Make a Beaglebone Debian testing image installable

Published: 2014-10-18

As discussed in my previous post on the Beaglebone Black, Robert Nelson provides multiple Debian images for the Beaglebone. The installer image, however, is only available for Debian Wheezy, but you can easily turn the Jessie (Testing) tarballs into an installer image as well. Here's how.

First, grab the latest image (check for updates):

$ wget https://rcn-ee.net/deb/rootfs/jessie/debian-jessie-console-armhf-2014-08-13.tar.xz
$ md5sum debian-jessie-console-armhf-2014-08-13.tar.xz
188687f57d5bc9f60c7b939100d44273  debian-jessie-console-armhf-2014-08-13.tar.xz

Unpack the tarball and use the script inside to write the Testing image to your card:

$ sudo ./setup_sdcard.sh --mmc /dev/sdb --dtb beaglebone

Make sure to change sdb to the correct device name.

After the installation is completed, re-insert the MicroSD card. The card will contain two partitions - BOOT and rootfs. Go to rootfs and uncomment the cmdline parameter in the bootloader configuration file:

$ sudo sed -i '/#cmdline=init/s|#||' boot/uEnv.txt

Now unmount the card, and boot your Beaglebone from it; it will start flashing right away just like with the Wheezy installer image.