MultiMediaCard
Instructions to use the MultiMediaCard (MMC/SD) on your Armadeus board
Contents
Introduction
You can use standard MMC/SD/miniSD/microSD cards with your Armadeus board:
- with an APF9328 DevLight V1, you must have the corresponding connector attached to your development board. and use an adaptor for miniSD and microSD
- with an APF9328 DevLight V2, you can use the onboard microSD connector
- with an APF9328DevFull, you can use the MMC/SD onboard connector and an adaptor for miniSD and microSD
- with an APF27Dev, an APF28Dev or an APF51Dev, you can use the onboard microSD connector
All needed drivers are included in the standard Armadeus Linux image.
Card insertion
You should see something like that on the Linux console:
# imx-mmc imx-mmc.0: card inserted mmc0: host does not support reading read-only switch. assuming write-enable. mmc0: new SD card at address 01b0 mmcblk0: mmc0:01b0 SD512 500224KiB mmcblk0: p1
Mounting the MMC/SD
- Just mount the MMC like you will do on your PC:
# mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/mmc
- Then, you can access the MMC's files from the /media/mmc directory
If you have problems with vfat code page, include the missing code page into the kernel.
Booting from MMC/SD
When your rootfs is too big to be put on the APF Flash, you can always use a MMC/SD like a Hard Drive and boot from it (this is possible because standard Armadeus kernel is compiled with the MMC driver built in).
Prepare your card
- On your APF board (to avoid to crash your Host HD), create a good partition table:
# /sbin/fdisk /dev/mmcblk0 Delete all existing partion with 'd' Create a primary partion: 'n' then 'p' then '1' Change bootflag to Linux: 't' then '83' Save partition table: 'w' (To quit without saving: 'm')
- Then, on your PC, format your MMC with Ext2 filesystem (booting on FAT is bad :-) ):
$ sudo mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdX1 (replace X with your MMC reader drive letter, if your Laptop has an integrated MMC reader then use mmcblk0p1 instead of sdX1)
- If not automatically detected/mounted by your distribution, mount your MMC/SD on your Host filesystem (for example in /media/mmc):
$ sudo mkdir -p /media/mmc $ sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /media/mmc (replace X with your MMC reader drive letter, if your Laptop has an integrated MMC reader then use mmcblk0p1 instead of sdX1)
Put your rootfs and Linux kernel on the MMC/SD
- Buildroot should be configured to generate a tar-ed rootfs (done by default), if not:
$ make menuconfig
Filesystem images ---> ... [*] tar the root filesystem Compression method (no compression) ---> () other random options to pass to tar ...
$ make
- and then uncompress the rootfs to the SD card, also copy the linux kernel to the rootfs /boot folder:
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Note: The APF51 (with U-Boot version older than 2013.04) and the APF9328 do not load the kernel from the SD card but use the one in flash instead. |
$ make shell_env $ source armadeus_env.sh $ sudo tar xvf $ARMADEUS_ROOTFS_TAR -C /media/mmc $ sudo mkdir -p /media/mmct/boot $ sudo cp $ARMADEUS_BINARIES/$ARMADEUS_BOARD_NAME-linux.bin /media/mmc/boot $ sudo umount /media/mmc
Boot
- Insert the MMC/SD/microSD in the corresponding slot of your Armadeus board and then under U-Boot do:
BIOS> run mmcboot
- if you want to automatically boot from SD at each startup, modify the bootcmd U-Boot macro:
BIOS> setenv bootcmd run mmcboot BIOS> saveenv
(default bootcmd when you receive your board is run jffsboot = boot from FLASH)
Performances
Troubleshots
VFAT Code Page
If you encounter this message (or something similar):
Unable to load NLS charset cp437 FAT: codepage cp437 not found
you have to add the charset to the supported kernel ones:
$ make linux-menuconfig
File systems ---> -*- Native language support ---> <*> Codepage 437 (United States, Canada) ... <*> NLS ISO 8859-1 (Latin 1; Western European Languages) ...
U-Boot usage
SD cards can also be used with U-Boot. The following commands are useful:
- Scan the MMC:
BIOS> mmc rescan
- List the MMC content:
BIOS> fatls mmc 0
- Load the file xxx.bin in RAM:
BIOS> fatload mmc 0 ${loadaddr} xxx.bin