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I didn't think it belonged in Dream Android Development, so I'm putting it here. If it needs to be moved, move it.
Is it possible to boot anything other than Android on the Dream?
I've seen the Nokia N900 and its Maemo 5 firmware, and I'm absolutely drawn to it, thanks to its debian-based OS (sudo apt-get install anything), it's X-based graphics system (REAL linux GUI programs), and all the apps it already has (Native Gizmo > Hacky Sipdroid).
I've also taken a look at other Linux-based open phone firmwares.
What is keeping us from doing this? If it's drivers, do they exist for another similar Linux-based firmware?
Could we dual-boot Android and this other OS using a third-stage bootloader which loads as a kernel from within the BOOT: partition?
I've seen the (albeit extremely hackish) method of getting Debian on the G1, chrooting into a loop-mounted FS and using a loopback VNC to spring into a KDE/Gnome/LXDE UI, but it's slow, still has Android and its apps loaded into memory, and very hackish and unstable.
I'm more than willing to test anything firmware-wise on my phone as long as it doesn't mess with my SPL.
The possibilities are nearly limitless - WINE under Linux means true "Windows Mobile" without the WinCE kernel.
Or perhaps WinMo/WinCE can be booted on the Dream?
It's more of a question of whether or not it's possible right now than a concept or implementation, but once that's answered, I'll either throw some time into testing and porting, or kick back and enjoy the Android as it is.
For starters:
- How does the SPL hand off to the BOOT: partition and its kernel/initrd?
- What devices need what drivers? What should be thrown into the kernel?
- Do things need reverse-engineering or is it all straightforward and documented?
- How can we use the space provided without messing with the SPL? (use cache partition for OS? Modified recovery that doesn't depend on cache partition?)
- Is dual-booting between Android possible? Can this be switched and launched before Dalvik and the Android stuff loads on the Android kernel?
- Can this be done with other Android-powered, rooted devices?
Have you seen wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/OpenMoko_on_HTC-Dream or lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2009-August/052529.html? (Crap, I can't post links) Looks promising since Angstrom is a very powerful embedded distro, but it's a one-man project now. I hope some people will join it or start a similar project.
G1 is a great device, however, I can see only a few people hacking on OS alternatives for it. You always got to have either an active community or a company in order to complete such a project.
The Android hackers community is very vibrant, however, people are not really interested in bringing a fully-featured Linux distro to G1 or other Android phones. Android is too trendy itself
The Debian/Ubuntu opportunity that we have now is nice, but it looks like an addition to the Android which takes a lot of memory and CPU.
I have just set up a small Ubuntu environment booting on my G1 together with Android. I combined the userspace prepared by Paolo Sammicheli (xdatap1.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/jaunty-under-android/) with Bayle Shanks's instructions (bayleshanks.com/wiki.pl?tips-computer-android-g1_debian_cyanogenMod). I am going to use it for mutt, vim, some coding. X11/VNC experience has been frustrating so far.
I am pretty sure though that there will be more people wanting to use alternative OSes on their phones: Moto Droid and Nexus are powerful enough for a full desktop environment.
vaskas said:
Have you seen wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/OpenMoko_on_HTC-Dream or lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2009-August/052529.html? (Crap, I can't post links) Looks promising since Angstrom is a very powerful embedded distro, but it's a one-man project now. I hope some people will join it or start a similar project.
G1 is a great device, however, I can see only a few people hacking on OS alternatives for it. You always got to have either an active community or a company in order to complete such a project.
The Android hackers community is very vibrant, however, people are not really interested in bringing a fully-featured Linux distro to G1 or other Android phones. Android is too trendy itself
The Debian/Ubuntu opportunity that we have now is nice, but it looks like an addition to the Android which takes a lot of memory and CPU.
I have just set up a small Ubuntu environment booting on my G1 together with Android. I combined the userspace prepared by Paolo Sammicheli (xdatap1.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/jaunty-under-android/) with Bayle Shanks's instructions (bayleshanks.com/wiki.pl?tips-computer-android-g1_debian_cyanogenMod). I am going to use it for mutt, vim, some coding. X11/VNC experience has been frustrating so far.
I am pretty sure though that there will be more people wanting to use alternative OSes on their phones: Moto Droid and Nexus are powerful enough for a full desktop environment.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i really think it lies in what you want from your phone... i know you say you use your ubuntu env for things such as vim and mutt, but everything that vim and mutt can do, can already be done under android..
the biggest challenge is getting people to latch on to an alternate distro which offers MORE than android, which has yet to come to surface... ultimately this is a phone.. not a netbook...and for a phone android is pretty dam sweet...
although in terms of geek work, running ANY other os on non native hardware is cool....albeit not really worth it
anybody were successful by using the internal-memory-image from the openmoko wiki?
I always get kernel panic, when booting it. I flashed it with flash_image boot/system, does this matter? In the wiki they use fastboot.
scheich, I only tried the SD-card way (see my post in http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=624392)
It shouldn't really matter whether you use fastboot or flash the image. The kernel panic could occur due to the inability to find the root filesystem. Try reflashing the yaffs2.
By the way, why did you choose to put OpenMoko in the internal memory? Are you going to use it exclusively or as the primary OS on the device?
Some of what you suggest can be done, but not recommended.
1) Nokia/Maemo is a bad fit for a phone. It is a real HOG. It is also shoehorning (with a sledge hammer) a desktop OS into a phone. It just doesn't work right. Android exists because a totally new UI model was needed to work optimally with a phone's physical form.
2) WINE will NEVER work since the CPU in the phone is ARM and not x86. If you want to run windonkey programs (can't imagine why you would), you would have to run a PROCESSOR EMULATOR, and this will be REALLY REALLY REALLY slow and memory intense.
TylTru said:
I didn't think it belonged in Dream Android Development, so I'm putting it here. If it needs to be moved, move it.
