Database Users

I need Recovery Partition

How to Access HPA
How to access HPA Partiton and extract all driver

Hello all.
I need Recovery Partition on English.
I talk with Pof he say that me must English Recovery partiton.
Please Send to my.
Thanks in advance!!!

I have sent the copy of my HPA partition to danielherrero which was hagving the same problem as you, and he could recover his vista with it, the problem is that my recovery partition installs a Spanish language Vista, which will not be good for you (as you might not understand spanish), so if someone could dump an HPA in english, this would be useful to people who lost it.
Instructions to dump and restore the recovery partition are on my blog:
http://pof.eslack.org/blog/2008/04/...re-the-vista-recovery-partition-on-htc-shift/

I can if acess to FTP/HTTP server for upload a Image and all software for HTC Shift and access for all people needet

pof said:
I have sent the copy of my HPA partition to danielherrero which was hagving the same problem as you, and he could recover his vista with it, the problem is that my recovery partition installs a Spanish language Vista, which will not be good for you (as you might not understand spanish), so if someone could dump an HPA in english, this would be useful to people who lost it.
Instructions to dump and restore the recovery partition are on my blog:
http://pof.eslack.org/blog/2008/04/...re-the-vista-recovery-partition-on-htc-shift/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hello
i dont mind doing that on my english shift..ive had quick look at the page discribing how to do it but being a bit of a thicko it would great if you could send step by step destructions for me..i have the capability of loading it onto external drive where i could give you access to upload..please advise me if you wish

pof said:
I have sent the copy of my HPA partition to danielherrero which was hagving the same problem as you, and he could recover his vista with it, the problem is that my recovery partition installs a Spanish language Vista, which will not be good for you (as you might not understand spanish), so if someone could dump an HPA in english, this would be useful to people who lost it.
Instructions to dump and restore the recovery partition are on my blog:
http://pof.eslack.org/blog/2008/04/...re-the-vista-recovery-partition-on-htc-shift/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, It saved my shift from SAT and several weeks out of home. Thanks again Pau
pd: Remove SD when dumping/restoring....
It takes 4 hours to dump or restore.
Pau....Maybe when I copied your fist MB did the trick?

plasticplanet said:
hello
i dont mind doing that on my english shift..ive had quick look at the page discribing how to do it but being a bit of a thicko it would great if you could send step by step destructions for me..i have the capability of loading it onto external drive where i could give you access to upload..please advise me if you wish
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Basically you need:
~1Gb USB stick
~3,5 Gb of free space on your Vista partition
1) Install Slax on the USB pendrive, follow instructions here:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/09/20/all-in-one-usb-slaxzip/
2) Reboot your Shift
3) Press Fn+F10 to choose the boot device, select USB pen drive
4) Slax boot menu will appear, choose the first option (KDE)
5) Open a Konsole (Terminal program), right next to the "K" menu in the menu bar.
6) Type the following command:
Code:
# dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hda1/shift-vista-recovery.bin bs=1 skip=36773560320
7) This will last about 4 hours, keep your Shift on charger and wait until it finishes. When it finishes you'll see something similar to this:
Code:
3226976256+0 records in
3226976256+0 records out
3226976256 bytes (3.2 GB) copied, 11938 s, 270 kB/s
8) Now reboot into Vista again, the backup of the HPA holding the vista recovery will be in c:\shift-vista-recovery.bin
9) Zip or Rar the 'shift-vista-recovery.bin' file and upload it somewhere, keep in mind this is a big file so you might want to split it in several volumes before uploading it.
10) There is no 10
That's all, feel free to ask if some point is not clear enough.

On Privet messegi send to Pof and plasticplanet FTP access for upload a HPA Partition on English or ES.

pof said:
6) Type the following command:
Code:
# dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hda1/shift-vista-recovery.bin bs=1 skip=36773560320
7) This will last about 4 hours
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not really 4 hours, for me that only did 98MB in 4 hours, and I had to use /mnt/hda1 anyway.
so tell me why is bs set to 1?
is bs=16384 fine? because that's how i did it in the end.
any way to verify the contents?
P.S: oh yes and my shift is hardspl'ed man!!

Probably I am in wrong but that command is dumping the last 3GiB of hda disk to the first partition of the same partition. Wouldnt be safer to dump to the sd or a usb pen?

no, the source is /dev so the hw device, like the whole hdd on windows
and the dest is /mnt/hda1 so the partition like C: on windows
the HPA "partition" is not part of the visible partition. no risk....
and the proper and FAST command is (if you are using the slack usb distro that pof linked to in his description) :
dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/hda1/shift-vista-recovery.bin bs=16384 skip=2244480
I assume similar method works for copying it back (the point is bs=16384).
if you want to be sure your shift has a partition of the exact same size, then read dmesg until you find the HPA (host protected area) information, should say what it said for pof and for me:
sda: Host Protected Area detected.
current capacity is 71826615 sectors (36775 MB)
native capacity is 78126048 sectors (40000 MB)
sda: Host Protected Area disabled.
sda: 78126048 sectors (40000 MB), CHS=16383/255/63
(ignore the "sda" part of course)
someone downloaded the backup I uploaded and confirmed it works.

cmonex said:
so tell me why is bs set to 1?
is bs=16384 fine? because that's how i did it in the end.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"bs" was set to 1 because I was too lazy to do the maths
Yes, you can increase it as long as you change the "skip" part too.

