Title says everything.
Have you found a multi boot loader for any other Android phone? If yes, please tell where it is because I'd love to take a look at modifying it for the X5 / U8800.
There's an earlier thread at:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1043898
in which I posted:-
Now that we have Recovery and Overclocker boot images, can we make a menu based bootloader like GRUB that could chainload a chosen OS from a chosen storage device?
In our case, we could choose to load, say, our choice Froyo, Gingerbread, Generic Linux or even a FreedomBox kernel during recovery boot. This from the SD card instead of internal Nand if we choose!
Much less likely to wear out our irreplaceable internal 4gb internal nand storage than all this flashing that we will otherwise be doing.
Related
Has anyone worked on putting bootloader on the G1 Rom, then have the OS install on a partition on the SD card? That might make in possible to run the newer rom updates.
JustNic said:
Has anyone worked on putting bootloader on the G1 Rom, then have the OS install on a partition on the SD card? That might make in possible to run the newer rom updates.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want /system to be from SD you need to make a ram disk mount part of the SD to /system. .
This is Linux hackery not bootloader hackery.
No such home made bootloaders have been made for the g1 to the best of my knowledge.
I could see usefulness in a bootloader that loaded the partitions from SD before boot for booting multiple android versions w/o using recovery (dual boot)
And we could if needed tweak the partition layout. .
But the bootloader wont be able to remap physical partitions to the SD card.. so if the OS mounts it (system /cache/userdata) it must be either dealt with by Linux/android or be copied to internal storage before the system is booted.
Ok, I've been able to keep up with all the flashing of android on hd2 fairly easy since the beginning almost a year ago. This is the only time I've ever really had a hard time figuring it this thing out.
I have flashed nand miui rom with 250mb partition on my eu hd2 through clockwork recovery. I'm trying to try other builds so I do the same method previously by flashing the zip file on my sd card through clockwork but it always get stuck at "unpacking sdext" files.
Is it because each build require different size partitions? Is it something else? Am I missing a step?
This clockwork stuff is pretty confusing...help is appreciated and thank you all in advanced. Much love.
Yes, different builds do require different partition sizes. A GingerBread build can get by on a 150mb (and possibly less) partition, whereas a Desire HD based build will require a 400mb partition.
so how do i go about doing this? because ive tried to partition my card, but it just erases everything clean even with a backup
mini_robot said:
so how do i go about doing this? because ive tried to partition my card, but it just erases everything clean even with a backup
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The latest cwm partitions are flashed to your NAND and has nothing to do with partitions on your sd card. The sd card partitions are needed to run certain roms on the EU512 device.
To flash a cwm 1.3 partition, you need magldr 1.13, download the partition size you need, boot to usb flasher in magldr and run the daf.exe file from the download. It will wipe data on your phone NAND memory and should have no impact on data on the sd card.
I already have cwm 1.3 and magldr 1.13. I already flashed miui rom. That means I have to use a computer to flash other Roms as well? I thought the point of cwm is so u can flash and switch between roms without a comp?
or does this mean flash through the computer once and then u can switch between roms? sorry if I'm really dumb
You can (as long as you have the same partition size as is needed). I haven't tried it, but I guess you could install the 400mb partition and that should cover all rom types. The only problem is that you then create a larger partition on NAND than may be needed for some roms thereby reducing the internal memory available.
ClydeB1 said:
You can (as long as you have the same partition size as is needed). I haven't tried it, but I guess you could install the 400mb partition and that should cover all rom types. The only problem is that you then create a larger partition on NAND than may be needed for some roms thereby reducing the internal memory available.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ahhhhhh. I think I will try that and report back to see how it goes. thanks so much for your help. I will try to do the same for other people once I figure this out
I'd be interested to know the answer. Good luck....
welps. I have tried with no luck. I actually ruined my 8gb SD card trying it and had to get a new one.
Ive been able to flash the 400mb partition and have been able to flash any rom but like it has already been stated it affects the amount of internal memory available, not too bad for me as i have a tmous
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App
mini_robot said:
welps. I have tried with no luck. I actually ruined my 8gb SD card trying it and had to get a new one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, send me your 8Go SD if you think it's dead
NAND and SD are two different things. For your SD, just delete/recreate the partition and it will be new again.
Explanation I post somewhere else (hope it wll help you to understand):
===
I will try to explain.
I assume you have a non-TMOUS device. So your internal storage (let call it NAND) is 512Mo. This is all what your have.
The CWM xxxMo will be what your allocate for your build.
If you allocate 150 (by flashing CWM 150MB) you will have 512-150=362Mo free.
If you use CWM 400... you will have 112Mo free space.
The build you want to use take a little bit more than 100Mo. So why using CWM400 to fill it with only 100Mo???
You have to use the smallest CWM to put your build in it. This will give you the more storage space after installing the build.
Don't think the more "CWM" you will use the more space you will have. It's exacly the opposite.