Is it possible to boot anything other than Android on the Dream?
I've seen the Nokia N900 and its Maemo 5 firmware, and I'm absolutely drawn to it, thanks to its debian-based OS (sudo apt-get install anything), it's X-based graphics system (REAL linux GUI programs), and all the apps it already has (Native Gizmo > Hacky Sipdroid).
I've also taken a look at other Linux-based open phone firmwares.
What is keeping us from doing this? If it's drivers, do they exist for another similar Linux-based firmware?
Could we dual-boot Android and this other OS using a third-stage bootloader which loads as a kernel from within the BOOT: partition?
I've seen the (albeit extremely hackish) method of getting Debian on the G1, chrooting into a loop-mounted FS and using a loopback VNC to spring into a KDE/Gnome/LXDE UI, but it's slow, still has Android and its apps loaded into memory, and very hackish and unstable.
I'm more than willing to test anything firmware-wise on my phone as long as it doesn't mess with my SPL.
The possibilities are nearly limitless - WINE under Linux means true "Windows Mobile" without the WinCE kernel.
Or perhaps WinMo/WinCE can be booted on the Dream?
It's more of a question of whether or not it's possible right now than a concept or implementation, but once that's answered, I'll either throw some time into testing and porting, or kick back and enjoy the Android as it is.
For starters:
- How does the SPL hand off to the BOOT: partition and its kernel/initrd?
- What devices need what drivers? What should be thrown into the kernel?
- Do things need reverse-engineering or is it all straightforward and documented?
- How can we use the space provided without messing with the SPL? (use cache partition for OS? Modified recovery that doesn't depend on cache partition?)
- Is dual-booting between Android possible? Can this be switched and launched before Dalvik and the Android stuff loads on the Android kernel?
- Can this be done with other Android-powered, rooted devices?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
vaskas said:
scheich, I only tried the SD-card way (see my post in http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=624392)
It shouldn't really matter whether you use fastboot or flash the image. The kernel panic could occur due to the inability to find the root filesystem. Try reflashing the yaffs2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried reflashing the system image. Also the older image on the ftpserver. The same. I will try the sdcard installation.
vaskas said:
By the way, why did you choose to put OpenMoko in the internal memory? Are you going to use it exclusively or as the primary OS on the device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Two reasons:
1. Thought that would be the faster way to get it work. I used BART to backup my android installation.
2. Thougt, I would get a bit more perfomance in using the internal memory.
I really would like to use SHR(or other) as primary OS, because I had an GTA02, depends on what is(could) work(ing) on the dream.
would it be possible to boot ubuntu netbook remix? it uses far less resources.
zenstitution said:
would it be possible to boot ubuntu netbook remix? it uses far less resources.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NBR is targeted at x86, but Ubuntu MID edition is installable. It's similar to the netbook remix. We'll have to wait before we have a proven/stable installation method though.
I would really like to see another OS on my Dream as well - just in addition to android
Che123 said:
I would really like to see another OS on my Dream as well - just in addition to android
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, you can try the OpenMoko port (it's in the alpha stage now): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5521417
The more people get interested in the alternative OS, the sooner we'll get one.
vaskas said:
Well, you can try the OpenMoko port (it's in the alpha stage now): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5521417
The more people get interested in the alternative OS, the sooner we'll get one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really hot stuff - but i don't want to loose my recovery
But i will definetly keep an eye on it!
edit: Adding a bootmngr like grub for selecting boot OS (android/openmoko/recovery) would be really nice Or adding bootoptions to the current amon_ra Recovery would be a soloution too. But I'm no dev, so I don't even know if it is possible.
So, let's get linux installed natively on our Iconia.
As some of you I have been working on porting Iconia to chromeos 2.6.38 kernel (to get rid of Acer crappy moron-written drivers (well.. nothing personal, but most code written for commercial embedded devices is a pile of crap and you have to rewrite everything to update kernel or integrate upstream))
For now, I have hardcoded the kernel command line in the boot config to boot off /dev/mmcblk1p2 (that is, you must create ext4 (this is also hardcoded.. uhh)) second primary partition on your sd card with the root fs). For now, until all hardware is working fine and userland is ready, let's boot off micro sd. We don't have nvflash yet so let's leave repartitioning internal storage aside.
Flash the kernel image instead of boot.img to LNX or instead of recovery to SOS. And make sure to write your UID in a secure place before messing with the device - this is the only way to flash your device if you have checksum errors (you should contact sc2k in that case). Okay, even if you eff up here, there is still a way to get UID from a brick so take it easy. But if you do screw it, be prepared to work hard and use some command-line tools.
You should be able to use any armel rootfs. For X11, use fbdev driver and evdev for touchscreen.
For the proprietary NVIDIA accellerated drivers for X11, OpenGL ES and OpenMAX, download the nvidia-tegra package from AC100 PPA https://launchpad.net/~ac100/+archive/ppa (probably you have to manually download using this link http://ppa.launchpad.net/ac100/ppa/...dia-tegra_12-0ubuntu1~alpha1monson6_armel.deb as the package didn't show in aptitude for me after adding to sources.list.. or i was doing sth wrong) or the tarball from nvidia. A newer package of tegra drivers is available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-tegra. You may just add an alternative to mesa EGL/GLES library path via update-alternatives to always use nvidia libs.
precompiled kernel image [15 August 2012]
http://www.mediafire.com/?p32l949n2s7la43
xorg.conf
http://pastebin.com/0a6T6c18
Here is some video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGHZ5VTAr8
And now - we need developers, developers, developers.
The git is https://github.com/astarasikov/iconia-gnu-kernel
The main branch is chromeos-2.6.38 that is more stable. The 3.0 branch is unstable (network traffic causes virtual memory trashing).
