Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Solution
This solution is to flash an external microSD card and run the Bone from it. If you boot the
Bone with a microSD card inserted with a valid boot image, it will boot from the microSD
card. If you boot without the microSD card installed, it will boot from the onboard flash.
TIP
If you want to reflash the onboard flash memory, see
Recipe 1.13
.
NOTE
I instruct my students to use the microSD for booting. I suggest they keep an extra microSD
flashed with the current OS. If they mess up the one on the Bone, it takes only a moment to
swap in the extra microSD, boot up, and continue running. If they are running off the onboard
flash, it will take much longer to reflash and boot from it.
Windows
If you are using a host computer running Windows, go to
http://rcn-ee.net/deb/testing/
2014-11-11/lxde-4gb/
,
and download
bone-debian-7.7-lxde-4gb-arm-
hf-2014-11-11-4gb.img.xz
. It's more than 500 MB, so be sure to have a fast Internet con-
nection. Then go to
http://beagleboard.org/getting-started#update
and follow the instruc-
tions there to install the image you downloaded.
Linux
If you are running a Linux host, plug a 4 GB byte or bigger microSD card into a reader on
your host and run
Disks
.
Select the microSD Drive and unmount (
Figure 1-28
) any partitions that have mounted.
Note the path to the device (shown with an arrow in
Figure 1-28
) at the top of the Disks
window. In my case, it's
/dev/sdb
. We'll use this path in a moment.
