BeagleBoard SD Card Software Bits

From Crashcourse Wiki

For simplicity's sake, if you're just getting started with your BeagleBoard, the simplest thing to do is install everything you need on an SD or SDHC card and boot entirely off of that. The binary image files you're going to need:

• MLO (X-loader)
• u-boot.bin (U-Boot loader)
• uImage (kernel image)
• a root filesystem of some kind

And where do you get all of the above? There are number of available distros out there (Angstrom, Android, Ubuntu, etc.), each of which has its respective download site. And while each will have its own uImage file and root filesystem, theoretically the first two files should be distro-agnostic. (That's the theory; however, it probably won't hurt to download everything from the same distro site, just to be safe.)

As one example, here's the [Angstrom download page], where you can see all four of those files.

WHOA, HOLD ON THERE: Apparently, there might be subtle inter-relationships between a U-Boot image and the corresponding kernel, not so much so with the MLO image. But to avoid any surprises, you might as well make sure that you get all the bits and pieces from the same place. Why risk it?

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