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So I've finally kind of figured out several files in partition mmcblk0p1. Files named custom, init, and recovery are actually kernel and initramfs packed with 256 header. Information at offset 0x94 is length of kernel + header (256 bytes) and offset 0x98 is length of initramfs. Except of file init, contain additional size which I'm not actually understood.
By extracting init file, and modifying extracted initramfs, I can boot to android system with rooted state.
I've experimenting using unionfs got from somewhere in this forum and added files su and superuser.apk. I've added in init file inside initramfs.
Actually analyzing recovery files, we can get information regarding recovery program which mostly in bash script.
I've include my kernel and initramfs extracted from file init in mmcblk0p1. You can try for yourself only in Developer Edition, where you can flash your own kernel and initramfs.
Beware, I don't guarantee it will succeed... try for yourself
*Sorry, bad english...
Hi,
Is it not pointless to work on this squashfs, when we can use plain file/device partition on SDE (like Angstrom demo)? I guess (it's still theory - since I've just installed SDE) it's enough to create rootfs with copied everything from squashfs and /data - to make it fully writeable and rootable - and boot on it as /.
I'll give it a try later...
No methods are pointless. Stop saying that. It's a progress to what we can do with the device.
Anyway, were you able to make that root work on the main OS, dogma?
MoonPhantasm said:
No methods are pointless. Stop saying that. It's a progress to what we can do with the device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ehh ok - but it makes thinks complicated, while we should straight everything up - to make upgrading smooth and easy
MoonPhantasm said:
Anyway, were you able to make that root work on the main OS, dogma?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I can see in files - it should work.
Here's a diff of those init files (what was added)
out# diff init init.old
53,54d52
< CP=/bin/cp
< CHMOD=/bin/chmod
122,130d119
<
< # Create tempfs on /rootfs/home and unionfs with /rootfs/system
< $MOUNT -t tmpfs tmpfs $rootfs_path/home
< $INSMOD /lib/modules/unionfs.ko
< $MOUNT -t unionfs -o dirs=$rootfs_path/home=rw:$rootfs_path/system=ro unionfs $rootfs_path/system
< $CP /home/su $rootfs_path/system/bin/
< $CP /home/superuser.apk $rootfs_path/system/app/
< $CHMOD 6755 $rootfs_path/system/bin/su
< $CHMOD 755 $rootfs_path/system/app/superuser.apk
Booting from normal ext3 device requires some more changes - but gives us no 300MB (or similar) limit, allows to change boot parameters after kernel boots up (now on squashfs partition) etc. etc.
Yeah.. I'm able to get root with kernel and initramfs I've attached...
I am very excited about the prospects with SDE. Hopefully with some more poking and prodding and with Archos Froyo source released we will see some nice custom ROMs coming down w/ full root and a re-mapped file system in the coming months. I for one am hopeful that the dev community embraces the Gen8's w/ SDE and bakes up a nice serving of Gingerbread!
I was thinking that in recovery there's tool to flash initramfs and kernel which formed in file custom in mmcblk0p1. If we can replace destination to init (not custom). I think we can force booting to our new change, without entering to recovery mode first.
But, I still don't want to break anything in partition mmcblk0p1 .
Also, if we can modifying squashfs file with new one, without script checking the file (I think is on cramfschecker program); we can have custom rootfs itself replacing androidmerged.squashfs.secure....
Just the thought...
Keep up the good work guys!
just copied the content of the squashfs in an ext3 image and modified the init and mountpoints.
will report later after some testing
Heh.. I've just did the same - but on ext3 partition of sd card. Not luck yet to full boot... yet...
me neither. don't have time for more testing today and tomorrow, but soon I have a lot of spare time
edit: currently running kernel and initramfs of dogmaphobia, works great so far
Let me know when you guys news beer on your break, its on me.
Keep up the good work.
its too bad i am too dumb to understand all of what you are saying.
Does this mean rhe archos can be booted with root?
is it then rooted on the normal android firmware i use at the moment or on something else?