Hope you understand. Please take into account that the figures I give are appoximation. Don't complain if instead of 362Mo you have only 300... it's more than enough anyway for most of us.
===
So if your first NAND needed a small partition only, you may have to flash again CWM with another partition setting (for ex a 400Mo to fit a desire HD NAND).
Go on the CWM thread to find the version you need (150, 250 and 400 are available). Some thread are also available to modify the config file to make the partition size you want.
By using the 400Mo most build will be flashable... but you will have very little free space and will have to use your SD card (APP2SD or other soft).
I prefer to put everything in NAND for two reasons:
1/ I can remove my SD when I want
2/ I think it's better for battery consumption to not use the SD (but this I don't know, it's just what I think).
i was able to recover the sd card (thanks). anddddd i was able to kind of, sort of, dual boot, two different builds except that one of them has force close issues constantly.
mini_robot said:
i was able to recover the sd card (thanks). anddddd i was able to kind of, sort of, dual boot, two different builds except that one of them has force close issues constantly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What are you talking about? You can't dual boot with clockwork
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App
dung8604 said:
What are you talking about? You can't dual boot with clockwork
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well its not dual booting. i just kind of re-install each build from clockwork.
I don't know about you guys, but I love dual booting WP7 from NAND and Android from SD; however, I miss the great functionality of CWM for my Android build. With that said, is there a modified version o CWM that can be installed to the SD card? Before you say I'm crazy, when I used the G-Tab they had developed a modified version that installed to the internal SD card rather than the internal storage. Has this been attempted, or is this possible? I also realize that it would have to be modified to update the system.ext2 rather than looking for the /system partition, and it would also have to backup the data.img, rather than creating one from a /data partition. I just thought it might be possible with all our talented devs.
Sorry if this has already been asked--I searched all over Google to see if it had been attempted or anything.
Hello,
As the title says, I'm a new CM7 user (running verygreen's SDcard installer, using the 1.3 generic image, with nightly 87, no OC). This is running beautifully, except for one thing... I didn't use a big enough SDcard to start with and now I'm faced with looking for the right way to migrate to a larger card (or alternatively to make use of the NC's built-in eMMC in some fashion to augment the current SDcard).
Can someone tell me if the following approach will work? And is it the right/best way?
1. Use Win32Imager to make a full disk image of the current card (4GB).
2. Write the image to a new 8GB or 16GB card. At this point I should have a perfect copy except that there'll be wasted space on the card past the final partition.
3. Boot into a Linux recovery type LiveCD and use gparted to expand the final partition to use up the rest of the space.
4. Am I done? (crosses fingers?)
The goal of this move is to give myself some room to drop movies, music, etc. onto the /mnt/sdcard partition (which I believe is called /media by NC Stock 1.2?) Will what I described work?
Thanks in advance,
fuul4nook
P.S. One extra question, will the fact that my NC is a blue dot cause any problems with the idea? And if not, is there any way I can use the eMMC partitions while running CM7 from SDcard?
fuul4nook said:
Hello,
As the title says, I'm a new CM7 user (running verygreen's SDcard installer, using the 1.3 generic image, with nightly 87, no OC). This is running beautifully, except for one thing... I didn't use a big enough SDcard to start with and now I'm faced with looking for the right way to migrate to a larger card (or alternatively to make use of the NC's built-in eMMC in some fashion to augment the current SDcard).
Can someone tell me if the following approach will work? And is it the right/best way?
1. Use Win32Imager to make a full disk image of the current card (4GB).
2. Write the image to a new 8GB or 16GB card. At this point I should have a perfect copy except that there'll be wasted space on the card past the final partition.
3. Boot into a Linux recovery type LiveCD and use gparted to expand the final partition to use up the rest of the space.
4. Am I done? (crosses fingers?)
The goal of this move is to give myself some room to drop movies, music, etc. onto the /mnt/sdcard partition (which I believe is called /media by NC Stock 1.2?) Will what I described work?
Thanks in advance,
fuul4nook
P.S. One extra question, will the fact that my NC is a blue dot cause any problems with the idea? And if not, is there any way I can use the eMMC partitions while running CM7 from SDcard?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should be able to do what you want but use Easeus Partition Manager to extend the 4th partition on the SD to get full use of the card. I don't know what you mean by "blue dot", but you can access 5 gb on the emmc directly through apps if it's music or video. You can also use File Expert or Root Explorer to store what you want on the emmc partition, which will then also be available when you boot into the stock NC rom.
I tried almost any ROM known to work from user's feedbacks in the XDA forums, but I couldn't get any android ROM to work on my HD2.
I have installed magldr 1.13, installed radio 2.15.50.14 (BTW, my HD2 is NOT t-mobile), installed CWM recovery*, put some android ROMs on the microSD (2GB card) and then installed android ROMs from the Android recovery.
