Sunday, June 16, 2013

Creating SD Image Without a Linux Machine

If you have a BeagleBone and want to play with my MachineKit image but are stuck on Windows without a handy Linux system (other than the 'Bone itself), I've created a page with instructions on how to do it.

You will need a USB Hub, a 4G or larger USB Key, and a USB SD Card Reader in addition to the uSD card itself, your BeagleBone, and a Windows system.

I went through this process because someone reported problems extracting the tar.xz file using a USB key on the BeagleBone, since they didn't have a conventional Linux system handy.  As long as you untar the image file on a system with lots of disk space and memory (the xz compression uses a lot of run-time resources, and most BeagleBone systems aren't setup with swap), the BeagleBone can be easily used to run the extracted setup_sdcard.sh script and make a working image.

The excellent 7-Zip archiver utility can be used on Windows to extract the tar.xz file onto a USB key, which can then be hooked to the BeagleBone, where you can run the setup_sdcard.sh script and actually create the image.

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