If yes how exactly do i get this to work and will there be a easier version for people like me who dont know that much about that kind of things.
and sorry again if my questions are dumb,i just want to try to get it.
nimrodity said:
Does this mean rhe archos can be booted with root?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes - but with SDE installed (and voided warranty - unless Archos claims so)
nimrodity said:
is it then rooted on the normal android firmware i use at the moment or on something else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We are trying to boot oryginal Archos-Android on writtable disk (then it will be fully rooted - on OS level at least). dogmaphobia prepared initrd (first stage boot - lets say) that mounts part of original dir tree as RW and installs SU (switch to root) tool.
nimrodity said:
If yes how exactly do i get this to work and will there be a easier version for people like me who dont know that much about that kind of things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably yes, this one is not so hard either - but it's really just a first step, so I recommend to wait.
This is freaking awesome. Since 2.0.71 disabled temproot I haven't been using my 101 very much other than poking around in Angstrom.
I voided the warranty on every other Android device I own for root, and I sure don't mind doing it on my 101 either.
@$aur0n
thx for the explanation.
Since i am please ight now ho the archos works,i ca wait a while till something new comes up.
so no hurry,we all saw how achos handled that with an unfinished bugged fimware
this is great news, im so looking forward to the future with a fully rooted device. And all the benefits that comes with that,maybe some custom roms maybe even cyanogen mod, A2SD, custom kernels and Gingerbread. If this comes thru it blows this wide open. Keep up the good work
@dogmaphobia you've written kernel size was at 0x94 and initramfs size at 0x98 but I don't get it. 2byte value (db70) at 0x94 results in 56176 and (db700021) ist far too much for kernel size. same weird result for initramfs.
how did you extract initramfs and kernel from this mmcblk0p1/init file? may post a shell script?
I've checked my "custom" file - on pos. 94 i have unsigned 32bit (8 bits) value "2218864" - witch might be ok, since 2218864-256=2218608 - and that's exactly the size of kernel that dogmaphobia send (and it's bootable).
On pos. 98 I have value "833767" (8 bit stream like before) - that's look also quite ok.
ps. and you should be able to extract it with dd (dd if=custom of=whatever bs=1 skip=245 count=2218608) - it's slow with bs=1 but...
Heym I mounted the rootfs.img as loop, put the two files from dogmaphobia in /boot and copied the image back to internal memory, but wasn't able to boot from this image. Any tips?
I live in Japan and after more than 6 months I have successfully and permanently rooted both my Sharp 003 SH Galapagos and the 005SH Galapagos (Softbank not Docomo). My next concern is how to SIM unlock. I have been reading the posts about hacking the nv_bin file. I have searched through all of the the files (Root FTP thank you!) but there was no such file. I am happy to send along any screenshots or data files if that helps.
Thanks in advance.
Search Sharp 003SH Root Success and Sharp 005SH Root success on Youtube for more info
Can't really help you. Don't know anything about it. But I would like to know how you ended up rooting this phone of ours.
Its not a file on the filesystem. The sim locking in these phones is in the radio image; which can be accessed when you use the custom build kernel thats in the latest rootkit (I assume thats what you are using).
See the 2ch root/ROM thread for more details, but basically it is done through ADB, manually backing up the "_modem" partition; stripping the spare/ECC bytes and then extracting the radio OS using QualcommDumpAnalyser
I have managed to extract this image, but no idea where to go from there. None of the other device info seems to apply to this (HTC, Samsung, LG, any other Android that has had its sim-lock discovered in the radio)
Advice i got from the guys on 2ch: "Qualcomm's NAND code is neither difficult, nor unique, so if you know what you are looking for its not hard"
003SH 005SH Sim unlock
Thanks very much for giving me a new direction. I'll get started on it right away and let you know how it progresses.
It just sucks that the guys who know how to unlock it are staying quiet, saying its "taboo"
FYI, stripping the Spare/ECC bytes can be done manually (i wrote a C program to do it), but there is an option in the RevSkills app to do it all for you - i recommend doing that.