For now, the following stuff works
-Panel/framebuffer/backlight
-Touchscreen
-Internal eMMC
-microSD slot
-usb gadget
-usb host
-gpio keys/buttons [rotation switch acts as wifi/bluetooth power blocker. iirc, left position disables wireless, right - enables]
-charger
-battery
-shutdown
-LEDs
-bcm4329 wifi (don't forget to copy bcm4329-fullmac-4.bin to /lib/firmware/brcm and nvram.txt from android's /system/etc to the same dir as bcm4329-fullmac-4.txt) [causes lockups with 3.0 kernel]
-nct1008 temperature sensor for cpu throttling
-sound. external speakers and headphones.
-bcm4329 bluetooth. accessible at 115200 on /dev/ttyHS2. Look at http://htc-linux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ubuntu/Leo/Bluetooth to get it running at higher speeds with proprietary firmware patches (hcd files from android)
-suspend. Although will probably drain a bit more power than android because mmc power is not disabled (due to a race condition in kernel. and because we have rootfs on micro sd). Two glitches are: sometimes, the device freezes for several seconds after suspend (will test later if playing with wifi clock fixes it) and fonts get corrupted after suspend if using proprietary nvidia X11 driver. [suspend works in 2.6.38 only]
-kxtf9 accelerometer
-mpu3050 gyroscope
-ak8975 magnetometer
The following stuff is broken or not implemented at all
-hdmi video. May be working but no one has tested. hdmi audio is not implemented.
-light sensor
-video cameras, focus, torch.
-gps. To turn on the chip, it should be enough to enable gpio 203 via sysfs. Unfortunately it uses the proprietary MEIF protocol which can probably be obtained from Nokia under NDA. And I don't feel like disassembling the whole megabyte of the gps daemon
-3G. I don't have the modem in my iconia. So I don't care. But should be easy to add.
And one notice for those who want to join in. I don't care if hardware works properly. I want 'beautiful' code. That is, please, when you make patches to add functionality, do not follow the path of corporate coders and do not invent custom interfaces and sysfs hacks. Use rfkill for bt/3g power control, for example. And don't be selfish - please share your patches and userland stuff.
TODO:
-fix framebuffer issues (no console till X boots, X fonts and window decorations get corrupted after suspend with proprietary drivers) it kinda works.
-video camera
-port meego or build the list of good software in ubuntu for handling sensors, virtual keyboard etc
I'm not currently working on the project and don't have the device anymore. Feel free to PM me if you need help with some tegra hackery
good job...
Hi sp3dev,
Cooooool, you rock
Thanks
FANTASTIC WORK!!!!
Guys... I'm not so clued up on the bootloader here, but is dual boot possible with this setup?
"so I guess I need to switch distro to try out this cool stuff"
What distro are you considering switching to?
tholmewood said:
FANTASTIC WORK!!!!
Guys... I'm not so clued up on the bootloader here, but is dual boot possible with this setup?
"so I guess I need to switch distro to try out this cool stuff"
What distro are you considering switching to?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, dual boot is possible - the android is in internal memory, our stuff is on micro sd card. It should be possible to even dual boot from internal memory, but not right now
I am switching to ubuntu because it has a lot of packages prebuilt
sp3dev said:
Yes, dual boot is possible - the android is in internal memory, our stuff is on micro sd card. It should be possible to even dual boot from internal memory, but not right now
I am switching to ubuntu because it has a lot of packages prebuilt
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Man I cant wait to get Netbook Remix dual booting on this badboy... Living the dream I tell ya...
Thanks again
Would booting a distro from say the usb work?
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA Premium App
M..N said:
Would booting a distro from say the usb work?
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see no reason why not. But you'd have to hardcode the uuid of the boot partition in kernel command line or build a ram disk. Anyway having to use a heavy and power consuming external storage sounds like an extremely stupid and useless idea
what about Gentoo?
This is great! i would love a dual boot. and ubuntu! i just got done reading that the asus got this and was like. i want it now. now we almost have it keep up the great work!
sp3dev said:
I see no reason why not. But you'd have to hardcode the uuid of the boot partition in kernel command line or build a ram disk. Anyway having to use a heavy and power consuming external storage sounds like an extremely stupid and useless idea
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not even from a USB flash drive? Wouldn't it be the same as say booting it from a microsd card?
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App
Have Anyone seen this LINK?
Hope it can help!
OrionBG said:
Have Anyone seen this LINK?
Hope it can help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That sounds like the place to start!
Thanks
Thanks man you really rock !
I cant wait to try it out. Hope you will continue working onto this.
can you share the steps after compiling the kernel ?
I would like to try with different kernels but I'm still not confident on how to do this.
If I use dd if=zImage of=/dev/mmcblk00p1
will this effectively boot this kernel after pressing power and vol- keys ?
Hello, do you think that Dvb t is possible if Linux is running on the acer?
yodor said:
can you share the steps after compiling the kernel ?
I would like to try with different kernels but I'm still not confident on how to do this.
If I use dd if=zImage of=/dev/mmcblk00p1
will this effectively boot this kernel after pressing power and vol- keys ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No.. You need to build boot image with android's mkbootimg and flash instead of recovery. And then, mkfs.ext4 on your sd card on partition mmcblk1p2 and untar rootfs there
Thanks man, this is really getting clear to me now.
I'm going to try and post results here. I will love to try and see how arch, fedora and ubuntu will run on A500.
http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/tegra2/install.xml
There are two apps in the Android market that will install either Ubuntu or Backtrack for you- they are not native installs though I can confirm they perform well even if it is chroot and I can also confirm they work on the iconia great! Search ubuntu installer or backtrsck5 linux install in the mmarket....
Hello! I've been just a reader for some months, my questions have been always already answered here for basic things (rooting, performance tips etc) but now it's the time to register and start participating I am a professional programmer, just have been "out" of the development world for the last 1+ year, so I'm a bit untrained now...
