[Solved] Beaglebone Black won't boot Arch from SD card

[spudgunner]

So I've been trying to get Arch working on the Beaglebone Black as per the instructions on the device page and haven't been very successful. When I try to boot the board from the SD card, I get lots of flashy lights on the board for 5-10 seconds perhaps and then everything turns off (including the power light). Upon using the reset button, the power light comes on, and the other four lights slowly turn (over the course of about 10 seconds) until they are all on and nothing is happening. At no time does the board get on my network during the attempted boot. I do not think the problem is related to the type of SD card (as I have read about it other cases of people not being able to boot from the SD card) since I was able to use the same SD card to update Angstrom on the board after I first got it (and after I borked the original version of Angstrom that was on the NAND memory).

Any help would be appreciated.

[kmihelich]

Get a better power supply. Everything turning off means it's inadequately powered.

[spudgunner]

Thanks, I will try that. I have been running it off the USB port on my router for power; I'm pretty sure I first tried running it from a USB port on my desktop but I'll be sure to try that again. I'll have to add a 5V supply to my list of stuff to buy for this I guess.

[spudgunner]

Success! Apparently Arch Linux ARM requires more juice than Angstrom does (a single USB port doesn't provide enough power and I was lucky enough to find a 5V power cable laying around)... I can't decide if this is good or bad.

Either way, I'm happy!

[kmihelich]

Our kernels default to the performance CPU governor, whereas the others likely default to ondemand, which means our power requirements are higher when starting.

[spudgunner]

That's good to know. Perhaps that should be included on the installation instructions so people don't try to run Arch on the board with a single USB port.

[kmihelich]

The board runs just fine from my desktop's USB port. When you use the supplied (short) cable and a port that actually provides the USB specification 500ma, there isn't an issue.

[spudgunner]

I just tried it on my desktop now that I have if installed on the onboard NAND memory it it looks to be working. So it's looking like a problem with my SD card causing power consumption I guess.

[kmihelich]

The latest bootloader tarball available on the installation page has a fix in the uEnv.txt for allowing >500mA through the mini-USB port.

You can also add this to your current uEnv.txt by adding the following command to uenvcmd:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'i2c mw 0x24 1 0x3e')

To make it look like this:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'uenvcmd=run findfdt; if test $board_name = A335BNLT; then i2c mw 0x24 1 0x3e; setenv mmcde.....')

However, because we know it can draw over 500mA, we recommend using a USB charger that can supply more than this as opposed to a port on a computer.