Create A Burning Card From Command Line

This guide contains step-by-step instructions to create a Burning Card for Linux users. You may also use this Windows Guide(VIM1/VIM2/VIM3) instead.

The operation of VIM1, VIM2 and VIM3 is almost the same, so this document will take VIM1 as an example.
As the burning card only support FAT32 filesystem, because the Ubuntu desktop image size is large then 4GB, so it is not supported to burn via TF card.

Preparation

  • Build your own, or download (VIM1/VIM2/VIM3) the latest U-Boot file for SD-Cards.
  • You may need to format the SD-Card Via FDisk (VIM1/VIM2/VIM3) if your SD-Card contains >1 partition.

Before You Start

You may have to delete all the partitions first, you will loss all data on it, please remember to save them.

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$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdX

Then you need to creat only 1 partition:

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$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdX
NOTE

First sector must set to 4096.

The partition will be like this:

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Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdc: 14.86 GiB, 15931539456 bytes, 31116288 sectors
Disk model: SD Card Reader
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x2914f327

Device     Boot Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1        4096 31116287 31112192 14.9G 83 Linux

The Start should be 4096.

Create the Burning SD-Card

Insert the SD-Card into your PC, and make sure the disk is unmounted:

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$ sudo umount /dev/sdX1

Format the SD-Card to FAT32:

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$ sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdX1
Note

Replace sdX with the correct one on your PC.

Use dd to write the Bootloader/U-Boot to the first sector of SD-Card:

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$ sudo dd if=u-boot.bin.sd.bin of=/dev/sdX conv=fsync,notrunc bs=1 count=444
$ sudo dd if=u-boot.bin.sd.bin of=/dev/sdX conv=fsync,notrunc bs=512 skip=1 seek=1
Tips

u-boot file u-boot.bin.sd.bin is build for SD, and u-boot.bin is for eMMC.

Copy the images to your SD-Card, you can build the image yourself or download from our storage.

Insert the SD-Card in again, then run the following command:

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$ cp -a aml_sdc_burn.ini update.img /media/XXX/9CE9-3938/
Tips

aml_sdc_burn.ini is a configuration file for U-Boot to burn/download images into the onboard eMMC storage. You can found it here

Note

The package in aml_sdc_burn.ini should match your image!
e.g. The image name above is update.img, so the package in aml_sdc_burn.ini should be package = update.img.

Eject the SD-Card:

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$ sudo eject /dev/sdX

Done!

Upgrade Using Your “Burning Card”

  1. Insert your Burning Card into your VIM, and power-on.
  2. Follow this guide(VIM1/VIM2/VIM3) to boot into Upgrade Mode.
  3. Wait till the process completes.
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