I was thinking on buying a BeagleBoard for trying some programming in it, just wanted to see what's the power of that board when doing image processing stuff (namely playing with OpenCV). But, before spending those $130 in one, I realised that my Archos A101IT has almost the same board (SoC), well actually even a bit faster (BeagleBoard comes with OMAP3530 while A101IT comes with OMAP3630).
The BeagleBoard works with a linux Kernel for the OMAP architecture, so what would be the closest to bare-bones thing I could get for the A101? If this was Desktop, I'd answer "Debian with the lightest Desktop setup and OpenCV libraries installed", but in this architecture I'm lost.
I see a lot of "custom kernel for you", "Ubuntu over Android" and stuff like that, but I don't get if that's what I'm looking for or just that people here are building replacements to the underlying Android kernel. As you see I'm not interested at all on the Android part of the A101.
Hope you can give me some orientation...
juannm said:
Hello! I've been just a reader for some months, my questions have been always already answered here for basic things (rooting, performance tips etc) but now it's the time to register and start participating I am a professional programmer, just have been "out" of the development world for the last 1+ year, so I'm a bit untrained now...
I was thinking on buying a BeagleBoard for trying some programming in it, just wanted to see what's the power of that board when doing image processing stuff (namely playing with OpenCV). But, before spending those $130 in one, I realised that my Archos A101IT has almost the same board (SoC), well actually even a bit faster (BeagleBoard comes with OMAP3530 while A101IT comes with OMAP3630).
The BeagleBoard works with a linux Kernel for the OMAP architecture, so what would be the closest to bare-bones thing I could get for the A101? If this was Desktop, I'd answer "Debian with the lightest Desktop setup and OpenCV libraries installed", but in this architecture I'm lost.
I see a lot of "custom kernel for you", "Ubuntu over Android" and stuff like that, but I don't get if that's what I'm looking for or just that people here are building replacements to the underlying Android kernel. As you see I'm not interested at all on the Android part of the A101.
Hope you can give me some orientation...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That isn't anything particaly solid but the best you can do is either install one of the os from here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1198389
or look at archos sde http://www.archos.com/support/support_tech/updates_dev.html?country=gb&lang=en
juannm said:
The BeagleBoard works with a linux Kernel for the OMAP architecture, so what would be the closest to bare-bones thing I could get for the A101? If this was Desktop, I'd answer "Debian with the lightest Desktop setup and OpenCV libraries installed", but in this architecture I'm lost.
I see a lot of "custom kernel for you", "Ubuntu over Android" and stuff like that, but I don't get if that's what I'm looking for or just that people here are building replacements to the underlying Android kernel. As you see I'm not interested at all on the Android part of the A101.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure about what really you want to know, but would note the following:
It's possible to run a Linux kernel on Archos, and Ubuntu on it will be "Ubuntu over Linux kernel". The problem is that Archos needs an Archos-friendly kernel, and it's so tweaked that I don't know at what point Linux ends there and Android starts. So here is another problem: it seems rather hard to make the mainline kernel running on Archos. This means that you'll stay with 2.6.29 till the end of your Archos' days... But if you're happy with custom-made GPL'ed 2.6.29 by Archos -- installing "Debian with the lightest Desktop" on it should be no problem. On Archos-Debian.org they've already made a few rootfs images.
Question: justo out of curiosity, do you know if the Debian compilation from (www .debian-archos.com) is made by following this (dev. openaos.org/wiki/Debian%20gen8) ??
In the other hand, I have just installed Urukdroid 1.6 over my previous system (letting the installer to wipe my previous partitions and creating new ones), and now I'm going to try the Angstrom "rootfs.img" option (that I copied somewhere before installing Urukdroid) and also the Debian beta2 one (altough its a wooping 3,8 GB file... I wonder what did this people install in it? KDE? hahah).
Then for cross-compiling from my desktop computer, I guess all I need is the ARM Gcc version, right? I'm in Kubuntu 11.10 so that would be the g++-4.6-arm-linux-gnueabi package (just tell me if this is not the right direction...)
I guess compiling and copying some "hello world" binary file to the Debian or Angstrom in the tablet would be enough for running it, am I right?
Probably, it's better to send an email to OpenAOS people about how they made their package. Also I think it's not a "compilation", but an "installation": standard Debian binaries installed over Archos-specific 2.6.29 kernel. I don't think they recompiled the kernel or built Debian from stratch. The way shown at http://dev.openaos.org/wiki/Debian gen8 is a working one (at least, in general: I don't know about the goodies like wifi, I didn't get that far).
3.8Gb -- it includes free space too: rootfs.img is like a virtual HDD, it contains the system, user data, and free space.
For cross-compilation you need a toolchain: a cross-compiler plus some other tools. Look for Mentor (Codesourcery), Emdebian, OpenEmbedded, Buildroot, etc. Here is a ready-made custom built one: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1328027 . Maybe Kubuntu has their own build-in toolchain too, I don't know. Which one is better for you, and how to install and use it -- it depends on many things, actually. Generally: yes, g++-arm-linux-gnueabi looks like a cross-compiler for ARM. And yes, if you cross-compile a "Hello, world!" correctly -- it will run on Archos.
Hi juannm,
welcome to XDA-Developers
juannm said:
I was thinking on buying a BeagleBoard for trying some programming in it, just wanted to see what's the power of that board when doing image processing stuff (namely playing with OpenCV). But, before spending those $130 in one, I realised that my Archos A101IT has almost the same board (SoC), well actually even a bit faster (BeagleBoard comes with OMAP3530 while A101IT comes with OMAP3630).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was able to buy an A101it with was a brick few weeks ago and merely had the same intent. Thought of getting an OMAP3 platform to fiddle around with.
I started to collect some information of the hardware in use.
Luckily i was able to repair it.
For information about that look here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1199450
The design of the board is pretty clean and apart form running Android OS, Archos offers the SDE as people already pointed out.
You might also start from scratch and build up Ubuntu or Debian images for this device.