The installation process goes fine, no warnings, no errors. After installation comes trouble, either of the next will happen:
- the phone will go in bootloop forever
- the phone will freeze on the bootscreen (freeze like the animation is still going but after hours nothing happens)
- the phone will go in soft-reboot loop. With this I mean it goes on on the boot animation, almost finishes doing whatever it was doing, and then a black screen and the boot animation will just start over and keep doing so forever.
- android will boot and do the applications installation thing (where it says "Installing apps... 10/30" or so) and when it has finished it will just reboot. On reboot it will do again the applications installation thing, and then reboot once more, and do so forever.
*I tried many recoveries: 3.0.2.4; 4.0.1.5; 5.0.2.6; 5.0.2.7; they all work fine on their own, it's just the android ROMs will go crazy. Tried different partition sizes, including 500MB system and 100MB cache, nothing changes.
I followed guides that I found on this forum, which seem to work just fine for others.
Can you help me with this? Please, my WP7 ROM is working for most things but gives me some huge troubles and lacks many apps that I need...
EDIT
Answers to obvious questions you might ask me:
Are you trying to dual-boot WP and Android? >> NO
Have you wiped before installing? >> YES, tried wiping dalvik as well
Are you using wrong ROMs? >> NO, just ROMs from NAND development section
Have you tried with GB ROMs? >> YES, same thing as with ICS/JB ROMs.
Are you trying to install ROMs with HCT Sense? >> tried one, didn't work. all others are without HTC Sense
A few things come to mind; you might have a too small data partition (i.e. gave too much to /system) or perhaps repartitioning didn't take- it's a little harder to check with magldr than cLK. If you have adb installed (or TWRP) you could boot to recovery and check with adb shell df (or df).
Have you tried with NativeSD? Repartition the sdcard in recovery (give it 1GB ext4), this will wipe the sdcard and install it as NativeSD, this would rule out any problems with the NAND (size or otherwise).
Can you give me some more info about sizing the data partition? From recovery I can only wipe the partition but it gives me no choice on how much space to give it. Also, if it helps with the issue, I tried with many system partition sizes, including the "standard" 150, 250 and 450 MB.
No, I don't have adb installed on my PC. I haven't tried to install as nativeSD yet, mainly because the card is very slow (class 2 if I remember well). I'll try though, maybe it works...
T3STY said:
Can you give me some more info about sizing the data partition? From recovery I can only wipe the partition but it gives me no choice on how much space to give it. Also, if it helps with the issue, I tried with many system partition sizes, including the "standard" 150, 250 and 450 MB.
No, I don't have adb installed on my PC. I haven't tried to install as nativeSD yet, mainly because the card is very slow (class 2 if I remember well). I'll try though, maybe it works...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I recall NAND resizing is done when flashing CWM by reading a flash.cfg file, I'm thinking perhaps that the data partition (which houses dalvik) is full leading to the stall. Try installing a ROM as NativeSD (Even if your sd is slow it should at least boot) - that'll check if the issue is with something else (radio, HSPL etc.), you could try booting an SD TWRP and running df in terminal emulator (after trying to boot), to see the partition sizes and how full they are.
If you install adb - no need to install the whole sdk, you should be able to see what's causing the bootloop.
Found the issue after a dozen of trial-and-fail. Yes, the issue was that the data partition was too small (actually, it didn't exist at all).
So here's the deal. the flash.cfg file did not contain anything specific to the "data" partition. I guess it simply can't be managed from flash.cfg or for other reasons it wasn't included as an option. Unfortunately, it seems like all the guides/tutorials I have read (here on XDA, but even elsewhere) simply lack any mention about this. So for any future user having the same issue as me, the solution follows. For guide writers, if you wish you may copy-paste this to your guide. BTW, this is magldr 1.13 specific, I have no idea how cLK works.
After flashing CWM recovery, boot your phone to magldr > AD recovery. From CWM menu choose Advanced > parition sdcard. You will be asked for:
Ext size >> this is the data partition that will be used for your system
Absolute minimum size: 512MB. You'll be able to install most ROMs and boot them properly, but on first app install you might fill the whole partition
Recommended minimum size: 1024MB. You'll be able to install a handful of apps, but it's still pretty small. I have filled it with just 20 apps or so...
WARNING: don't give this partition the full sdcard or you won't have any more space for the "sdcard" partition where all your storage goes (photos, music, settings, and anything).
swap size >> a swap partition can be used to augment (read: improve efficiency, not quantity) your RAM
Any cached processes (background applications) may sit in swap when inactive. A swap partition will NOT increase your RAM to 32GB if you own such microSD card, active processes are still executed in your physical available RAM. Instead it may leave more free RAM available to active processes instead of keeping it filled with inactive applications. Please note that I strongly recommend NOT to create such partition on slow microSD cards (I'd recommend a class 6 microSD minimum). It's perfectly fine to run with no swap partition (choose 0MB size).
There you are. Now, all the ROMs that can be installed with [email protected] and [email protected] (data on sdcard) will use the newly created Ext partition.
I hope this will come useful to more people than just me
p.s. thanks for help HypoTurtle