I have a problem.
I have two shift devices, one got screwed trying to install ubuntu MID and the other one is fine
I've tried your method with dd to the to copy the recovery partition from the working shift however it always fails during the fn f3(same failure that I got even before restored the image). IT starts the restore but fails somewhere along the line at 2%.
I noticed my hpa is at a slightly different location to yours using dmesg. Probably because it has office in it. How do I calculate the seek/skip
Also I tried doing a dd from higher on the drive just to see if I can atleast pick it up as excess got the same error.
Any help guys
btw good work on everything else you all have done

ok i got it..you guys were slightly off in your calculations so i wasn't sure that the address you got was by 512. Anyhow I have the .bin dump for anyone who needs it for the vista with office demo or those who partition size is different to that of the above postings. I also took it a little higher just to ensure i don't miss any of the partition
BTW posting from the previously bricked shift

Could you please stick this thread.
pof
Could you please stick this thread too. It has a lot of useful information.
Thanks
Ram

Hi there
if someone have a german Recovery partition Image for me, please let me know
My new HTC Shift has a Recovery Partiton but don´t boot with this. Don´t know why.
Maybe a recover of this partition may be work
But only for testing, i have made (before starting the Shift first time) a complete Acronis Image

I have a somewhat related question. I've basically busted my Vista recovery partition, long story short, I decided to try out ubuntu mid and didn't realize it was going to wipe my whole hdd (installed on my other laptops the regular images of ubuntu hardy and it asked me to specify partitions etc., but the mid didn't and I was half awake or vice versa).
I have now installed XP, and even though ubuntu mid appears to have wiped the HPA, it is still hidden from windows. I don't plan on going back to Vista (if I have to, I will just throw the thing out, xp just gave it a new lease on life). Is there a safe and easy way to unhide the hidden partition and use it, without having to install linux and without affecting my XP install (took too long to get it running and I'd rather give up the 3GB than have a go at it again, at least not until I really have to)?

I suppose I managed to unhide it, whiped it out and put it together with the rest of my HDD. Though now I used about 3GB with Acronis and created my own hidden/protected partition with XP completely set-up and some essential software. Worked like a charm.

Restore recovery partition
What is the correct command for restoring the rescovery partition bin file?
I used "dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/hda1/shift-vista-recovery.bin bs=16384 skip=2244480" to create the dump file.

I need you.
Hello.
I had installed ubuntu 8.04 and it run good, but the resolution was horrible.
With vista, the virtual resolution permits work without external panel, for not very long time, of course.
I don't now what i do wrong, and now i can't recovery the Vista by the recovery partition. I have installd a Vista Bussiness from a copy and with the activation key from my htc shift and it works good.
I wouid like recovery the recovery partition of my htc.
know you where i could get the "shift-vista-recovery.bin" image from?
thanks. and "help" me please

developing for the DSTL1 / N21

I want to try developing for the DSTL1 / N21
There are quite a few interesting things we can do...
Success has been been seen by xda-devs such as JesusFreke, Amon_RA, Haykuro, and Cyanogen (yes there others) in the field of Android ROMs. The ground work is there, porting and developing can commence.
Why do this?
Current ROM 1.5 - has many problems...
Unofficial ROM 1.6 - is a GREAT improvement, but makes one hungry for something better...
It would be awesome to have some success in this field. I know this device is capable of so much more, but I believe the implementation of the system is the issue. This is not the phone developers fault, as they have their own company agenda, but we could improve our own performance and satisfaction .
For example, my device (1.6 rooted) lags with having only ~50% CPU utilization and ~50MB RAM free...
Overclocking (i mean forcing full CPU capacity - 624Mhz) the CPU has barely helped and only aided battery drain...
Relevant comparison of G1 vs DSTL1 (N21) are
RAM - G1: 192MB vs DSTL1: 128MB
CPU - G1: 528Mhz vs DSTL1: 624Mhz
These specification comparisons say that G1 can run a better ROM than DSTL1? I don't think so. DSTL1 only loses in RAM, which can be made up for using swap!
Devs had success with techniques using: App2SD, swap, ext3, and BFS (faster file system). I believe we could do something impressive here! There are pros and cons to this.
Developers and Testers would be needed. A team of 5 developers and a few testers should be able to get us on the right track. We would definitely need Linux experience, or the desire and ability to soak up all the info on Google
A Linux kernel is a must for this phone, we would have to compile our own... It would be nice to preserve DUAL SIM, but in reality we might have to give up this luxury, as it is proprietary code, unless a new ROM is made backwards compatible (which is possible).
Cyanogen's Github is available for knowledge osmosis http://github.com/cyanogen
A DSTL1 Recovery by Amon_RA (based on Cyanogen's Recovery) is already in Beta...
Cool things are possible. Could I find some developers willing to donate their free time?
Please limit responses to dev talk.

reserved for later

crzyruski,
Believe it or not the very luxury you talk about giving up(dual sim) is the reason why may of us bother to buy these phones(DSTL1\N21) in the first place. Other wise we might as well go with a mainstream phone such as hero etc.

chrismotto said:
crzyruski,
Believe it or not the very luxury you talk about giving up(dual sim) is the reason why may of us bother to buy these phones(DSTL1\N21) in the first place. Other wise we might as well go with a mainstream phone such as hero etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its a possibility that I'm not going to ignore, so I stated it.
The point is that the current OS is lacking. Initially we would want to port and learn from porting of the quality ROMs available now. Those obviously don't support dual-SIM.
Progress needs to start from somewhere. When someone releases a new port or ROM not all pieces work... look at the Eclair (2.0) port, half the features don't work!
If enough heads came together we could probably retain dual-SIM, common this is linux and I've seen the most amazing development come to realization. I just need the teamwork because it might take me a whole year in my spare time...

