Debian Recovery SD card

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DART-MX8M - Debian recovery SD card

Variscite provides a recovery SD card image that can be used to install the pre-built Debian images into the internal storage device of the SOM.

Download the recovery SD card image

Download the latest recovery SD card from Variscite's FTP server: https://variscite-public.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/DART-MX8M/Software/debian

Note: Some web browsers have removed FTP support. Please see our FTP wiki page.

The easiest way to download files from an FTP server using the Linux command line is to use wget:

$ wget https://variscite-public.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/DART-MX8M/Software/debian/stretch-4.14.78-mx8m-v1.0.img.gz 

Write the image to an SD card

Note: During the SD card image writing all files and partitions are erased from target device.
Double check that the device is correct to avoid accidentally overwriting a different device and potentially damaging your existing operating system.

Using a Linux based host

Plug-in the SD card to your Linux HOST PC, run dmesg and see which device is added (i.e. /dev/sdX or /dev/mmcblkX)

$ gunzip mx8m-dart-debian-recovery-sd.vXX.img.gz
$ sudo umount /dev/sdX*
$ sudo dd if=mx8m-dart-debian-recovery-sd.vXX.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M conv=fsync status=progress; sync

(Replace /dev/sdX with your actual device)

Using a Windows based host

• Download Win32 Disk Imager from: https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ and install it.
• Extract downloaded <image name>.img.gz file to get <image name>.img (using 7-Zip for example)
• Insert your SD card into your PC.
  No need to format the SD card before writing the image to it, as the card will be formatted once it will be flashed.
• Run the file named Win32DiskImager.exe (in Windows 7, 8 and 10 we recommend that you right-click this file and choose “Run as administrator”). 
• If the SD card (Device) you are using isn’t found automatically. Click on the drop down box and select it 
• In the Image File box, choose the <image name>.img file you have extracted previously 
• Click Write 
• After a few minutes, you receive a notification that your SD has been created successfully. 

Using a Mac OS X host

Use the dd Utility for MAC OS X to flash .img files to your SD card.

Recover NAND flash/eMMC

• Power-off the board.
• Insert the SD card into the SD card slot of the carrier board (DVK)
• Make sure the Boot DIP switches are set to SD card: Setting the Boot Mode
• Power up the board - it will boot into Linux from the SD card

Flash from command line

• Login as root (password root)
• From Linux command line, type the following

$ install_debian.sh	- Flash Debian into eMMC

SD card image file tree

/opt/images/
└── Debian
    ├── rootfs.tar.gz
    └── imx-boot-sd.bin

The install_debian.sh script file is located at /usr/sbin/