Of course we face another issue once we find the actual unlock - recalculating the ECC bytes after making the change; the only way to access the radio is with raw data access.
P.S. hope you have warranty on your phones - this is very likely to brick at least one phone until we get it right
---------- Post added at 12:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:24 PM ----------
In the spirit of open cooperation, here are the instructions i was given, translated and simplified
In ADB Shell, type su to get the # prompt, then:
cat /proc/mtd <Enter>
Confirm that you have the "_modem" partition available. If not, you need to reflash with the custom build kernel
Dump the image to file with the following command:
dump_image -r -D -F _modem /sdcard/backupimages/modem.img
Access this with anything as "raw dump" and all blocks will get read as ECC error, so definitely dont do this
ECC positioning is different to Linux, so take care
The following maps out how 512bytes of data and 10 bytes of ECC info are stored in a 528 byte block:
0000 - 01CF (0-463): Data
01D0 - 01D1 (464-465): Unused (0xff)
01D2 - 0201 (466-513): Data
0202 - 020B (514-523): ECC
020C - 020F (524-527): Unused (0xff)
Use RevSkills application to extract the data portions:
Menu⇒Calculators/Generators⇒Android MTD Nand remove Spare and ECC
Extract all of the Data only portions out of the raw dump, and then use QualcommDumpAnalyser to read it and split up the various parts. I did notice that i wasnt able to get the AMSS block out with QualcommDumpAnalyser - i copied that out manually by calculating the byte positions shown in QDA.
003SH bootloader key sequence?
Eternalardor,
I'd be happy to swap information. Perhaps you could shed some light on the question of the bootloader for the Sharp 003SH and 005SH? There seems to be no discernible key sequence (Power+home+Volume up etc.) to access the bootloader. I feel like I've tried them all. Can you tell me this critical piece of information?
Is a form of the USB Jig necessary to access it?
Looking forward to your response.
003SH SIM unlock
Dominik,
Here are the results of the original /proc/mtd (before rooting)
boot
cache
misc
recovery
ipl
system
persist
log
battlog
calllog
ldb
userdata
I don't see the _modem partition. Should I?
I have also included a screenshot of the results showing size. I have most of them backed up as .img files too.
FYI: .img backed up sizes. Perhaps this will help you to ponder where the _modem partition may have gone. Maybe it's been renamed?
boot 11,264KB
cache 3,072KB
misc 1,024KB
recovery 11,264KB
ipl 15,360KB
system 419,840KB
persist 30,720KB
ldb 45,056KB
userdata 405,120KB
There is no bootloader menu AFAIK. If you install the custom kernel, you will have the option of a quasi-recovery mode, by pressing the home button between 7-12 seconds after the Galapagos logo is seen (or was that the Softbank logo)
Anyway, looking at the screenshots, it seems you do not have the custom kernel.
How did you achieve root on your phone?
To do this, you need to use the "003sh_005sh_dm009sh-rootkit" from at least 5/27 (recommend _0614); which is available on the 2ch forums. This includes 2 possible ways of achieving root:
1. A modified standard kernel (boot image), which, when flashed gives you regular root access
2. A custom compiled kernel, which has full root, a bunch of power profiles, and heaps more features (inc that quasi recovery), as well as access to the "_modem" image.
Judging from your youtube videos, you speak some Japanese, so the Japanese menus in the rootkit shouldnt be much trouble.
http://www1.axfc.net/uploader/Si/so/142435
This is what i used.
Go here for help/instructions http://anago.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/android/1337845757/
And dont even think about typing in English on there, or you will be ignored and/or told to go away
This all looks familiar. I have been using the root kit (5/27) to get where I am now - step by blessed step. It was pretty straight forward BUT I have never seen the option to write to the system partition. It is in all the instructions but the only option I have with respect to the system partition is to back it up. I'm confused as to why it doesn't seem to show up for me. I am using a Japanese machine so all the characters are displayed and I can read the instructions but I can't find help anywhere as to why I don't have that particular (and critical) option. I can see a lot of new and cool options in the 6/14 release. I'm excited and would like to get it installed.