Having a kernel working
Hi,
the most important IMHO is having a kernel working, built from sources.
Obviously, some closed source drivers must be rewritten, notably the NXP5209 (the GSM modem), if we want the device to be useful (i.e. if we want to make phone call).
My first attempt of booting with a custom kernel was unsucessfull (black screen), which brings to the second point: the lack of some sort of console for kernel debuging.
Any idea regarding the NXP? Anyone is aware of some opensource driver or specs?
Any idea also regarding kernel debugging in the N21/DSTL1?
sfabris

@sfabris
I will try to find info for the questions you have.
My initial work will be to make an emulator so we can test on PC and not our devices (because we need them functional for every day life )
Have you checked out how other modders have done kernel modifications?
Namely JF and Cyanogen?
I can't begin to comprehend so I'm glad you took the initiative with this.
Lets make some progress

sfabris said:
Obviously, some closed source drivers must be rewritten, notably the NXP5209 (the GSM modem), if we want the device to be useful (i.e. if we want to make phone call).
Any idea regarding the NXP? Anyone is aware of some opensource driver or specs?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe we have it all wrong???? Maybe its PNX?
PDA DB reports DSTL1 as having Nexperia PNX5209 (ARM946) Phone Controller.
http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=1714&view=1&c=general_mobile_dstl1
A similar Android with this phone controller is WayteQ X-Phone (TechFaith Lancer)
http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=1801&view=1&c=wayteq_x-phone_android_techfaith_lancer

crzyruski said:
@sfabris
Have you checked out how other modders have done kernel modifications?
Namely JF and Cyanogen?
I can't begin to comprehend so I'm glad you took the initiative with this.
Lets make some progress
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I'm forced to HTC G1 until I'll wait the replacement for my N21 I'll go in detail on the kernel boot process on other hardware.
A fast way to test kernel in our every day device is kexec which should work also on ARM.

sfabris said:
A fast way to test kernel in our every day device is kexec which should work also on ARM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I understand, kexec is a program that can run a new kernel on the fly...
So I could try a new kernel right from my device without reflashing?
have you tried this? Or is this still theory?

crzyruski said:
As far as I understand, kexec is a program that can run a new kernel on the fly...
So I could try a new kernel right from my device without reflashing?
have you tried this? Or is this still theory?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried it on x86, never on arm.
Support is there also for arm, but this not imply that also the Marvell PXA is supported.
It's basically the same way of booting Android from WM via haret.
Fastest way to boot your new kernel or to crash your machine

I have created an emulator.
FYI, LCD density should be 120.
Edit: Technically the density is 133...

files prevent recovery-RA-DSTL1-v1.2.3 from loading
I have been wrestling with the beta recovery-RA-DSTL1-v1.2.3
Amon_RA retrofitted his own recovery image to work for the DSTL1 (N21)...
IT HAS AWESOME POTENTIAL.
Currently ADB RECOVERY SHELL + ROOT is the only thing that is functional.
But I haven't been able to get in touch with him to continue work on it.
The following files prevent me from booting into RA's Recovery, so I remove them:
- e2fsck
- mke2fs
- parted
- tune2fs
Once I am in ADB RECOVERY SHELL I can push them back on and do what I need to do.
Unfortunately the changes are persistent so if I were to reboot and try Recovery Mode again, it won't load
What is so special about those four programs that prevent my recovery from loading?????

is there any ways to update the firmware of N21
hi,
i'm just buy a sciphone n21 (actually is already in our office for 2 weeks but find it now:-( )
and i've to face myself in a situation that i can't use this phone:-( since i buy this phone because:
- i assume that google apps auto sync contact and calendars. unfortunately this phone has not google apps by default.
- and has dual sim support.
so my question: is there any way to upgrade it to a firmware which support is?
can i do anything to use my phone?
thanks in advance.
regards.

crzyruski said:
I have been wrestling with the beta recovery-RA-DSTL1-v1.2.3
Amon_RA retrofitted his own recovery image to work for the DSTL1 (N21)...
IT HAS AWESOME POTENTIAL.
Currently ADB RECOVERY SHELL + ROOT is the only thing that is functional.
But I haven't been able to get in touch with him to continue work on it.
The following files prevent me from booting into RA's Recovery, so I remove them:
- e2fsck
- mke2fs
- parted
- tune2fs
Once I am in ADB RECOVERY SHELL I can push them back on and do what I need to do.
Unfortunately the changes are persistent so if I were to reboot and try Recovery Mode again, it won't load
What is so special about those four programs that prevent my recovery from loading?????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
e2fsck is a filesystem check utility for ext2
mke2fs is for ext2 filesystem creation
parted is a partitioning tool
tune2fs is for change some filesystem parameters (usually checking interval)
I've read that recovery from Amon-Ra creates automatically 3 partitions (ext2, swap and FAT32). So those commands whould probably mean ext2 filesystem creation. I'm sure Amon-Ra could give us more information on this subject because he added them to the image.
Have you checked your SD card?.
PD: I'm waiting for my N21 . So I can't test yet.

andferno said:
e2fsck is a filesystem check utility for ext2
mke2fs is for ext2 filesystem creation
parted is a partitioning tool
tune2fs is for change some filesystem parameters (usually checking interval)
I've read that recovery from Amon-Ra creates automatically 3 partitions (ext2, swap and FAT32). So those commands whould probably mean ext2 filesystem creation. I'm sure Amon-Ra could give us more information on this subject because he added them to the image.
Have you checked your SD card?.
PD: I'm waiting for my N21 . So I can't test yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for that insight.
I am not sure what RA's recovery would have done on its own...
but I have initiated and completed successfully a partition of my SDCard that includes FAT32, swap, and ext2.
Now that I have done this, for experimentation really, I don't know how to use it and what it gives me.
Obviously the swap is useless because I would need a cooked Android ROM that would actually utilize swap.
ext2 is probably for apps2sd... which I tried unsuccessfully - probably because of my own mistake.
I will continue trying and report again later.
As far as Amon_RA, he mentioned he was working on upgrading all the recovery images he has put out to the next version - thus we will be in queue until this comes to pass. Maybe we can just skip this version and go to the next