In fact i consider it nearly perfect for such experiments.
juannm said:
The BeagleBoard works with a linux Kernel for the OMAP architecture, so what would be the closest to bare-bones thing I could get for the A101? If this was Desktop, I'd answer "Debian with the lightest Desktop setup and OpenCV libraries installed", but in this architecture I'm lost.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What exactly do you mean?
It's too much to built up rootfs from scratch...
Need a starting point?
So basically you'll need to know how the boot process works on these devices, how rootfs is stored and how the rootfs gets mounted during boot up.
First i recommend to install SDE from Archos to get the alternate bootloader installed.
This way you might use bootmenu to load custom kernels and install your own rootfs on top of this.
It's too much to explain it all, so look around and read first.
Just in short:
Stock OS uses squashfs images as rootfs, which are mounted ro if you don't tweak anything.
SDE uses uncompressed EXT2 image, as far as i remember.
It might be a good idea to install UrukDroid (this will wipe out SDE, but leaves Stock OS untouched).
Afterwards you got true EXT4 filesystem, which is still Android but offers a lot of useful tools.
You'll need some background of course and it might be useful to tweak the bootloader to accept the first kernel to be unsigned as well.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1018260
juannm said:
I see a lot of "custom kernel for you", "Ubuntu over Android" and stuff like that, but I don't get if that's what I'm looking for or just that people here are building replacements to the underlying Android kernel. As you see I'm not interested at all on the Android part of the A101.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As already pointed out the kernel needs hardware specific tweaks to run on the Archos devices.
So does the Beagleboard kernel.
The vanilla kernel won't do it on these platforms.
Anyway there are some projects which use standard ARM distributions (e.g. Ubuntu, Debian) to get a working Linux on top of a custom kernel, which is based on stock kernel sources (2.6.29-omap1).
If you intent to change to a newer kernel version, there's more work to do.
There'd been some progress for 2.6.35 recently.
It really depends on what you expect to have working on the device.
I might even write more on this, but i guess you'll need to get a better overview yourself.
All i might say is, that Archos give good support for the open development (at least compared to other manufacturers).
They keep their git repo up to date and try to fix bugs as well.
So start hacking and have fun!!
scholbert
Hi there,
Just wanted to add few tidbits on top of what Scholbert said which I agree with 100%:
If you want to tweak the bootloader like Scholbert said to have three different bootable kernels (main android, sde, recovery), contact me first, I have few resources that could help you and add extra safety.
However, I believe that it's not needed at first and safer to get a hold on the platform to go sde route first.
Compared to beagleboard, you won't loose much with the a101, the thing I miss the most is a serial port to help with kernel dev, but even this is possible if you're comfortable with opening the a101 and soldering.
I don't own the phone yet, but been looking around at rooting this phone and seeing what I could get out of it if I did when it turns up. Nothing has really interested me to root the phone. I would of rooted it for CM7 or MUIU roms but as I am getting the Laptop Dock with the phone I wouldn't be able to use the webtop as both of these roms don't have that feature.
When I was looking into the Webtop I came across this post about installing ubuntu apps onto webtop. This did get me interested. Looking into it this seem like it only works with a very dated version of Ubuntu (jaunty) because this was the last version that had armhf support.
As Ubuntu 12.04 was just released I decided to see if this version has got a armhf repo that could be used, and indeed it has.
Code:
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ precise-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
The really cool thing about this repo is it has apps like XBMC that should just work with the device.
And then it hit me. This must be the repo that the Ubuntu for Android that Canonical was showing off a few Months ago must be using.
http://youtu.be/N6eEDZva1W8
So I decided to have a dig around the repo when I came across this: abootimg.
Android devices use a special partition format to boot any
operating system on the devices. These boot-images contain
a kernel image, a ramdisk, optionally a 2nd stage boot loader
and the commandline passed to the kernel when booting.
The original mkbootimg from Android can only create these images
where abootimg can also extract and modify them.
Handling android boot images is necessary when bringing other
operating systems to android devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So this is a pretty good tell tell sign that this is indeed the Ubuntu for Android that Canonical has been demoing.
As I have said I don't own the device yet but if someone wants to check this out to see if this is indeed the Ubuntu for Android repo that would be awesome.
looks like I can't post links.
Code:
deb ports.ubuntu.com/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb ports.ubuntu.com/ precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb ports.ubuntu.com/ precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb ports.ubuntu.com/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb ports.ubuntu.com/ precise-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
That is the repo but the http part is missing before ports
This sucks I can't post links. I would of had links to the repos and links to videos and to the XBMC app. I get why XDA does this but I really want to edit the OP so its got all the info.
Anyway I thought someone would of said something by now about this. This would work almost the same way as the [MOD] Full Linux (Debian) inside WebTop does but instead of using the Debian repos it would be using Ubuntu 12.04
I get the phone in a few days and it would be cool if someone could test this out. I am going to try it the second I get the phone but would be nice for someone to confirm what I suspect.
The only concern is whether you can get it to become functional without breaking Moto's modded dependencies that are stuck on Jaunty. I think a number of people have been trying to update to the newest Chrome etc and each time when getting the new repos they've killed their webtops.
I for one would love to get a newer version of Ubuntu running on this baby but information and tutorials don't seem to be forthcoming from the experts here. This might be due to the non-existence of such information, lack of time, or competitiveness. But I would love to see this if you can get it to work.
P.S. I think its really cool that you may have stumbled on the Ubuntu Unity for android on there though!!
It sure be cool to browse contacts and access system settings via unity
Sent from my MB860 using XDA
thantos said:
The only concern is whether you can get it to become functional without breaking Moto's modded dependencies that are stuck on Jaunty. I think a number of people have been trying to update to the newest Chrome etc and each time when getting the new repos they've killed their webtops.
I for one would love to get a newer version of Ubuntu running on this baby but information and tutorials don't seem to be forthcoming from the experts here. This might be due to the non-existence of such information, lack of time, or competitiveness. But I would love to see this if you can get it to work.
