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Beaglebone Essentials
Beaglebone Essentials

Beaglebone Essentials: Harness the power of the BeagleBone Black to manage external environments using C, Bash, and Python/PHP programming

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Beaglebone Essentials

Chapter 2. Managing the System Console

In this chapter, you will learn how a serial console works, and how you can use it in order to control/monitor the system activities (for example, monitoring the kernel messages, managing the bootloader, and so on).

Then, a brief introduction of the basic system management commands will be presented. In this section, you will learn about some useful command-line tools to manipulate files, and how to manage the distribution's packages.

At the end of the chapter, a special section will introduce you to the bootloader commands so that you may feel more confident to manage this important component of the system.

Getting access to the serial console

As shown in Chapter 1, Installing the Developing System, during our first login, we can easily get access to the system through a USB connection; however, doing it this way we use a virtual serial line created by the kernel that is not available during the first boot stages (that is, when the bootloader runs).

However, to have more control of the board (that is, complete booting stage control, kernel debugging messages, and so on), we must get access to the serial console, which is a real device, and it can be accessed using a serial adapter connected to connector J1, as shown in the following image:

Getting access to the serial console

There are two different kinds of serial adapters on the market. The first one is a standard FTDI USB to TTL cable, as shown in the following image:

Getting access to the serial console

While the second one is a standard TTL to RS232 converter, as shown in the following image:

Getting access to the serial console

Note

The TTL to RS232 converter can be purchased (or by surfing the Internet) at

http://www.cosino.io/product/rs-232-serial...

Basic system management

Now it's time to take a quick tour of some basic system management commands, which may be useful in the next sections.

Tip

Note that the following commands may be used in both the serial console or the SSH terminal emulator.

File manipulation tools and friends

One of the main principles of Unix systems is that everything is a file. This means that in a Unix system, (almost) everything can be accessed as a file. So, we can use the same commands to read/write a file for every peripheral connected to the system (for example, disks, terminals, serial ports, and so on).

Since this book's main goal is to show you how to get access to the system's peripherals, it's quite obvious that these commands are very important to know. Moreover, in the next chapters, we are going to use several command-line tools to set up our BeagleBone Black and its attached peripherals, so in this section, I'm going to list some of them.

Tip

The following tutorial will not cover...

A quick tour of the bootloader

As stated, at the beginning of this chapter, using the serial console, we can get access to the bootloader.

Actually, the BeagleBone Black has two bootloaders: one named SPL, which is the prebootloader that initializes the hardware components, such as the RAM and some mass storage devices, and the second named U-Boot, which is the real bootloader that initializes almost all the peripherals and has support for, among other things, booting over a network, and a scriptable shell through which basic commands can be given. Now the one million dollar question is: why should a developer be able to manage the bootloader too?

Well, the answers are more than one, however, the most important are as follows:

  • By passing a well-formed command line to the kernel, we can change some functionalities in the running filesystem.
  • From the bootloader, we can easily manage a factory restore method (this is usually made with a hidden button in a tiny hole on the system's box. By...

Summary

In this chapter, we saw how files are manipulated and kernel messages are managed. We also learned about some crucial bootloader commands and microSD management that will help us in the forthcoming chapters. Also, we were familiarized with the operation of the U-Boot bootloader and were able to learn a few commands that can help us if the BeagleBone Black gets stuck while booting.

Now it's time to compile and/or cross-compile programs to get the maximum performance from our embedded system and to be able to fully customize it.

So, let's go to the third chapter.

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Description

If you are a developer with some hardware or electrical engineering experience who wants to learn how to use embedded machine-learning capabilities and get access to a GNU/Linux device driver to collect data from a peripheral or to control a device, this is the book for you.

Who is this book for?

If you are a developer with some hardware or electrical engineering experience who wants to learn how to use embedded machine-learning capabilities and get access to a GNU/Linux device driver to collect data from a peripheral or to control a device, this is the book for you.

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : May 28, 2015
Length: 240 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781784397388
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Publication date : May 28, 2015
Length: 240 pages
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ISBN-13 : 9781784397388
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Table of Contents

12 Chapters
1. Installing the Developing System Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Managing the System Console Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Compiling versus Cross-compiling Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Quick Programming with Scripts Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Device Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Serial Ports and TTY Devices Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Universal Serial Bus – USB Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Inter-integrated Circuit – I2C Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Serial Peripheral Interface – SPI Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. 1-Wire Bus – W1 Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Useful System Daemons Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
(2 Ratings)
5 star 100%
4 star 0%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
Eternauta Sep 02, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Una sintetica introduzione all'uso della BeagleBone Black. Può essere utile ad un utente che sta imparando ad usarla da zero fino ad un modo più evoluto, soprattutto perché spiega come accedere direttamente alle periferiche.Chiari i capitoli su I2C, SPI e 1-wire.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Thaddeus B. Nov 24, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Using a Beagle Bone Black Rev C and was stuck making a LKM driver for it. Reading this book puts all the needed steps from the very basic to deep details like full compilation of the kernel and building a driver into perspective. Rodolfo even cites other books for deep dive help in very complex areas. All the information is presented well and clearly. A truly excellent book and Rodolfo keeps the content current in an ever changing sea of kernel updates. I HIGHLY recommend for a beginner or expert.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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