Debian Installation on SD Card for BeagleBone Black

In order to install Linux on the BeagleBone Black an image of the operating system and a SD Card is needed. The operating system image will be burned on the SD card. Burning will performed at your computer or Laptop, normally a Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X or Linux computer equipped with a SC card reader device.

Afterwards the SD card will be plugged in at the BeagleBone Black and Linux will be booted from the SD card. After booting is finished, it is a good advice to update the BeagleBone Black with the news software releases.

First, download an image to your computer. I am using the Debian Image Jessie IOT¹⁾ (bone-debian-8.7-iot-armhf-2017-03-19-4gb.img).

This image contains:

• Distribution Debian 8.7 (Jessi)
• Linux Kernel Version 4.4.54-ti- revision r93

Due to the fact, that the provided images are changing frequently in time and sometimes older images are no more available, this image bone-debian-8.7-iot-armhf-2017-03-19-4gb.img.xz is also available at the TKN Web Server.

If you like newer or other images, you can find them at beaglebord.org. In most cases, the image-file is compressed in an archive, indicated by the .xz suffix at the end of the file name (e.g. debian-wheezy-7.2-armhf-3.8.13-bone30.img.xz).

In the past the process of decompressing an burning the image was a very complex task. First have to decompress the image with an appropriate compression tool, next the SD card needs some portions with appropriate parameters. These portions need to be formatted. And than the image can be flashed. The tools for this process are depend from the operation system.

Today the process ist done by a single tool, called balenaEtcher. First, download belenaEtcher from https://www.balena.io/etcher/, install and open ist. belenaEtcher is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

After starting galenaEtcher for following window opens up, similar like this:

Fig. 1: balenaEtcher Main Window

Here you can see the illustration of the process, starting with selecting the image file followed by selecting the target. The target is the device, where you have inserted the SD card. At the end the image file will be Flashed to the SD card.

Starting by selecting the image file press the “Select Image” button. A window opens and prompts you selecting the image file:

Fig. 2: balenaEtcher Select Image

At my computer the image file is located at the download folder. Note, that the image file is in compresses xz Format. The image will be decompressed by balenaEtcher. Now, select the image file and press the open button.

In the nextstep, press the button “Select Target”. Now, another windows opens. In this window, you get a selection of devices. Choose the device, where your SD card is plugged in. In my case (see Fit. 3), this is /dev/disk6 the “Apple SDXC Reader Media” device. Now press the “Continue” button.

Fig. 3: balenaEtcher Select Target

Finally, select the “Flash!! button. The main windows changes. Now, the progress of the flashing is shown (see Fit. 4). After flashing is completed, a verification of the content of the image file is compared with the contents of the SD card. If everything is successful, you cat remove the SD card and quit the program.

Fig. 4: balenaEtcher Flash!

At this point, we have built an SD card with the Linux operating system and can now start booting the BeagleBone Black.

To test, if everything is correct you must insert the SD card into the card slot of the BeagleBone Black and boot. During boot, press the ”User Boot“ button (see figure 5).

IMPORTANT: First press ”User Boot“ button and than connect the power supply. And NOT the other way round.

Otherwise the BeagleBone Black will not boot from your SD card, but from the eMMC. Also be sure, that the BeagleBone Black is connected via the Ethernet interface and has access to a DHCP server (a DHCP server is installed at TKN or at home on your DSL router).

If the boot process is finished, you can establish a ssh connection to the BeagleBone Black. The needed ssh client is already installed at Linux or Mac OS. If you are using MS Windows you have to install a client by yourself. A popular client is Putty, that can be obtain from http://www.putty.org.

Using Linux or Mac OS, open a terminal application and enter the following command:

ssh debian@beaglebone

In the above example a ssh connection to the host beaglebone with the userid debian will be established. The ssh client will ask you for the password of the user debian that is also debian.

For MS Windows users, please follow the instructions of Putty.

Fig. 5: User Boot