Cloudy Beaglebone

Beaglebone is a SBC with an ARM processor and several input-output interfaces. For that reason is needed an operative system prepared to run on an ARM architecture and with the corresponding drivers to make these interfaces work.

Note: this guide has been done with Ubuntu distribution, but it is possible that with the same steps it work with another Debian based distribution.

Install the base system

• Insert the microSD Card into your computer and observe which device it registers as by typing ls /dev/sd. If you are uncertain, remove the microSD Card and the entry should go away. Once you know which device your microSD Card is, follow the instructions below replacing /dev/sdX with the name of the microSD Card in your system.

• Begin partitioning the microSD card by typing fdisk /dev/sdX.

1. Initialize a new partition table by selecting o, then verify is empty by selecting p.
2. Create a boot partition by selecting n (new), then p (primary), and 1 to specify the first partition. Press enter to accept the default first sector and specify 4095 for the last sector.
3. Change the partition type to FAT16 by selecting t (type) and e for ‘W95 FAT16 (LBA)’.
4. Set the partition bootable by selecting a then 1.
5. Next, create the data partition for the root filesystem by selecting n for (new), then p (primary), and 2 to specify the second partition. Accept the default values for the first and last sectors by pressing enter twice.
6. Press p to ‘print’ the partition table.
7. Finally, commit the changes by selecting w to write the partition table and exit fdisk.

• Continue to format the partitions and to install the boot system and the root system.

1. Format partition 1 as FAT by typing mkfs.vfat /dev/sdX1.
2. Format partition 2 as ext4 by typing mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX2.
3. Install u-boot to the microSD Card.

wget http://s3.armhf.com/dist/bone/bone-uboot.tar.xz
mkdir boot
mount /dev/sdX1 boot
tar xJvf bone-uboot.tar.xz -C boot
umount boot

1. Install the desired root filesystem to the microSD card (Ubuntu Trusty in this example).

wget http://s3.armhf.com/dist/bone/ubuntu-trusty-14.04-rootfs-3.14.4.1-bone-armhf.com.tar.xz
mkdir rootfs
mount /dev/sdX2 rootfs
tar xJvf ubuntu-trusty-14.04-rootfs-3.14.4.1-bone-armhf.com.tar.xz -C rootfs
umount rootfs

The microSD Card is now ready to boot. Note that for ubuntu installations, the login userid is ubuntu and the password is ubuntu.

Tip: the package cache has been flushed to reduce the size of the images. Run apt-get update after boot to update the package cache, then run apt-get upgrade to ensure the latest updates are installed.

Install Cloudy

To install Cloudy you can follow the instructions to convert a plain Debian installation in Cloudy by adding the system the specific files and tools of the distribution.

We call it "cloudynize".

We recommend to use a script to automate the process. You can know how to in the wiki page that explains how to "cloudynize".