P.S. I think its really cool that you may have stumbled on the Ubuntu Unity for android on there though!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If CWM can backup and restore Webtop I will have a look into getting Unity working on the phone.
In Synaptic you can freeze/lock packages, so all I would need to do is workout the list of packages that needs to be locked and not updated.
Once I have worked that out I can make a update script to install unity and lock the packages that need locking.
I will get the phone in about a week and will probably take about 3 days to get unity working.
I will let you lot know how it goes.
I am even thinking about trying razor-qt on it. This should work really well on the phone as the DE was made to run on devices like phones.
It looks like Webtop uses GTK and doesn't use any QT packages. So installing QT apps shouldn't break any dependencies.
There are a lot of QT apps now that will install and won't break anything.
Music Players: spotify-qt and Clemetine
Video Players: VLC
These are just to name a few. If you google QT apps there is a site that list all the avable QT apps that will work with Webtop and won't conflict with any of the GTK apps and dependencies it uses.
Looking forward to it. Good luck.
Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2
Just getting the info together for when I start messing around with webtop. Also some people may find the info handy for them to have ago.
Qt-apps
http://qt-apps.org/index.php?xsortmode=high
Razor-Qt
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/12/razor-qt-new-lightweight-desktop.html
Locking Packages
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PinningHowto
Precise armhf Repo
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/armhf/
XBMC Armhf Package
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/quantal/armhf/xbmc
Spotify Qt (they probably don't have a Armhf version so this more and likely won't work)
Code:
# 1. Add this line to your list of repositories by
# editing your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free
# 2. If you want to verify the downloaded packages,
# you will need to add our public key
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 4E9CFF4E
# 3. Run apt-get update
sudo apt-get update
# 4. Install spotify!
sudo apt-get install spotify-client
Clementine Armhf
http://packages.debian.org/en/sid/armhf/clementine/download
Run:
Code:
sudo apt-get install gdebi gdebi-core
This will install a program that will let you install .deb files by double clicking on them.
The apps that will work on Webtop that won't mess it up are for Armhf and use Qt (not kde-Qt). So just google for that and you should find loads of programs you will be able to run.
If its not a Qt app look at what it depends on.
Using chromium-browser as an example you can see it depends on a lot of packages that has a good chance of breaking the system. This is because its a GTK app. If it was a Qt app it wouldn't depending on as many system files/libs.
Hi, I have been working on such a port for more than a week now.
And I have thrashed the webtop countless times.
I have modified ubuntu.sh so that it loopmounts /osh from an image from the sd card; then it runs the image's original ubuntu.sh. In this way I am not limited to the 800MB size of the original /osh and I can test/swap different images quickly.
I have made a test environment using QEMU (emulating Cortex A9 and Versatile Express board) and I borrowed a recent kernel and initrd from a Linaro image.
I've been testing various distros: Archlinux for Raspberry Pi, Raspbian (which I modded into a full ARMv7a Wheezy by changing the repos), Linaro 12.04 (heavy and slow IMHO), the original Jaunty 9.04 for armel. The last one just to allow me to check the differences with the Moto's distro, file by file.
My QEMU setup is also able to boot GenTop2 and even the original webtop. But I have also an alternative setup using proot and qemu in user mode which e.g. allows me to run ARM-compiled commands directly inside a loopmounted webtop image.
In GenTop2 and in my Wheezy attempts I've also tried using a more recent, ARMHF compiled Tegra Xorg, see
http://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2854 but the only thing I got from it is to display a hardware cursor on the phone - my lapdock would stay blank no matter how I play with xorg.conf.
Although in fairness I'm not a dev and still have a lot to learn. I'm just a very stubborn person. And I'm close to giving up.
My second best option so far is to run GenTop2 from a partition on my external SD. Amazing work that GenTop2 is although I'm not a fan of Gentoo - because heavy compiling and too many small writes (at "emerge sync" time) inevitably shorten the life of the phone and SD card IMHO.
Here a link for you to start (in case you don't have it already):
Analysis of webtop - https://sites.google.com/site/androidnothize/nebtop/webtop
For emulating ARM v7a with QEMU - https://wiki.linaro.org/PeterMaydell/QemuVersatileExpress
Also to boot the original webtop in QEMU, the key is to take that extra getty from /etc/event.d/console out of the way (just delete the file), then change the password for root and adas (so you can get in) - the latter task can be performed e.g. using my qemu user mode way.
good luck and good night
I don't know if this is relevant but, here is a version of Ubuntu natty "webtop construction kit": http://mafipulation.org/blagoblig/linux/atrix/index.html#webtop-kit
I have managed to run it on Blurred and CM7 roms (manually). I had to heavily edit xorg.conf to make it display on my external monitor, but there were issues with the mouse and keyboard (the movements were mirroring on the phone as well), text-antialiasing, etc.
Also, apt-get seems to be a little broken, as I have only managed to successfully install lxde but not xfce, and many other packages.
Will this help?
zomgno1 said:
I don't know if this is relevant but, here is a version of Ubuntu natty "webtop construction kit": http://mafipulation.org/blagoblig/linux/atrix/index.html#webtop-kit
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh yes it helps indeed.
The piece of information I was missing about the broken glibc is fundamental, and probably explain why some of my Debian Wheezy attempts were crashing the phone so badly that I needed to remove the battery before restart.
I'm going to put my hands on this yes yes.
I'll look into xorg.conf and apt-get problems, maybe I get some idea.
Thanks!
G
Bionic port
I am very interested in the progress of this thread, as the addition of the newer version should allow XBMC, which would the the killer app for me that would allow me to completely replace my netbook with my phone.
But, I have a Bionic which uses the TI OMAP4 SoC.
If you work this out, I guess it should port, as long as the OMAP4 driver is in an accessible repository and xorg.conf is modified appropriately?
