Flash a Bootable SD Card for Rugged board

Objective:

This guide describes a method of flashing an SD card with a bootable images for the Rugged Board i.MX6UL . The demonstration image file is a customized Linux® distribution created using the Yocto project. This article assumes a Linux Ubuntu-based host, though the steps are similar for Windows®, macOS® and most Linux distributions.

Materials:

Hardware:

• You will need an SD card reader/writer for your PC

• SD Card

• Rugged Board i.MX6UL

Software:

• Gparted

• Ubuntu 20.04

• minicom

Files:

Use your own binary images or choose an appropriate binary images from this link with the below name.

• barebox.bin

• oftree

• zImage

• rb-qt5demo-image-ruggedboard-imx6ul.tar.gz

Connection Diagram:

to be done.........

Procedure:

Preparing the bootable SD Card:

• Insert the SD Card to your PC. Open the application named “GParted partition editor”, it will ask the password, after entering the password the GParted application will open.

• Select your SD Card device at the right top corner of the window shown in below figure as selected in red color box.

• Then unmount the sdcard partitions using right click on the partition. And Select the sdcard partition then delete the partition

• Right click on the partition and select the “new” option , then one window “Create new partition ” will open.

  At the option “free space proceeding” should be “8” and at “New size” give the “2048” and at “File system” select the “fat32” and at “Label” enter “boot” then click on “add” option.

  And then right click on the lower partition “unallocated” and click on the “new” option. Then one window will open and at “New size” enter “1024” then at “File system” select the “ext3” and at “Label” enter the “rootfs” and then click on “add”.

• Then click on the “right mark” on the menu. Then click on apply, It will take few seconds. Then close the “Applying pending operations” window.

• Then right click on the “boot” partition and select the “Manage flags” then select the “boot” in options. Then click on “close” option. It will take few seconds to complete.

Boot the Board with SD Card:

HOST :

Step 1 :- Flashing barebox.bin into SD-card 8 MB raw space

$ sudo dd if=<path of the barebox image> of=/dev/sd<a/b/c/d> bs=512 skip=2 seek=2

$ sync

Step 2 :- Copy the kernel image(zImage), oftree image(.dtb) into the boot partition of the sdcard. Below are the command to copy into sd card

$ cp zImage /media/<username>/BOOT

$ cp oftree /media/<username>/BOOT

Step 3 :- Root file system tar file should be extract to the rootfs partition of the sdcard using the below commands.

$ sudo tar -xvf <path of the rootfs tar file> -C /media/<username>/rootfs

$ sync

TARGET :

• Now insert the sdcard into the board and make the switch positions for booting from sdcard.

• And give the power supply to the board by connecting the USB cable between your PC and Board.

• Open minicom and Boot the Board by pressing the RESET button then it will boot the board then enter the username as "root".

• Your Board is READY TO USE.