	?
U-boot (bootloader)	No HDMI display with Parabola's u-boot 2020.07-1	Doesn't work with Parabola's u-boot 2020.07-1 (tested with the UART)	Settings: 1152008N1 (from u-boot environment)	Missing ums command Maybe some more commands missings	Works but needs configuration (tested with the UART and the dhcp+tftp commands)
Linux	Only shows the Linux console at the end of the boot by default Starts earlier (in the initramfs) if you add tilcdc to MODULES in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf	Works in the Linux console	Settings: 1152008N1 (from /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf)	Works but needs configuration	Works but needs usual user configuration
Systemd	N/A		Settings: 1152008N1 (from /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf)	Works but needs configuration	Works but needs configuration
OpenRC	N/A		TODO: Test it	TODO: Test it	TODO: Test it
Xorg	Fails to start for some reasons (tested with Xorg -retro and systemctl start lightdm)		N/A
Wayland	Fails for some reasons (frozen display)		N/A

3 Booting

The boot-rom of a typical ARM computer supports booting only from specific storage devices. See the table below for which storage devices on which you can install the boot-loader on the BeagleBone Black:

Storage device	Boot-loader can be installed	Accessible after boot
eMMC	yes	yes
SATA	n/a	n/a
MicroSD	yes	yes
SPI	n/a	n/a
USB flash, USB Hard drive, etc	no	yes

Note that hardware and feature support in ARM boot-loaders such as u-boot, often lags behind Linux. For example, currently:

• u-boot doesn't support all the newer ext4 filesystem features
• u-boot cannot open encrypted partitions

You may need to format your target filesystem (or re-format an existing filesystem) in a special way. The Parabola ARM installation guide explains these caveats.

4 Installation

Available bootloaders:

• uboot4extlinux-am335x_bone

Additionally Scripts for installing Parabola on the internal 4GB EMMC can be found at the knochenreiter repository [dead link].

The BeagleBone Black can also be bought with Parabola already install on it at Phreedom2600 [dead link].

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

7 See also

• BeagleBone Green