There is already an ARM/OMAP4 image here:
xxxxx]https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/OmapDesktopInstallxxxxx
(remove the xxs as I still can't post links either)
seems like somehow integrating the webtop binaries into that image and using the abootimg to create it on the phone would be a possible approach?
I have some Linux skills, but I am not a dev, so this may be terribly naive!
This is all very interesting. I cant wait until this gets running on our phones. This webtop environment is a pretty special thing that moto has going on here, but I wonder, can the webtop or something of a similar nature be done on other phones? I image it could very well be, other phones certainly have the power and space requirements. I would be willing to pay quite a bit to get this running on my galaxy s2.
It would be awesome to have FULL Ubuntu 12 on our webtop !
Well, actual webtop is cool but the interface is worse than Unity.
Not sure if any of you developers that have been trying to get Precise to work by messing with the XORG but I think KHOL tried but was unsuccessful and instead decided to boot it after getting into webtop...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1370176
Maybe that might be of some help?
I would love to know if anyone has gotten any where with this looks very promising I wish I could help but know very little about programming althought im trying to learn.
I've been trying different ways of entering bios and/or disabling secure boot, but can't figure out exactly if it has a BIOS menu at all.
Connected a keyboard to it and tries different keys during boot but I can't find the right combination.
Does anyone know how to enter the BIOS menu, or how do we go about disabling secure boot?
Thank you,
cocacola2015 said:
I've been trying different ways of entering bios and/or disabling secure boot, but can't figure out exactly if it has a BIOS menu at all.
Connected a keyboard to it and tries different keys during boot but I can't find the right combination.
Does anyone know how to enter the BIOS menu, or how do we go about disabling secure boot?
Thank you,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Keyboard is disabled(no driver installed, thanks Lenovo). Bios is usless.
From my LG-G4, Rooted running Stock 5.1
I was afraid that this would be the case. There seems to be no way to circumvent it either to boot a linux kernel.
http ://i.imgur.com/Tfd9U3i.jpg
Am I right to assume that the only thing we have that are signed are the stock Lenovo Yoga kernels, making them the only thing we can boot?
Also, does anyone know if these are the Microsoft keys, or some Lenovo keys, that they use for secure-boot. http ://i.imgur.com/dm1i16B.jpg
I'm wondering, because linux grub distributions do have a signed grub "shim" with the Microsoft key, maybe making us able to execute that at boot.
Ok, I've found out that it does have the microsoft keys, among other keys, which means it should in theory be possible, in theory. Will be looking into this more.
cocacola2015 said:
I was afraid that this would be the case. There seems to be no way to circumvent it either to boot a linux kernel.
http ://i.imgur.com/Tfd9U3i.jpg
Am I right to assume that the only thing we have that are signed are the stock Lenovo Yoga kernels, making them the only thing we can boot?
Also, does anyone know if these are the Microsoft keys, or some Lenovo keys, that they use for secure-boot. http ://i.imgur.com/dm1i16B.jpg
I'm wondering, because linux grub distributions do have a signed grub "shim" with the Microsoft key, maybe making us able to execute that at boot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
actually the problem is not in the unlocking but in making a working kernel for this tablet... because you see... Lenovo released the "source code" so they won't risk being sued for breaking the opensource (kernel) licenses, yet what they released is crap, broken drivers (i had to download all the source packages from all the YT2 models because they didn't even un-tarred crap and each one was 400MB and move things around and still it wont do the job as it should) they intentionally crippled the mk files, removed others, stupid and not working configs and so on... driver files missing... you get the picture and this was intentionally (not to say that this is only the kernel, not a chance to see in their source whats even more interesting: the code for the libraries, binaries etc) i am not saying it cannot be done but the amount of work it requires... hmm does it justify? in the end there are few people on this tablets and even lesser with the knowledge/available time to try and do something that will look like a custom rom
i thought at some point in making a rom but the hassle and time required don't justify it (what would i have? except that it's trendy to have a costom rom) so i for one will stay on my Android+Linux combo but who want to go further has my help
a better approach would be to build a custom rom based on the stock kernel/initramfs, this way you will start having the drivers in order and do your custom system (while no longer used in these days still it was cyanogenmod's way of making custom roms in the past) yet this one too is difficult and requires lots of work (and again for what? what's the gain?) but this one is much more acceptable than the rebuilding all previous one
the secure boot is passed (pm and you will understand) but to what end? see... the problem isn't so much in opening the door but in what you will do once inside (and i am inside that room for some time now yet no better bed than my Linux+Android combo) but feel free to continue on the road..
this is not to discourage you but to warn you about issues others (me) had on the road you're stepping now.
Thank you for the reply.
You're right, going the route of compiling whatever Lenovo has put out, is not the most streight forward option, but I disagree on not putting Linux on this tablet. This is the biggest and highest resolution tablet I've seen, and having Android on it instead of a full-blown Linux distribution, is a waste. Things like X forwarding to use it as a thin clinet, does not work well, I've tried all options. The only viable thing for using this as a thin client, is to run Linux on it, with its native input methods on the display server.
The gain is not having to pay twice as much for a Microsoft Surface tablet to install linux on, with it even being lower resolution and smaller screen.
well in this area @workdowg can give you more details as he is the one who loves X on this tab me i'm more like an Y type (aka windows gui/y) (i am happy with my openvpn and sshd) but again consider the unlocking part done and start collecting stuff for making your kernel
ionioni said:
well in this area @workdowg can give you more details as he is the one who loves X on this tab me i'm more like an Y type (aka windows gui/y) (i am happy with my openvpn and sshd) but again consider the unlocking part done and start collecting stuff for making your kernel
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very exciting. Need to boot a compatible kernel with the provided drivers, as you also suggested, and eventually get a full fedora distribution up and running.
