Trouble Installing Fedora on Beagle-V Ahead Board

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1

Hey everyone,

I am trying to install Fedora on my Beagle-V Ahead Board but I have been having some trouble getting it working.

Most of my info is coming from these two sources: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/RISC-V/T-Head, https://docs.beagle.cc/latest/boards/beaglev/ahead/02-quick-start.html.

I have tried the following:

  • Downloaded the prebuilt Fedora image for TH1520 platform from here (https://openkoji.iscas.ac.cn/pub/dl/riscv/T-Head/th1520_light/images/).

  • Flashed it onto an SD card, trying using both balena etcher as well as the dd cli tool

  • Entered USB flash mode by holding usb button then hitting reset and then letting go of the usb button

  • Connected the beagle board to my computer and flashed u-boot for the beaglev board (from here: https://openkoji.iscas.ac.cn/pub/dl/riscv/T-Head/th1520_light/FW/)

  • Powered the device off, inserted the SD card, and then powered device on

  • The LED lights on the board now stay solid and the device does not output anything (without taking these steps, just booting into the image that came on the board, 1 LED stays solid and 1 blinks and I am able to ssh into the machine and it operates as expected).

I have tried using a USB to UART cable in order to access the serial debug console, however when I connect that I am seeing no output from the device.

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2

Hi, have you managed to boot a Fedora image on the Beagle-V Ahead board since your last post? I haven’t found any official resources for this. Could your boot problem be related to a bad device tree? I can’t boot from SD either by following the steps you sent, I’ve only the message:

brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.

I don’t know if U-Boot SPL on the SD card isn’t loaded or if the issue concerns something else.

3

I was able to boot a Fedora image on the Beagle-V Ahead. Here are the steps I followed to do so:

  1. Download RISC-V Fedora image here: https://openkoji.iscas.ac.cn/pub/dl/riscv/T-Head/th1520_light/images/fedora-disk-multi-desktops_thead_th1520-f38-20230516-002100.n.0-sda.raw.xz

  2. Flash to an SD card. I used BalenaEtcher but you can also use cli using dd tool (sudo wipefs -a /dev/sdX && sudo dd if=fedora-disk-multi-desktops_thead_th1520-f38-20230516-002100.n.0-sda.raw of=/dev/sdX status=progress bs=4M)

  3. Change the default boot option in /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf (line 6). It defaults to the Lpi4A boot option (f37P), change to BeagleV Ahead boot option (f37B)

  4. Download u-boot for beaglev from here: https://openkoji.iscas.ac.cn/pub/dl/riscv/T-Head/th1520_light/FW/u-boot-with-spl_beaglev.bin

  5. Flash u-boot for the Beagle-V Ahead board into the EMMC. To do this, press and hold the usb button, then hit the reset button, then let go of the usb button in order to put the beagle into USB flash mode. Then run the following commands:

sudo fastboot flash ram /path/to/u-boot-with-spl_beaglev.bin ;sudo fastboot reboot

sleep 10

sudo fastboot flash uboot /path/to/u-boot-with-spl_beaglev.bin ;sudo fastboot reboot

  1. Power device off and then insert the sd card

  2. Power the device up and the BeagleV should boot Fedora

Getting a FT232 cable for debugging is really useful. This is the one I used but I had to buy a few because some of them didn’t work for some reason.

FT232 cable

  • This allows you to access the serial debug console
  • Tried a few different FT232 cables and this is the one that worked
    • If one of the cables isn’t working try a different one or order a new one, for some reason sometimes some of them just do not work, I had to buy multiple

I recommend using minicom for communicating with the device

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