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Revision 37 as of 2012-05-01 13:06:08

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Installing Precise (12.04) using netboot onto a Marvell Armada XP Development Board

Before You Begin

You will need the following:

  1. A management device for serial access to the board.
  2. DHCP available for the board which will provide Internet access (to access the Ubuntu package archive).
  3. A TFTP Server accessible from the board.

Downloading the Installer

Download the Marvell Armada XP uImage and uInitrd and place them on an available TFTP Server.

Booting the Installer

Access the Marvell Armada XP serial console, for example with screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 on a management machine with a USB serial adaptor attached to it.

Power on the board.

Interrupt U-Boot by pressing Enter when prompted.

Type the following at the U-Boot prompt, replacing the IP address with the IP address of your TFTP Server:

dhcp
tftpboot 0x2000000 192.168.1.1:/uImage
tftpboot 0x1100000 192.168.1.1:/uInitrd
setenv bootargs "console=ttyS0,115200 earlyprintk=ttyS0"
bootm 0x2000000 0x1100000

This will boot into the installer. Follow the default partitioning scheme suggested.

Booting into the Installed System

When the installer finishes and reboots, interrupt U-Boot again and type the following. If you used a different partitioning scheme, adjust the ext2load and root parameters accordingly.

setenv bootcmd "ide reset;ext2load ide 0:1 0x2000000 uImage;ext2load ide 0:1 0x1100000 uInitrd;setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200 earlyprintk=ttyS0 root=/dev/sda2 ro;bootm 0x2000000 0x1100000"
save
reset

Your system should now boot into the installed system, with U-Boot configured and verified to continue doing so on future reboots.

Installing pre-installed OMAP3/4 Precise (12.04) Server Images

Follow these steps;

Download

Download the compressed image from the cdimage server.

Warning /!\ Check the md5sum to verify the image Warning /!\

Copy the image to SD card

You should write the raw image to a blank SD card. Make sure you're using at least a 2 Gig SD card so that you have enough room for the image.

Steps:

  1. Insert the SD card in your host computer's SD card reader.
  2. Make sure the SD card is not mounted (just umount it if needed).
  3. Identify the correct device name (like /dev/mmcblk0 or /dev/sdb).

  4. Run the following command to write it:

gunzip -c ubuntu-12.04-preinstalled-server-armhf+<omap or omap4>.img.gz | sudo dd bs=1M of=/dev/<device name>
sync

or

sudo sh -c 'zcat ubuntu-12.04-preinstalled-server-armhf+<omap or omap4>.img.gz > /dev/<device name>'
sync

(note: replace <omap image> with omap4 for panda/blaze/other omap4 based system and the raw block device for <device name> - not a partition. i.e. /dev/mmcblk0 )

Booting the image

  1. Attach a serial cable to the serial port on the board. (note: The board is already wired for a straight serial cable - no null modem needed)

  2. Open a terminal on your host system and launch a serial console monitor with the port set for 115200,n,8,1
    • Screen: screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

      • * you can end the screen session by pressing Ctrl-A and then K

    • Minicom: TERM=vt100 minicom

      • * the TERM=vt100 setting is needed for proper output formatting

        * you can end the minicom session by pressing Ctrl-A and then X or Q

  3. Insert the SD card in the system and switch on the board.

The system should start booting with output shown on your serial terminal. After the board resizes the image to fill the SD card, it will reboot and start oem-config to prompt for localization and user info.