[MinnowBoard] Headless Operation

[eviljoel]

Hello Jon and Michael,

OK, I kinda figured it out (but not completely). It wasn't the display
that was keeping the Minnowboard from booting, it was the lack of a
keyboard. More specifically, the lack of a device in the USB 2.0 slot. I
suspect this is related to the fact that I am booting the operating
system from the USB 3.0 slot. Having no device in the USB 2.0 slot
causes the boot loader to not find the boot device.

To get around this issue, I'm just going to plug an old flash drive into
the USB 2.0 slot when I'm not using the keyboard. That said, if anyone
has any ideas about how to get the firmware to boot the USB 3.0 device
without a USB 2.0 device, I'm all ears.

Unfortunately, even with the flash drive in the USB 2.0 slot, I'm having
a little trouble getting the device to boot consistently. I've had it
abruptly stop about 3 times with the following screen (over serial):

UEFI Interactive Shell v2.1
EDK II
UEFI v2.50 (EDK II, 0x00010000)
Mapping table
     BLK0: Alias(s):
          PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0x1,0x0)
Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
Shell>

I also sometimes get this screen:

UEFI Interactive Shell v2.1
EDK II
UEFI v2.50 (EDK II, 0x00010000)
map: No mapping found.
Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
Shell>

I tend to get this "error" when the devices has been powered off for
several minutes. I'm currently researching UEFI boot options to see if
there is something I can do. Unfortunately, I'm finding that UEFI
documentation is hard to come by.

BTW, thanks for the serial port tip. That helped a lot.

Thanks,
eviljoel

On 11/26/2016 01:04 AM, eviljoel wrote:
> Hello John,
> 
> Good to hear someone has it working headlessly. Can you tell me the
> version of Linux you are using? Can you also tell me your firmware version?
> 
> I'm trying to run it headless over SSH. If I run into problems, I don't
> mind plugging it into a monitor from time to time, but generally I was
> hoping to run it without a monitor.
> 
> I'll likely try using the serial console later this weekend. It will be
> a good way to see if Linux is even starting.
> 
> Thanks,
> eviljoel
> 
> On 11/25/2016 11:27 PM, John 'Warthog9' Hawley wrote:
>> On 11/25/2016 08:18 PM, eviljoel wrote:
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> I've been trying to run the Minnowboard headless with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
>>> with the latest Minnowboard firmware. On subsequent boots with a monitor
>>> plugged in, the system logs record no boot attempts while headless. It
>>> appears that the Minnowboard is not booting Ubuntu or Ubuntu does not
>>> get far enough into the boot process to start logging. Plugging in the
>>> monitor after the Minnowboard has been powered on does not result in any
>>> video output. I'm starting to think the Minnowboard is not capable of
>>> headless operation.
>>>
>>> So what's the story? Is the Minnowboard capable of headless operation?
>>> So far, Google hasn't turned up anything but I can't imagine I'm the
>>> first one to run into this issue.
>>
>> I run the board headless, using only the serial console, quite a bit -
>> so it is possible.  Not sure how you are trying to run headless, but the
>> firmware will output information to the serial port, and assuming you
>> have your Linux distro setup correctly (usually by adding
>> `console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0` to your kernel boot parameters, but
>> I'm unfamiliar with how Ubuntu does it for sure), you should get serial
>> console data out.  Not entirely sure what you are seeing, but if you are
>> running headless can you confirm your setup with your serial port?
>>
>> - John 'Warthog9' Hawley
>>
> 

-- 
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