N21 vs DSTL1: stock comparisons
I have completed the comparison of recovery images of the DSTL1 and N21.
For this test I used an original mtd2.img from my DSTL1 and an original mtd2.img from Slemmen's N21.
The recovery images are identical:
Both mt2.img are 4,194,304 bytes
Both mtd2.img-kernel are 2,141,616 bytes
Both mtd2.img-ramdisk.gz are 386,645 bytes
What is also interesting to note is that the two boot images i inspected were also identical.
The DSTL1 boot image is one that came with the 1502 update from General Mobile (which may or may not be identical to the original).
The original N21 boot image, thanks to ikarishinjisan, is identical to the DSTL1 boot image:
Both mt1.img are 4,194,304 bytes
Both mtd1.img-kernel are 2,141,816 bytes
Both mtd1.img-ramdisk.gz are 148,671 bytes
*Notice how both recovery and boot are the same size... must be padded?
*Notice how boot kernel is 200 bytes more than recovery kernel.... interesting...
On a side note:
Bootloader is identical as expected: both ikarishinjisan's and my mtd0.img are 1,048,576 bytes.

If things are going to go custom, it might make some sense to put ext3 filesystems on these things.. ext3 is just ext2 with journalling, which could be helpful since phones can just die/get dropped/lose connection with battery/whatever.

Also, this can be done with the tools already there..
mkfs.ext2
tune2fs -j

dnfm said:
Also, this can be done with the tools already there..
mkfs.ext2
tune2fs -j
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you referring to the Amon_RA's custom recovery?
I can't get tune2fs onto the recovery without trickery, definitely not noob friendly... until we figure out why.
But great suggestion
I'm guessing the ROM must be coded to make use of ext3, otherwise its worthless?

The kernel would need to be configured to support ext3.

Eris Dual Boot ROM

I'm posting this in General as I don't have the knowledge to port this or develop a similar version for the Slide and I don't want to clutter up the Development forum.
Team ADX over in the Droid Eris forum came up with this gem; a dual boot Eclair Sense/2.2 AOSP ROM. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=824072
I don't know if this can be done on our phones, but I thought it possible as you don't need to flash a custom recovery.

man this would awesome... the best of both worlds, run and "stock" ROM so we can still receive updates and still have CM.

i was actually thinking about dual boot just the other day! i dont feel like id be switching back and forth from 2 roms but itd be a great feature for those who do. unfortunately i dont think we have that much developers :/

I was reading the instructions for it and it looks like we'll have to wait for S-OFF before we can try it.
Part of the scripting is telling the phone how to partition the phone, sizes of those partitions, and so on. The slide is, generally speaking, un-brickable and it's the measures used to give us that luxury that also prevent us from doing so much like R/W on the system while in a non-recovery boot and changes we do make while booted are just wiped on reboot *sigh* man I love that ramdisk image.
Once we get S-OFF let's get this project started

KCRic said:
I was reading the instructions for it and it looks like we'll have to wait for S-OFF before we can try it.
Part of the scripting is telling the phone how to partition the phone, sizes of those partitions, and so on. The slide is, generally speaking, un-brickable and it's the measures used to give us that luxury that also prevent us from doing so much like R/W on the system while in a non-recovery boot and changes we do make while booted are just wiped on reboot *sigh* man I love that ramdisk image.
Once we get S-OFF let's get this project started
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think S-OFF is the issue. The partitioning instructions only refer to sdcard. This command:
Code:
mkpartfs primary fat32 0 3500 (can be adjusted to your needs. This partition will be used by the 2.1 rom and by recovery)
I think is only for the phone ROM storage and the for the recovery to find the boot scripts. According to the instructions, they're only partitioning the sdcard to run the AOSP ROM in it. They install the 2.1 Sense ROM to the phone, get it set up, run the boottosd script to boot into the 2.2 AOSP ROM on the sdcard, then set that up and run the boottophone script to go back to 2.1 Sense. They're running a ROM on the sdcard!
As I said before, I think something like this can work for our phones because it doesn't require flashing a recovery. The problem is we don't have the devs to do it.

heybobitsme said:
I don't think S-OFF is the issue. The partitioning instructions only refer to sdcard. This command:
Code:
mkpartfs primary fat32 0 3500 (can be adjusted to your needs. This partition will be used by the 2.1 rom and by recovery)
I think is only for the phone ROM storage and the for the recovery to find the boot scripts. According to the instructions, they're only partitioning the sdcard to run the AOSP ROM in it. They install the 2.1 Sense ROM to the phone, get it set up, run the boottosd script to boot into the 2.2 AOSP ROM on the sdcard, then set that up and run the boottophone script to go back to 2.1 Sense. They're running a ROM on the sdcard!
As I said before, I think something like this can work for our phones because it doesn't require flashing a recovery. The problem is we don't have the devs to do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll take a look. No promises as I'm an übernoob but I would love to have this.
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using XDA App

migueltherocker said:
I'll take a look. No promises as I'm an übernoob but I would love to have this.
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You won't be able to do a simple port. I posted about it more of as a proof of concept. Take the same idea, but obviously using our espresso sense and CM6.

heybobitsme said:
I don't think S-OFF is the issue. The partitioning instructions only refer to sdcard. This command:
Code:
mkpartfs primary fat32 0 3500 (can be adjusted to your needs. This partition will be used by the 2.1 rom and by recovery)
I think is only for the phone ROM storage and the for the recovery to find the boot scripts. According to the instructions, they're only partitioning the sdcard to run the AOSP ROM in it. They install the 2.1 Sense ROM to the phone, get it set up, run the boottosd script to boot into the 2.2 AOSP ROM on the sdcard, then set that up and run the boottophone script to go back to 2.1 Sense. They're running a ROM on the sdcard!
As I said before, I think something like this can work for our phones because it doesn't require flashing a recovery. The problem is we don't have the devs to do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok that makes sense. I thought it was pointing to the partitions on the phone telling it to format to a different size for some reason. Then what's preventing us from doing this? Just a lack of a proper script?

