86Duino SysImage Installation (Linux)
86Duino SysImage is a utility which enable you to place 86Duino system firmware onto a MicroSD storage card, include the following:
- Create a bootable MicroSD storage card to launch 86Duino system firmware (Refer to: Advantage for launching 86Duino Firmware from MicroSD)
- Update 86Duino firmware on internal flash, including the bootloader
- Update 86Duino system BIOS
This application note talks about SysImage installation and usage (For more information refer to this URL).
Preparation
- You will need a MicroSD storage card with 1 GB or larger capacity
- An USB-to-MicroSD adapter is also needed
Step 1
Download the latest version 86Duino SysImage. After expanding the image file content to the /tmp directory on your development machine, you will see the 86duino.img image file, approximately 1 GB in size.
Step 2
As preparation to configure and place the 86Duino SysImage image onto the MicroSD storage card, insert the MicroSD storage card into the USB adapter and attach the USB adapter to the development PC.
As preparation to configure and place the 86Duino SysImage image onto the MicroSD storage card, insert the MicroSD storage card into the USB adapter and attach the USB adapter to the development PC.
Next, launch the Terminal program.
Execute the following command from the Terminal program:
sudo fdisk -l
You will see a list of storage device, as shown below:
From the above list, locate the MicroSD storage card, which is attached via an USB-adapter.
In our example, the MicroSD storage card is identified as ‘/dev/sdb’.
Make note of the partition information for the MicroSD storage card.
In this example, the MicroSD storage card only has one partition, identified as “sdb1”.
Next, un-mount the MicroSD partition, using the following command:
sudo umount /dev/sdb1
If the MicroSD has multiple partitions, repeat the command to un-mount all partitions.
After all partitions are un-mounted, the USB storage device icon disappear from the desktop, as shown below.
From the Terminal window, execute the following command to configure and place 86Duino SysImage onto the MicroSD storage card:
dd of="MicroSD partition" if="SysImage image file path" bs=1m
Here is the actual command for the example in this application note: dd of=/dev/sdb if=/tmp/86duino.img bs=1M
The process to configure and place 86Duino.img image onto the MicroSD storage takes approximately 6~7 minutes. Depending on the read/write performance for the MicroSD, the times may vary.
After the process is completed, remove the USB adapter from the development machine and remove MicroSD storage card.
Step 3
Insert the newly configured MicroSD storage card to the 86Duino board, using the MicroSD as the boot device and apply power to the 86Duino board.
During power on, the 86Duino board detects the inserted MicroSD storage card. When a valid boot partition is found on the MicroSD storage, the 86Duino board will continue the boot process using the MicroSD storage as the bootable storage, instead of the internal flash.
After successfully boot from the MicroSD storage, you can see the LED on the 86Duino board (as shown below) blinks 3 short pulses, follow by 2 long pulses, which indicates the 86Duino board successfully launched the new SysImage from the MicroSD storage.
Next, you can reset power to the 86Duino board and boot from the updated 86Duino BIOS and bootloader on the internal flash. Or, you can boot the 86Duino board using the MicroSD storage created from this application note and use it as the target device, and deploy sketch (86duino application) from the 86Duino IDE to the 86Duino board.
Note: SysImage is a sketch (86Duino application). When you deploy another sketch onto the MicroSD, it will overwritten and delete SysImage.
For more information about how to use SysImage, refer to information on this URL.
The text of the 86Duino reference is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