I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for your help .... keep it coming!
And another thing
Could you explain a little more about "having" the custom kernel? Using the root kit, I wrote to the Recovery partition then the Boot partition then rebooted from the Recovery partition and all seemed well. As I said above, I have never been able to write to the System partition despite it appearing in all the instructions. I suspect that is what is holding me back from the latest and greatest custom kernel. Still, I am enjoying all the same functionality that everyone else seems to be enjoying in root. What am I missing?
Eep, you wrote to the boot partition before trying the recovery? Brave!
The steps should be:
Write image to recovery partition;
Then reboot to recovery partition (from the menu) and confirm it all works without errors.
Then write image to boot partition
And then turn off the phone, and reboot (the last part is only my instructions - you could just select "reboot to boot partition" from the menu)
You are doing this on your 005SH right? It should be the same for the 003SH, but i only have the 005SH. In the rootkit there is 2 options when you say "burn custom image":
1 カスタムビルドrootedカーネル（リカバリーキット機能付き）
2 S4080 標準rootedカーネル（簡易リカバリー機能付き）
Q 中止してメインメニューへ戻る
You must do the first one, the CUSTOM rooted kernel, to get any of the really cool features. The second option is only if you just want root access for a particular app or something. AFAIK the second option doesnt even disable MIYABI LSM, which prevents you from mounting the system dir as R/W
But either way, writing to the System dir is not important for what we are doing. You need the Custom kernel, which gives you access to the "_modem"
Edit, i just noticed in your screenshots above, you didnt even get root in ADB shell?
Type
ADB Shell<Enter>
Then type
su<enter>
The cursor should change to a #, this means root. You may get a prompt on the phone from Superuser asking you to give root access to "shell". Once you have this try the cat /proc/mtd again
jcroot003sh,
can you tell me how to root 003sh?
Use the link i provided in my previous post
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=27989085&postcount=8
You can use a translator if you dont understand Japanese, but the general instructions are in the post above yours
I translated it for a friend, but that is at work, so wont be able to put it up until monday.
DominikB said:
Use the link i provided in my previous post
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=27989085&postcount=8
You can use a translator if you dont understand Japanese, but the general instructions are in the post above yours
I translated it for a friend, but that is at work, so wont be able to put it up until monday.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your replying. I will wait for your translated version. You are really a good person.
Progress
I have successfully found and dumped the "_modem" image. Exactly as you stated - forgot the "su" command in ADB. Thanks. The next problem is editing out the code. I am way above my head here so I will do some research before bugging you for a step-by-step for that.
Also, the bootloader worked. I didn't realize how to do it until I read the notes in the 6/14 release. I successfully put a previously dead phone back on it's feet EXACTLY to the point of my current phone simply by backing up and then restoring partitions through the bootloader. Very slick and easy.
Will get to work. I'll be in contact soon with my progress on the SIM unlock.
I have spent a bit of time looking at it, it certainly isnt easy (Certainly isnt a "lock=yes" section). I assume the actual locking portion is encrypted/compressed/or just compiled, because it would be too easy otherwise (be happy to be proven wrong). For starters, i cannot even find my IMEI number in the dump file... I think that this dump only includes the radio code, not the NV RAM which contains the IMEI and SIM Lock status. If that is the case then the solution should be to change the portion of the radio code that queries the NV RAM, so that it doesnt care if the SIM lock is supposed to be applied.
Extracting the spare/ECC bits out should be done with the RevSkills app; extracting the relevant portions, that is a bit of a cludge; QualcommDumpAnalyser can show the start/end positions, but doesnt extract the AMSS part (AFAIK thats where the code will be). You need to use a hex editor to cut that part out manually... And i am still not 100% sure what the block size is on this NAND.
Good luck!
And if there *are* any experienced hackers out there willing to help out, i can offer some monetary help (as will a few of my fellow Japanese smartphone owning friends) as this will be valuable for not just these 2 phones (there is an army of 007SH owners waiting on this unlock)
Shall we give the 007/009 a shot?