I have not poked around with how they are going about doing everything, but I was the one who got the ball rolling with my dual boot linux script. Conap took the basic setup and made some changes to just install them both on the phone and sdcard. Here is the basic of what it is doing....
The init.rc file found in boot.img has been modified for the froyo rom on the sdcard. The lines where it mounts [email protected] , [email protected], and [email protected] have been changed to the partitions on the sdcard (/dev/block/mcblk0px) The updater-script for froyo has been modified to flash the rom to the partitions on the sdcard. There are some gscripts which are ran from the phone that either modify or replace the boot.img for the rom you want to boot into.
The froyo ROM is running completely off the sdcard and the recovery is left untouched. The script that is required if you are using clockworks is because clockworks sbin and folder locations are setup a little different. I was running into some problems with froyo not recognizing the sdcard after making more than 4 partitions. Several had reported to me that their phones also did not recognize the sdcard, but the Eris phones somehow still did. I am working on something that should run from all android phones and allow you the option of installing whatever ROM you want.
One Last Thing..
Anyone is capable of learning how to do some development work. It just takes some patience and "Google". I had no knowledge of linux or any other scripting languages, except windows batch scripts, until 3 months ago.
There is not much activity on my thread, but once I get a working version finished it will be posted there-----Dual Boot Android

When you get it done and own working, post it in development. I only posted the thread in general because I knew I wasn't going to be the one to develop it. I'm a welder by trade and java and linux are a little beyond me. Although I am trying as I'm using Ubuntu as my main OS and starting reading java tutorials.
Sent from my CM6 Slide

heybobitsme said:
You won't be able to do a simple port. I posted about it more of as a proof of concept. Take the same idea, but obviously using our espresso sense and CM6.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If there was ever a reason to get a dev started on a project, this would be it. I would reconsider upgrading from the Slide if we had something this awesome.

unCoRrUpTeD said:
I was running into some problems with froyo not recognizing the sdcard after making more than 4 partitions. Several had reported to me that their phones also did not recognize the sdcard, but the Eris phones somehow still did. [/URL]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I understand, android can not *see* more than 4 partitions so they had to do something a bit different. Somewhere in the thread that's linked it states what they did to get it to work.

s off is tmobs response to....
KCRic said:
I was reading the instructions for it and it looks like we'll have to wait for S-OFF before we can try it.
Part of the scripting is telling the phone how to partition the phone, sizes of those partitions, and so on. The slide is, generally speaking, un-brickable and it's the measures used to give us that luxury that also prevent us from doing so much like R/W on the system while in a non-recovery boot and changes we do make while booted are just wiped on reboot *sigh* man I love that ramdisk image.
Once we get S-OFF let's get this project started
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The "companies" wanted s-off due to the large number of brix getting returned for handest exchange and assurion claims, just to figure out somebody pooched sumthin up trying to be a HAXOR, if you haven't done anything like this before. Id suggest peeps get a g1 or some other root & rom-o-matic type for and play with it till you take on your brand new handset trying to install some bleenin edge hack...
You gotta learn to wank off before you can try it with somebody else in the room.
I remember my early days at xda, hacking my mda, xcaliber, and esato hacking SonyEricsson fones before they jumped the shark. People who had the ability to read and follow directions (emphasis on the read part) would study till they were sure they would still have a working fone at the end. Hung out and did great stuff with there handsets. And the noobs were wary enough to investigate before they just started mucking about.
So the handset manu. Had to do sumthin and now we have s-off.
the moral of my high and mighty rant an rave, if you don't know how to do sumthing or if you understand what to do but not the why, then keep reading, read more do less

KCRic said:
From what I understand, android can not *see* more than 4 partitions so they had to do something a bit different. Somewhere in the thread that's linked it states what they did to get it to work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the newest builds they have 2.1 system on the phones system partition and froyo system on the phones data partition. The data is moved to the SD. 2.1 and previous Rome had no problem with extra partitions on the sdcard.froyo changed the way it mounts the sdcard and could only see 4.
I am actually releasing a dual boot method very shortly that should work on any android phone with very little setup required on your part. I am in the process of finalizing it. Anyone interested in testing please let me know as I want to test on as many devices ad possible
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App