Since this is an x86 tablet, no cross-compilation will be needed so it will allow for more flexibility with getting tools into initramfs to make it bootstrap systemd, and eventually run a full distribution from the system partition.
Would be very interested if workdowg can also provide some input on the issue.
cocacola2015 said:
Thank you for the reply.
You're right, going the route of compiling whatever Lenovo has put out, is not the most streight forward option, but I disagree on not putting Linux on this tablet. This is the biggest and highest resolution tablet I've seen, and having Android on it instead of a full-blown Linux distribution, is a waste. Things like X forwarding to use it as a thin clinet, does not work well, I've tried all options. The only viable thing for using this as a thin client, is to run Linux on it, with its native input methods on the display server.
The gain is not having to pay twice as much for a Microsoft Surface tablet to install linux on, with it even being lower resolution and smaller screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
as short as it was yet i still read it on fast-forward
i wasn't saying to not put linux on it (i have linux on mine too) i'm saying that putting ONLY linux was not worth (for my needs) the work required for (maybe i was too subtle ) i mean even if i had a full linux distro solution for my 1380 tablet i would still go for my current Android on Linux set-up that i have. yet, each has his own needs
oh boy it's getting late
cocacola2015 said:
Very exciting. Need to boot a compatible kernel with the provided drivers, as you also suggested, and eventually get a full fedora distribution up and running.
Since this is an x86 tablet, no cross-compilation will be needed so it will allow for more flexibility with getting tools into initramfs to make it bootstrap systemd, and eventually run a full distribution from the system partition.
Would be very interested if workdowg can also provide some input on the issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ionioni said:
as short as it was yet i still read it on fast-forward
i wasn't saying to not put linux on it (i have linux on mine too) i'm saying that putting ONLY linux was not worth (for my needs) the (huge)work required for (maybe i was too subtle ) i mean even if i had a full linux distro solution for my 1380 tablet i would still go for my current Android on Linux set-up that i have. yet, each has his own needs
oh boy it's getting late
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I purchased my tablet with intention of dual booting Linux and Android and eventually going with Linux alone (being x86 I thought this would be a piece of cake). Now after getting Linux running (with Android in a chroot).... My vision has changed. TTY Linux is great, I have so much I can get done when not home. Using Xsdl, X runs well enough ( I had wine installed to run a Windows app) and I don't think it would be all that much better on the framebuffer.
The problem ends up being.... (and it has been stated before).... Touch still sucks on a small screen! Android just excels at it. So for me, if someone were to develop kexecboot or such I would definitely play with it (proof of concept) but I'm positive I'd go right back to my current setup.... ssh and the Xsdl for X as needed are perfect.
ionioni said:
as short as it was yet i still read it on fast-forward
i wasn't saying to not put linux on it (i have linux on mine too) i'm saying that putting ONLY linux was not worth (for my needs) the work required for (maybe i was too subtle ) i mean even if i had a full linux distro solution for my 1380 tablet i would still go for my current Android on Linux set-up that i have. yet, each has his own needs
oh boy it's getting late
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh I see. The highest priority for me at least, is to get any linux distribution to boot.
workdowg said:
I purchased my tablet with intention of dual booting Linux and Android and eventually going with Linux alone (being x86 I thought this would be a piece of cake). Now after getting Linux running (with Android in a chroot).... My vision has changed. TTY Linux is great, I have so much I can get done when not home. Using Xsdl, X runs well enough ( I had wine installed to run a Windows app) and I don't think it would be all that much better on the framebuffer.
The problem ends up being.... (and it has been stated before).... Touch still sucks on a small screen! Android just excels at it. So for me, if someone were to develop kexecboot or such I would definitely play with it (proof of concept) but I'm positive I'd go right back to my current setup.... ssh and the Xsdl for X as needed are perfect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Touch will probably work better on the larger screens, I've got the 13inch one.
---------------
So I got the latest kernel from kernel.org to boot but I'm not sure why it doesn't find the initramfs, I assume it has to do with it not existing on a partition, but being built into the boot.img.
http://i.imgur.com/IxdwXre.jpg
I'm trying to make it boot a live OS directly from USB, without initramfs. It's a bit difficult because I don't know how the block devices are named, maybe if anyone knows the kernel command line for booting the live linux using the custom kernel, using sdhci or normal usb.
Basically, instead of the normal LiveUSB sequence:
grub from USB -> kernel from USB -> root filesystem from USB
I want
custom kernel with android boot.img -> root file system from USB/SD card
cocacola2015 said:
I want
custom kernel with android boot.img -> root file system from USB/SD card
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there's something wrong with your boot.img, and from the image there not enogh info
link the boot.img you make
ionioni said:
there's something wrong with your boot.img, and from the image there not enogh info
link the boot.img you make
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What's wrong is you need the root= kernel argument, and I'm not sure how the block devices are named (For example, it doesn't have /dev/block/ like on the android kernels). The initramfs isn't modified yet, it's a custom compiled kernel with the source at kernel.org.
Created a boot.img that one can add root= kernel arguments to, to test booting from other media:
https://anonfiles.com/file/177753c2344c3c64c200cdb3803236bd
It has these kernel command line arguments built into the kernel:
Code:
oops=panic panic=360 vmalloc=172M debug_locks=0 bootboost=1 vga=ask i915.modeset=0 drm.vblankoffdelay=1 selinux=0 nomodeset ro debug noinitrd
Another one with UHCI (USB2.0) driver, instead of xHCI (USB3.0), because it might not reach init sometimes otherwise when plugged in, for some reason.
https://anonfiles.com/file/d41f495d118ab1e5ccef961baeb1bcce
No command line arguments built into the kernel, all in boot.img, boot_delay= disabled
Code:
oops=panic panic=360 vmalloc=172M debug_locks=0 bootboost=1 vga=ask i915.modeset=0 drm.vblankoffdelay=1 selinux=0 nomodeset ro debug noinitrd root=/dev/mmcblk0