Errata

Getting Started with BeagleBone

Errata for Getting Started with BeagleBone

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The errata list is a list of errors and their corrections that were found after the product was released. If the error was corrected in a later version or reprint the date of the correction will be displayed in the column titled "Date Corrected".

The following errata were submitted by our customers and approved as valid errors by the author or editor.

Color key: Serious technical mistake Minor technical mistake Language or formatting error Typo Question Note Update

Version Location Description Submitted By Date submitted Date corrected
ePub
Page Page 259 (iBook edition)
code at top of page

Overall this is an excellent getting started guide for the BeagleBone. My new Beaglebone Black arrived with a problem connecting by SSH. Different computers got the same error. An online search showed that other people have been having this issue and the solution was to download a new Angstrom image and put it on a SD card which could be used to flash the eMMC with the new image. I followed the instructions in Appendix A for Mac OS X (Mountain Lion) but it didn't work. I found different instructions here: http://www.height8.com/info/devel/hardware/beagleboneblack/macupdateangstrom and in Adafruit's documentation. On my Retina MacBook Pro which has a built in SD reader, the SD was identified as Disk6s1. The command needed to be something like:
$ xz -dkc ./BBB-eMMC-flasher-2013.07.31.img.xz > /dev/rdisk6

It seems the r is important. Anyway I was able to get it to work with the format above and sure enough, once the newer image was installed SSH worked fine. Flashing took about 50 minutes.

Note from the Author or Editor:
Thanks for the correction; we've taken this information into account in our July 2014 reprint.

 Ross Fisher  Nov 02, 2013 
Printed
Page 11
3.c

Says...'Launch PuTTY, then enter "beaglebone.local"...'

Had to use "beaglebone.home"

Note from the Author or Editor:
Thanks for the correction, and sorry about the error. We've confirmed this is the case on some networks and have updated this in our July 2014 reprint.

 Anonymous  Apr 17, 2014 
Printed
Page 27
Set the NTP server section

It appears that it is also necessary when editing ntpdate to change the no after update_hwclock to "yes."

Also, when I followed the instructions for syncing the time (ntpdate-sync) i got the wrong time zone. I think this is because when I followed the instructions on the previous page for renaming the localtime file I found that the file was still linked to the default universal timezone file. So now I have two linked files (localtime and localtime.old).

BTW the instructions at http://derekmolloy.ie/automatically-setting-the-beaglebone-black-time-using-ntp/ did the trick for me.

Note from the Author or Editor:
Thanks for submitting this and sorry about the error. In the July 2014 update, we're using a different method to set the timezone (and ntpdate is now enabled by default).

 Arlin  Nov 22, 2013 
Printed
Page 27
Set the NTP SERVER

Given the level that a user is expected to be when reading this book, I think it should be clear that the Beaglebone must be connected via WiFi or via the Ethernet port for this procedure to work.

The book implies many different ways of connecting to the board in the previous example, but this section and next related to software updates will only work if you are on the internet.

Note from the Author or Editor:
Thanks for submitting this and sorry about the error; we tried to make this somewhat clearer. In the July 2014 update ntpdate is now enabled by default.

 Kevin McQuown  Jan 25, 2014 
PDF
Page 80
Step 7

The command "pip install xively-python" is failing with the latest (Sep 4) beaglebone black angstrom image. The error is that the library netrc cannot be found. I think netrc should be a standard library for python, but it is not present. From the python command line, I cannot import netrc.

Note from the Author or Editor:
Thanks for submitting this and sorry about the error. In the July 2014 update, which is based on the new default of the Debian distribution, this error does not occur.

 markpchicagp  Sep 14, 2013 
PDF
Page 114
Step 7

When executing the command: sudo xz -dkc BBB-eMMC-flasher-2013.09.04.img.xz > dev/disk2
my Mac (Mavericks based) returned an error:
bash: /dev/disk2: Permission denied
even though I had successfully unmounted it in the previous step.

For me it was necessary to run the command as follows:
sudo bash -c 'xz -dkc BBB-eMMC-flasher-2013.09.04.img.xz > dev/disk2'

credit: http://blog.robert.mcfrazier.com/fix-permission-denied-on-osx-dd-to-sd-card/

Note from the Author or Editor:
Thanks for the correction, and sorry about the error; we've taken this information into account in our July 2014 reprint.

 Cory Stewart  Jan 04, 2014