I can see mountains of the 007SH on the auction (mostly pink). Perhaps I should pick one up and take it for a spin. I am happy to try to do something to help out for all the help I am receiving.
Or perhaps the 009SH?
How hard would it be to crack the 007? The 009SH looks like it is supported in the latest release kit.
Thoughts?
Currently, the 003/005SH are going to be the easiest, because they have the custom kernel which allows access to the "_modem" image. To do it on the 007SH we need to build a custom kernel (compiled from the sources available on the ktai-dev site), and add the modem access code (this is in the src directory of the rootkit). Not impossible, but i dont have a Linux machine to compile the sources.
However i think that the code will be fairly universal. Once we find it on the 005SH we will know what we are looking for on the 007SH as well. That will make many people happy
Anyway, my 005SH is under warranty/anshin plan so i dont mind if it gets bricked (especially now that we can take nand backups).
First things first though - examining the 005SH modem image. Does anyone know whether the NAND is a 16kb or 128kb block size? Or is it something completely different?
P.S. The DM009SH is just the Disney Mobile version of the 003SH
Linux machine no problem
I have a Linux server running 24/7 so compiling the kernel is easy. Don't let that be the holdup. I'll keep working on the 003SH _modem image.
DominikB,
I can't open this site [anago.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/smartphone/1319287551/] on channel2 for free. This site had been moved to the past-log storehouse. So.... I even can't look at Japanese version for rooting 003sh. It is very helpful if you can show me the steps for rooting 003sh.
Hi
I've done a bit of searching but can't find anything too specific to what I'm trying to do. Basically we have 10 Android tablets, and I want to make them all standardised e.g. have the same Apps on, configured in the same way (e.g. enterprise wireless network added).
Now the thing is if anyone messes around with them I want a really easy way to restore them to the original config which I've done.
One way I thought was to configure one fully, install Titanium Backup on it, do a full backup of apps/system data etc, and put the backup onto an SD card. Then I already have the base ROM on an SD card so if theres any problems, I can just flash the ROM over it again, install TB, and restore all the data. Would this be suitable to do to duplicate the data onto 10 tablets, and also restore the data if required?
The other thing I looked into was customising a ROM myself, don't want to do anything too tricky it'll just be a case of removing all the preinstalled crap I don't want, preloading the Apps we do want, and if possible preloading the wireless key and getting rid of the first boot initial set up wizard.
PS I've looked at installing CWM and doing whole image backups, but supposedly the tablet isnt supported (its an Ainol Novo 7 Elf 2)
Any advice would be great, hopefully theres some fairly straight forward way of managing this
Thanks
One of the reasons I integrated a full blown GNU/Linux on my devices, was the need to run full and automated backups. If you are looking into the possibility making a custom ROM, this might be a solution for you as well. I'm using BackuPC to run backups nightly, backing them up as any other GNU/Linux machine (using tar over ssh).
See the link in my signature for more information about this.
kuisma said:
One of the reasons I integrated a full blown GNU/Linux on my devices, was the need to run full and automated backups. If you are looking into the possibility making a custom ROM, this might be a solution for you as well. I'm using BackuPC to run backups nightly, backing them up as any other GNU/Linux machine (using tar over ssh).
See the link in my signature for more information about this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
Thanks for the reply, not too sure this would be the right option for us. I don't really need to take nightly backups, I just need to make a backup of a preconfigured image, and then put that image onto 10 other devices. Then I want to keep the original backup and have an easy way to restore it onto any devices which have been messed up. Sort of like image cloning for PCs, I want to prepare a base image, and then flash it over all the devices.
fro5tie said:
Hi
Thanks for the reply, not too sure this would be the right option for us. I don't really need to take nightly backups, I just need to make a backup of a preconfigured image, and then put that image onto 10 other devices. Then I want to keep the original backup and have an easy way to restore it onto any devices which have been messed up. Sort of like image cloning for PCs, I want to prepare a base image, and then flash it over all the devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, I see. Compile the image to you likings (boot image and system partition), and then flash it using fastboot onto you devices.
