PandaBoard

Introduction

We have received a donation for a PandaBoard for use by XinCheJian projects by Joe Yu (joe dot yu at arm dot com).

Included are:

• PandaBoard
• Serial cable
• HDMI cable
• 5V power supply
• 4 GB SD Card with Ubuntu 11.04 pre-installed

Essential information

• Username/Password: xinchejian/(same as router admin password)
• LAN IP: 192.168.1.48 (pandaboard)
• SSH: password-authentication is disabled. Add your public key to the /home/xinchejian/.ssh/authorized_keys
  • WAN: xcj.dyndns-at-home.com

 $ uname -a
 Linux pandaboard 3.0.0-1205-omap4 #10-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Thu Sep 29 03:57:24 UTC 2011 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

Image install

• Download latest ARM Ubuntu image for server (ubuntu-11.10-preinstalled-server-armel+omap4.img.gz)
• Decompress and rename file from .raw to .img (using 7zip)
• Write image to SD card using win32 imagewriter or dd on Linux [1]
• Boot into install image

Additional packages

 sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant ssh-server vim hplip git unzip screen elinks

/etc/crontab

 * * * * * root /opt/wifi/listae.py --once True
 * * * * * root /usr/sbin/ntpdate cn.pool.ntp.or

/etc/sysctl.d/60-laptop-mode.conf

 vm.laptop_mode = 1

/etc/logrotate.d

• change rotate values in /etc/logrotate.d to 0

Others

• disabled swap in /etc/fstab
• HP 1200 Printer setup
• Wifi Data Collection setup
• Motion Detection setup

Things to explore

Have a project? Go ahead, use the board - it's for all members of XinCheJian. Just make sure to document what you do here...

• Installing Android on a separate SD card
• Powering from a regulated battery 5V supply
• Use the onboard GPIO
• Add an external USB harddrive

References

• Running Linux on a flash system
• PandaBoard Ubuntu How-To
• PandaBoard: official website
• Linaro: kernel, compiler, etc
• Ubuntu Preinstalled Linux image

Boot sequence

• X-Loader
• U-Boot (from the SD card)
• Boots kernel

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.5.0 (Apr 11 2011 - 09:48:22)
Reading boot sector
Loading u-boot.bin from mmc


U-Boot 2011.03 (Apr 20 2011 - 07:37:43)

CPU  : OMAP4430
Board: OMAP4 Panda
I2C:   ready
DRAM:  1 GiB
MMC:   OMAP SD/MMC: 0
Using default environment

In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
Panda #

Environment printing:

Panda # printenv
baudrate=115200
bootcmd=if mmc rescan ${mmcdev}; then if run loadbootscript; then run bootscript; else if run loaduimage; then run mmcboot; fi; fi; fi
bootdelay=3
bootscript=echo Running bootscript from mmc${mmcdev} ...; source ${loadaddr}
console=ttyS2,115200n8
loadaddr=0x82000000
loadbootscript=fatload mmc ${mmcdev} ${loadaddr} boot.scr
loaduimage=fatload mmc ${mmcdev} ${loadaddr} uImage
mmcargs=setenv bootargs console=${console} vram=${vram} root=${mmcroot} rootfstype=${mmcrootfstype}
mmcboot=echo Booting from mmc${mmcdev} ...; run mmcargs; bootm ${loadaddr}
mmcdev=0
mmcroot=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw
mmcrootfstype=ext3 rootwait
usbtty=cdc_acm
vram=16M

the new setup

this setup is by paul, using the PandaBoard to power most of XinCheJian!

first install as normal with this: headless

you'll need to use the blkid to get the UUID of the disk, this following one recommends to use LABEL (case sensitive) however it didn't work well

then move the contents to an external USB 2.5" HDD with this one: external disk