LolBoot xD SGS2 dualboot - NEW 12.12.11: Easy-Setup App v2.51

(I wasn't really sure if this might fit into "Development", so I put it here, maybe a mod will move it, if it's a dev topic )
Anyways, here we go, I DUALBOOTED two different, independant ROMs on the S2
Video of dualboot in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9-V_6Ua_D0
** THIS IS NOT (YET) COMPATIBLE **
** WITH ICS (ANDROID 4.0.x) ROMS! **
-- this goes for custom ROMs as well as stock ROMs --
Icey Sammich compatibility will be added once Sammy released their ICS kernel sources.​
!!! There now is an app for more convinient and easy setup of the dualboot !!!
(04.11.2011) DualBoot setup app v2.00: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=19049047&postcount=94
(12.12.2011) App has been updated to 2.51, lot's of good new stuff! >> Free Version -- Donate Version <<
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First off:
This is only a little experiment I did like "c'mon, has to be possible" - this is NOT (at least yet) tweaked for usability and anything the like, just a humble experiment.
That said, don't flame me if things are rather complexicated to do this ATM.
Maybe I'll come up with a more userfriendly way of setting this up, maybe someone else does, maybe no one does.
Also now that I found a base on what to do, there might be different ways (more easy ones maybe) to set this up, I'll keep toying around with it.
But let's cut to the chase, shall we
So, how was this set up? I'll give a brief rundown of what I did:
I edited a few .rc files in the initramfs of the kernel to make it actually perform a full boot when recovery mode was triggered and to fire up recovery mode when in battery-charging mode.
I also edited a few mounts in the boot .rc for the 2nd OS (in "recovery" mode) to use different partitions for /system and /data, so that we'd end up with really independant installs.
What partitions did I missuse for that:
partition 12 (mostly unused, only when installing a stock ROM AFAIK) for /system - that's a neat choice IMO as p12 is 512MB in size, just as p9 where /system usually sits on
partition 7 (which is usually /cache) for /data
gives us only 100MB of user data space, but for now that's OK, as said, it's only an experiment on how such a thing could be done.
with the original partition for /cache "gone", I mounted a tmpfs for it.
So the OS still has a usable /cache
Then I set up the two OSes:
(dualboot kernel not yet flashed)
Launchprep part 1:
I made a CWM backup of my normal installation I was running (stock XXKG6 at the time).
I installed DevNull-Test AOSP as to it's instructions
Some su'ed voodoo via a terminal while having the 2nd OS (the DevNull AOSP one, in this case) installed - best done in recovery mode via ADB:
rm -Rf /cache/*
cp -Rp /data/* /cache/
dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p9 of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p12 bs=4096
That did "set up" the 2nd OS to where it's supposed to go.
Launchprep part 2:
Then, "advanced restore" of the backup made a few minutes earlier:
- boot
- system
- data
Reboot
At this point OS #1 is running again and OS #2 is sitting in hiding, prepared to roll - so, let's roll:
Flashed the modified "dualboot kernel" (via an App or Odin or magic, doesn't matter).
---> DONE <---
reached the point to where everything works as shown in the video.
As said above already, yes it needs some manual work to set it up, yes there's a lot of things that might not work, yes there are other/better ways to set it up.
It's only a humble experiment - lot's of space for improvement.
Maybe you like it - for those who do, I wanted to share this
Attached to this post you find the modified kernel I used, it's based on my v1.20 custom kernel (see sig) but with the above mentioned changes.

I've seen the video m8, this is totally different approach, ur giving this device a new dimension. love u "in a straight way" hahaa

there currently an app called Bootmanager which also handle up to quadruple booting. But sadly currently only support HTC phones.
http://www.appbrain.com/app/bootmanager/com.drx2.bootmanager
well, one can hope!

Thanks OP this is an awesome concept! Very happy to see you posted it with a video! and nice boot animation!

sunwee said:
there currently an app called Bootmanager which also handle up to quadruple booting. But sadly currently only support HTC phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's the thing.... that app is HTC only.... but we have Samsung S-II and want dualboot as well.
I'm already brainstorming on how to enhance the actual usability of this, i.e. flashing a 2nd OS directely to it's place instead of first installing it to the main system partition. But there is problems when /data is not mounted to the original partition, at least stock doesn't like it on initial boot.... well, well....

That is great. Going to use this for sure. This should be in development for sure.
Congratulations already.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

This is impressive bro sure will use it
but i want to ask one thing
SD card needed for this or not ?

That would be really cool (and definitely should goes to original development). Does it work with CM7/MIUI + custom rom?

vikas776 said:
SD card needed for this or not ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, so far this completely works with all internal storage.
But I have a few ideas I have yet to try to get mounted from other places - like images in /sdcard for example (I *so* hope that'll work.... )

Hi
Does this kernel include any of the Hellcat kernel tweaks or are they work in progress.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Tricky103 said:
Does this kernel include any of the Hellcat kernel tweaks or are they work in progress.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I made this build based on my v1.20 custom kernel, so it has everthing that one has - plus the touchfix already

exactly what i was hoping for.
great job - pls continue your work

Hi i tried this with instanity rom last night. When I use the three buttons to boot it just sits there not booting. My guess is the kernel is not compatible. Unless I made a mistake somewhere.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Hm, yah, might be that the kernel isn't fully compatible with that ROM, what kernel does the ROM usually use?
Did you boot it up fully at least once before copying /data to /cache ?

Yes I did fully boot up. But his kernel didn't have advanced activated in recovery so I flashed your kernel and moved the cache okay. But it said /data not found when I ran the 2nd command line.
I will flash aosp later. I like that rom.
I am not sure what kernel nitr8 uses. I think it is his own, Insane.tar would you like it to see if they can work together.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Tricky103 said:
But it said /data not found when I ran the 2nd command line.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hm, yeah, that sounds like something didn't work.... make sure you run those commands as root, i.e. "su" as very first command (I'll add that to the first post).
Give me a direct link to the ROM and I'll try it.
Make take a few days though as I'm away from my computer a lot because of work the next two days, but I'll try once time permits.
Well yeah, and this still is in highly experimental stage, if I (or someone else) should ever get this to more stable and reliable state, I'll make an easy to use installer/setup tool
But I got a few other ideas on setting it up I have to try first....

http://goo.gl/2uZCh
This is the complete rom. Only 47mb. I thought you would like the whole rom

Tricky103 said:
Hi
Does this kernel include any of the Hellcat kernel tweaks or are they work in progress.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May be someday WINDOWS Mo 7 and Android on our sweet beast

Hi
I tried again with Aosp Dev-null. I still get this error "cp: can't stat '/data/*': No such file or directory "
after running this command line " cp -Rp /data/* /cache/ "
Any Ideas ?
It still doesn't boot if I press 3 button it brings up the boot logo and then black screens until it boots to the 1st partition.

