Booting On ARM architecture :

The Beagle Board’s firmware contains a first-stage bootloader called X-loader. X-loader can also be loaded from a removable storage space (such as an SD card) in a signed file called MLO. X-loader bootstraps the system only enough to load the second-stage bootloader, which otherwise would not fit into memory.

The second-stage bootloader provided in flash memory on the Beagle Board is U-boot, although most distributions provide their own version of U-boot in a file called u-boot.bin. U-boot initializes the system, then boots the Linux kernel. It can also be run from the console.

The Linux boot image, named uImage, finally boots the Linux kernel, which resides in the Linux file system in the /boot directory.

There are several ways to set up the file system; the method shown here requires a bit of work at the beginning but is flexible. Also note that this is the way the pre-built Ångström SD cards arrive if you order them from Special Computing.

Preparing MLO and u-boot.bin for Beagleboard-xM -

Get the Source Code of the Bootloader (u-boot) (It supports ARM architecture) using Command -

$ git clone git://git.denx.de/u-boot.git u-boot-main

$ cd u-boot-main
$ git checkout –track -b omap3 origin/master

/* For Building bootloaders For arm the toolchain must be installed in your Host PC */

$ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-linux-gnueabi- mrproper

$ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-linux-gnueabi- omap3_beagle_config

$ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-linux-gnueabi-

Then copy the MLO and u-boot.img images in the first Partition of SD card (have FAT32 type Filesystem)
/* Download Kernel From the kernel.org site and prepare it according to the steps given below */

$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-linux-gnueabi- omap3_beagle_defconfig

$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-linux-gnueabi- uImage

Then copy the uImage from the arch/arm/boot/uImage to the first partition of sd card

/* For Root File System Either you can build it using busybox or Buildroot . Another Way is to download Rootfs from Angstrom Site(demo images) and extract the root file system in second partition of SD card (ext3 type filesystem)

Replace the Kernel image inside boot Partition from your build Kernel Image
and create a softlink named uImage using

$ ln -s source_image_name uImage

/* Enviournment */
for boo.scr creation create a boot.scr.txt file and write the content

setenv bootargs ‘console=ttyS2,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext3 rootwait’
mmc init
fatload mmc 0 0×80300000 uImage
bootm 0×80300000

$ mkimage -A arm -T script -O linux -C none -a 0 -e 0 -n “boot.scr” -d boot.scr.txt boot.scr

and put this boot.scr file in 1st Partition of SD-card