Hi
Does anyone have any more thoughts on this?
I have experimented with Titanium Backup and this seems to work quite well. I have installed a ROM, and customised it e.g. installed the apps I need and configured the apps, wireless settings and home screens etc. Then I do a full apps + system backup in TB to my SD card.
Then the plan is, I can reflash the ROM onto the other device, install TB and then restore this backup. This saves my user state and wireless settings etc.
Only problems is when I flash the ROM, I have to go through all the initial set up again and also remove some preinstalled apps which I dont want. Any ways around this?
There must be something I'm missing. Why don't you install the device, walk through the setup, remove the bloatware you don't want and then dumps the disk partitions into images you flash the other devices with using fastboot? This way you'll get'em cloned, isn't it this you want..?
Of course there's still some tinkering needed once restored/cloned, such as giving them individual Google accounts etc, but you can easily fix this without re-running the setup wizard.
kuisma said:
There must be something I'm missing. Why don't you install the device, walk through the setup, remove the bloatware you don't want and then dumps the disk partitions into images you flash the other devices with using fastboot? This way you'll get'em cloned, isn't it this you want..?
Of course there's still some tinkering needed once restored/cloned, such as giving them individual Google accounts etc, but you can easily fix this without re-running the setup wizard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
Yes that's what I want to do! How would I go about dumping the disk into an image and then flashing?
fro5tie said:
Hi
Yes that's what I want to do! How would I go about dumping the disk into an image and then flashing?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are several methods. Some boot loaders (such as nvflash for tegra based devices) can actually read back the disk partitions to a computer via the USB port. You can also on the tablet read the raw mtd device with busybox/dd. I assume you've unlocked the bootloader and gain root access to the device, since this is a requirement for flashing them as well. A third alternative is using busybox/tar, and then recreate the filesystem image using mkyaffs (or if ext3/ext4 even easier, just loopback mount an image on you linux maching to unpack the tar archive to). Once you got the images (system and userdata partitions), you flash the devices with "fastboot flash system system.img" and "fastboot flash userdata data.img". I don't believe you'll need to tamper with the other partitions.
kuisma said:
There are several methods. Some boot loaders (such as nvflash for tegra based devices) can actually read back the disk partitions to a computer via the USB port. You can also on the tablet read the raw mtd device with busybox/dd. I assume you've unlocked the bootloader and gain root access to the device, since this is a requirement for flashing them as well. A third alternative is using busybox/tar, and then recreate the filesystem image using mkyaffs (or if ext3/ext4 even easier, just loopback mount an image on you linux maching to unpack the tar archive to). Once you got the images (system and userdata partitions), you flash the devices with "fastboot flash system system.img" and "fastboot flash userdata data.img". I don't believe you'll need to tamper with the other partitions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
Thanks for the quick reply, much appreciated.
Unfortunately you've lost me a bit here!
Yes the device is rooted, I dont have a linux machine though.
Any chance you'd be able to provide some more specific instructions? The device is a chinese tablet from manufacturer Ainol, the model is a Novo 7 Elf 2. Unfortunately there isn't much discussion on these online so specific help is hard to find!
fro5tie said:
Any chance you'd be able to provide some more specific instructions? The device is a chinese tablet from manufacturer Ainol, the model is a Novo 7 Elf 2. Unfortunately there isn't much discussion on these online so specific help is hard to find!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can provide you specific answers to specific questions, but I have no experience of the tablet in question, so you'll have to do some digging yourself first. Make sure it supports fastboot, investigate what the proprietary bootloader is capable of, see how/if you can obtain an original image etc.
One maybe easier solution, especially if you plan to restore the tablets on a regular basis, is to only make a new boot image to reflash the devices with. The only modification done is that you change the /init.rc script to mount /data and /system from the SDcard instead of from the internal nand disk device.
