[arm-allstar] node building

[Doug Crompton]

Jim,

 The short answer is you could but there really would be no advantage in doing it and maybe some disadvantages. The internal eMMC is nothing more than a permanant SD card. The problem is if it goes bad you can't replace it. Once the BBB boots it basically runs in RAM. It does reads when necessary from the SD card but rarely does writes. Using the removable SD card makes it very easy to have complete backups that can be inserted in seconds. This would not be possible with the internal eMMC. If you were out somewhere in a remote location you would have to take a complete BBB written with the backup instead of just an SD card to accomplish the restore. 

So with that in mind I made the decision to not use the internal eMMC. For the "C" version of the BBB you have a perfectly good copy of Debian prei-nstalled in the eMMC that we don't touch so if you should ever decide to use your BBB in a different way you can just remove the SD card and it will boot Debian.

The disadvantage is you need to pay an extra $10 for an SD card but I find that a small price to pay for the flexibility. 
73 Doug
WA3DSP
http://www.crompton.com/hamradio


> Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 23:11:32 -1000
> From: jim.pilgram at gmail.com
> To: arm-allstar at hamvoip.org; arm-allstar at hamvoip.org
> Subject: Re: [arm-allstar] node building
> 
> Dave, Doug,
> Thanks for the reply. This leads me to a follow-up question. I'm curious as to why you wouldn't/can't blow away the mmc flash ‎away and Just load the image there. I'm guessing that it may not be large enough to handle it. 
> 
> Aloha 
> Jim
> 
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network.
>   Original Message  
> From: David McGough
> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2014 17:07
> To: BeagleBone Black ARM Allstar
> Reply To: BeagleBone Black ARM Allstar
> Subject: Re: [arm-allstar] node building
> 
> 
> Hi Jim,
> 
> All config info is currently only on the uSD card. The mmc flash on the
> BBB is not modified at all, by default. So, you can take an existing,
> working uSD card out of the BBB where it was setup and plug it into a new
> BBB and the new BBB will be functionally identical to the old (and the old
> BBB will then again boot the original firmware it came with from the
> manufacturer).
> 
> 73, David KB4FXC
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2014, James R. Pilgram wrote:
> 
> > Aloha,
> > Noob question! I was wondering if I have a working BBB, Is the uSD card 
> > married to the BBB? Can I pull the uSD card and boot it in a different 
> > BBB outside my network and not have to edit anything except maybe the IP 
> > information depending if I set it up static or DHCP and Port forwarding 
> > stuff. Does anything get written to the BBB or just the uSD card? I'm
> > looking to set up more repeater and simplex nodes around the Island and 
> > wanted to do all the editing from the comfort of my desk. Then when I 
> > get more BBB's I can pretty much plug and play.
> > 
> > I did read
> > http://www.crompton.com/hamradio/BeagleBoneBlackAllstar/BBB-backup.pdf
> > Just wondering if the BBB cares where the uSD card was originally 
> > configured.
> > 
> > Jim NH6HI
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > 
> > arm-allstar mailing list
> > arm-allstar at hamvoip.org
> > http://lists.hamvoip.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/arm-allstar
> > 
> > Visit the BBB web page - http://www.crompton.com/hamradio/BeagleBoneBlackAllstar/
> > 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 
> arm-allstar mailing list
> arm-allstar at hamvoip.org
> http://lists.hamvoip.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/arm-allstar
> 
> Visit the BBB web page - http://www.crompton.com/hamradio/BeagleBoneBlackAllstar/
> _______________________________________________
> 
> arm-allstar mailing list
> arm-allstar at hamvoip.org
> http://lists.hamvoip.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/arm-allstar
> 
> Visit the BBB web page - http://www.crompton.com/hamradio/BeagleBoneBlackAllstar/
 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.hamvoip.org/pipermail/arm-allstar/attachments/20140723/ef637bed/attachment.html>