Thanks for the link, will download and try as soon as time permits.
Also, try this command sequence, I got an idea what the issue maybe might be, give it a shot:
Code:
su
rm -Rf /cache/*
busybox cp -Rp /data/* /cache/
dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p9 of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p12 bs=4096
(use "busybox cp" instead of plain "cp", maybe it helps)
And some update on my ongoing thoughts for those interested:
- got an idea on how to make a more easy to use App for prepping and setting up the dualboot environment
- managed to do a neat thing I didn't really think it would work: issued a "mount" command and the OS thought it was mounting a partition of the internal flash (/dev/block/mmcblk0p12 in this test, but was testing for later on actually doing it with p9 - you might see where I'm headed here ) but instead of the partition it actually mounted from an .img file! (loopback)
i.e. "mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p12 /somedir" actually mounted "/somepath/someimage.img" to "/somedir" instead of the partition from /dev/block/... (you just gotta love Linux and it's flexible way of handling things....)
NOW, imagine /dev/block/mmcblk0p9 (the partition carrying the system) and p10 (data) being (kinda) transparently mounted from an IMAGE FILE
I "only" have to find a way to sneak this in before init starts mounting stuff.
If there's a way to do THAT.... unlimited multiboot from OS images, anyone?
(so far this is kinda dreaming, but would be cool to get it working )

Linx 7 android port?

UPDATE: it works. see my link below. If anyone knows how to root I'd appreciate if you reply.
Hi
I own a Linx 7 windows tablet. Android x86 builds have not been great due to lack of sound and other driver issues.
I want to flash the bios - the dual boot one - from the cube iwork7 tablet.
In a youtube video by "Mr Borshchuk" - i cant post links, the cube is shown here running the LINX bios, the same version as my tablet. Can I do the reverse and flash the cube dual boot bios on my Linx?
Do you think this would work?
They seem to have the same spec etc and I'm guessing the same board- the cube just has a silver back. All ports are in the same place.
UPDATE: After looking more on 4pda, the iwork seems to come in 1/16GB variants and 2/32GB variants. My linx has 1GB of ram but 32gb of storage. Would this be an issue? My search also confirmed they are hardware clones.
So, that's the BIOS flash method. My other thought is is there a way to boot the android rom from the cube tablet from the stock linx bios? I have tried using the androidx86 bootloader combined with parts of the cube image and parts of androidx86 but, as expected, it didn't work.
So: I'm currently downloading the dual-boot bios from 4pda. Should I flash to my Linx?
Thanks. I've always loved XDA.

androidonlinx said:
Hi
I own a Linx 7 windows tablet. Android x86 builds have not been great due to lack of sound and other driver issues.
I want to flash the bios - the dual boot one - from the cube iwork7 tablet.
In a youtube video by "Mr Borshchuk" - i cant post links, the cube is shown here running the LINX bios, the same version as my tablet. Can I do the reverse and flash the cube dual boot bios on my Linx?
Do you think this would work?
They seem to have the same spec etc and I'm guessing the same board- the cube just has a silver back. All ports are in the same place.
UPDATE: After looking more on 4pda, the iwork seems to come in 1/16GB variants and 2/32GB variants. My linx has 1GB of ram but 32gb of storage. Would this be an issue? My search also confirmed they are hardware clones.
So, that's the BIOS flash method. My other thought is is there a way to boot the android rom from the cube tablet from the stock linx bios? I have tried using the androidx86 bootloader combined with parts of the cube image and parts of androidx86 but, as expected, it didn't work.
So: I'm currently downloading the dual-boot bios from 4pda. Should I flash to my Linx?
Thanks. I've always loved XDA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just thought what's the worst that could happen and flashed the bios. it worked. installing android and windows now.
EDIT: Android works. If anyone wants to know how I did this, please reply
EDIT: Windows works. I have achieved a dual boot setup .

androidonlinx said:
I just thought what's the worst that could happen and flashed the bios. it worked. installing android and windows now.
EDIT: Android works. If anyone wants to know how I did this, please reply
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Windows works. .linxtablet.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=1462&p=8748#p8748 is a guide. I am that user.

Can you just flash the android with this? I've no need for windows but if you could please share some info on the procedure.
Thanks

redeyes_ni said:
Can you just flash the android with this? I've no need for windows but if you could please share some info on the procedure.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check my 'link' to LinxTablet forums. You have to flash both but you can just ignore Windows and have a 16GB android partition.

androidonlinx said:
Check my 'link' to LinxTablet forums. You have to flash both but you can just ignore Windows and have a 16GB android partition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Done all that which was handy enough so thanks but the android partition is only showing up as:
Internal Storage
Total Space: 4.36GB
I've loaded some apps which leaves me 2 GB free.
The only other partition is the external SD. Is there something I need to do to get the rest of the 16GB? Seems to me that it hasn't mounted or partitioned the internal memory correctly. The tablet is 32GB and I'm not concerned at just using the 16GB for android but with 2 GB left it's going to be a bit tight for apps.
Thanks again, any help would be appreciated.

I'm not sure. I'll check mine tonight but I remember having more storage than that. Are you sure your tablet is a 32gb version
Try using Minitool or Easus on the Windows side to resize the android partition if you can, or even just view the layout.
KitKat lacks support for apps to extsd. Root would mean we can fix this. The device does not support USB as port is otg and charge only so root has to be done with APK on tablet or on offline android fs from Windows. Anyone know how to root?
EDIT: checked. I have 3.43 GB free. Sorry, should have checked earlier. Android system takes up 2GB not shown, storage is only 28GB after bootloader, BIOS partition huge due to touch support in menus plus unnecessary drivers, plus I imagine the EFI partition was wrongly sized. This is fine for me, but will look into when I am working on Android again.
Currently not working on Android any more (fruity-based desktop OS port instead) but will come back to it. Hoping to also create an Androidx86 build to avoid BIOS flashing, but the BIOS flash does mean you have 64bit EFI on the Android side so can boot Win7, Darwin (you know what I mean ) and Ubuntu without modification.
Still looking to root. Anyone?

androidonlinx said:
I'm not sure. I'll check mine tonight but I remember having more storage than that. Are you sure your tablet is a 32gb version
Try using Minitool or Easus on the Windows side to resize the android partition if you can, or even just view the layout.
KitKat lacks support for apps to extsd. Root would mean we can fix this. The device does not support USB as port is otg and charge only so root has to be done with APK on tablet or on offline android fs from Windows. Anyone know how to root?
EDIT: checked. I have 3.43 GB free. Sorry, should have checked earlier. Android system takes up 2GB not shown, storage is only 28GB after bootloader, BIOS partition huge due to touch support in menus plus unnecessary drivers, plus I imagine the EFI partition was wrongly sized. This is fine for me, but will look into when I am working on Android again.
Currently not working on Android any more (fruity-based desktop OS port instead) but will come back to it. Hoping to also create an Androidx86 build to avoid BIOS flashing, but the BIOS flash does mean you have 64bit EFI on the Android side so can boot Win7, Darwin (you know what I mean ) and Ubuntu without modification.
Still looking to root. Anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man. I'll try to resize the partition if/when I need it. Great work, well appreciated.

androidonlinx said:
Currently not working on Android any more (fruity-based desktop OS port instead) but will come back to it. Hoping to also create an Androidx86 build to avoid BIOS flashing, but the BIOS flash does mean you have 64bit EFI on the Android side so can boot Win7, Darwin (you know what I mean ) and Ubuntu without modification.
Still looking to root. Anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any bugs to note with the *toshing?
Rooting wise I can see two options. 1. mount the android system in windows with ext2 viewer or something and root it manually using a SuperSU.zip or better yet with linux (to avoid permissions issues). 2. Is there any other stage in the android boot process that you can halt it at? Dnx mode or droidboot (I'm assuming similar setup to chuwi vi10), where perhaps the usb will work in slave mode and it is identified as a fastboot device, allowing you to flash a custom recovery/root.

HypoTurtle said:
Any bugs to note with the *toshing?
Rooting wise I can see two options. 1. mount the android system in windows with ext2 viewer or something and root it manually using a SuperSU.zip or better yet with linux (to avoid permissions issues). 2. Is there any other stage in the android boot process that you can halt it at? Dnx mode or droidboot (I'm assuming similar setup to chuwi vi10), where perhaps the usb will work in slave mode and it is identified as a fastboot device, allowing you to flash a custom recovery/root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good idea. The flash is done using droidboot but I cannot get back into recovery again

androidonlinx said:
Good idea. The flash is done using droidboot but I cannot get back into recovery again
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If its anything like the vi10 then Dnx mode is volume up and power from device off. Volume down and power is Windows/Android switcher. Volume down once the android logo appears will boot into droidboot.
Then there is the question of if you have a working custom recovery to flash, I think any of the baytrail recoveries from Dell/Chuwi etc. devices would work - will a kernel change if needed, and if the buttons work to enter recovery.

HypoTurtle said:
If its anything like the vi10 then Dnx mode is volume up and power from device off. Volume down and power is Windows/Android switcher. Volume down once the android logo appears will boot into droidboot.
Then there is the question of if you have a working custom recovery to flash, I think any of the baytrail recoveries from Dell/Chuwi etc. devices would work - will a kernel change if needed, and if the buttons work to enter recovery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Will try this when I next have some spare time and my Linx to hand.
Knowing the reputation if Cube it wouldn't suprise me if the stock recovery allowed custom zips but otherwise I will try and flash another recovery from a similar tablet.
I'll take another look on 4pda to see if they have achieved root there too
Thanks again

I have root if anyone is interested email me on [email protected]
HypoTurtle said:
If its anything like the vi10 then Dnx mode is volume up and power from device off. Volume down and power is Windows/Android switcher. Volume down once the android logo appears will boot into droidboot.
Then there is the question of if you have a working custom recovery to flash, I think any of the baytrail recoveries from Dell/Chuwi etc. devices would work - will a kernel change if needed, and if the buttons work to enter recovery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got root working on my linx7 with the icube dual boot email me and I will tell you how

Hi mate, I found you late but really wants to know how to install Android in Linx 7, I don't wan windows at all, please reply
Thanks
U

onlinejobwork said:
Hi mate, I found you late but really wants to know how to install Android in Linx 7, I don't wan windows at all, please reply
Thanks
U
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go to linxtablet.co.uk I put my work on there it does mean flashing the bios so backup your product key also the Android partition is only 4gig so you can dual boot and have both I did find a way of making it 8gig but it was messy and buggy

[email protected] said:
Go to linxtablet.co.uk I put my work on there it does mean flashing the bios so backup your product key also the Android partition is only 4gig so you can dual boot and have both I did find a way of making it 8gig but it was messy and buggy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
any direct link please ?

onlinejobwork said:
any direct link please ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://linxtablet.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2096