Once this is done, you'll power up and run the installation wizard and everything on your master tablet. Then power it down, and clone the SDcard. This SDcard now contains everything, so you'll simply restore a device by replacing its SDcard with a copy of this master card. I guess it's easier to clone a SDcard than reflashing several internal partitions. Easier to make the master as well - you don't need to dd or tar them, they are already in "image" format. If you can get hold of the original firmware, this should be quite easy without the need to preserving data from the device itself.
fro5tie said:
Any chance you'd be able to provide some more specific instructions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Issue the commands "cat /proc/mtd" and "mount" on your device at command prompt (e.g. via "adb shell" or the "ConnectBot" terminal app). This shows you if the device allows you to copy the boot image from it. Paste in the output into this thread. If you believe the "clone the tablet via the SDcard" is a good solution for you, the process is in short terms something as below;
Copy the boot image to the sdcard:
# dd if=/dev/mtd/mtd2ro of=/mnt/sdcard/boot.img bs=2048 (device dependent of contents of /proc/mtd)
Remove the sdcard, insert into a computer, split the boot image info kernel + initramfs. Read http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=HOWTO:_Unpack%2C_Edit%2C_and_Re-Pack_Boot_Images for instructions about how to work with the boot.img file. I really recommend a GNU/Linux environment for this.
Then edit /init.rc replacing the "mount yaffs2 [email protected] /system" with "mount ext3 /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 /system" for system and data (use p3 for data partition, the device name may be different on your tablet, see mount output).
Create an SDcard with three partitions: #1 vfat (standard), #2 and #3 ext3. Insert into you device and boot it up again.
# mount -t ext3 /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 /root
# cd /system
# tar cf - . | (cd /root ; tar xf - )
# umount /root
# mount -t ext3 /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 /root
# cd /data
# tar cf - . | (cd /root ; tar xf - )
# umount /root
This copies your partitions to the SDcard. Shutdown the tablet again.
Make a new boot.img using the instructions in the link above, using the edited init.rc script.
Now you can non-destrutive give this a try.
Place you tablet in fastboot mode (often vol-up (or vol-down) during power on).
$ fastboot devices
This vill verify the tablet is in fastboot mode. It should be listed. Then:
$ fastboot boot boot.img
Note here, only BOOT the tablet, do NOT use the "flash" keyword. This in case of the image isn't working, you'll just have to restart you tablet, and no harm's done.
Look around. Do a "mount" command. Everything works? Mount shows /data and /system from sdcard? Perfect. Now you can reflash it. Shutdown and flash:
$ fastboot flash boot boot.img
Now the device will use /data and /system from the SDcard every time. Customize your device, and then clone your SDcard and try it in tablet #2 you'll booting with your new boot.img and the cloned SDcard. Verify that #tablet #2 is a perfect clone of tablet #1. It is? Now you can flash the boot,img into all your tablets.
--------------------
But don't forget, there may be other solutions as well, maybe more suitable. This you'll have to investigate yourself.
And the usual disclaimer - you can probably not follow above by the letter. There sure is some obstacle you'll have to overcome, something non-standard, etc.
Also keep the original boot.img file for safekeeping in the case you want to restore the device's boot image some day.
Wow! Thanks for the info! This is really helpful, I need to set aside a bit of time to work through this and have a look. Thanks again its really appreciated, I'll be back with info once I've had chance to give it a go!
I certainly can't offer more detailed info than the fellow from Sweden who seems to really know his stuff...but what about making a nandroid backup of your fully configured reference tablet (I'm assuming all tablets are rooted). Ensure all your tabs have CWM recovery and copy your nandroid file to each one.
If any of your fleet get 'corrupted' you can simply restore the original, fully configured ROM.
In fact that sounds too obvious..likely I missed something about your scenario which precludes this option from consideration!
Good luck mate.
tweeny80 said:
I certainly can't offer more detailed info than the fellow from Sweden who seems to really know his stuff...but what about making a nandroid backup of your fully configured reference tablet (I'm assuming all tablets are rooted). Ensure all your tabs have CWM recovery and copy your nandroid file to each one.
If any of your fleet get 'corrupted' you can simply restore the original, fully configured ROM.
In fact that sounds too obvious..likely I missed something about your scenario which precludes this option from consideration!
Good luck mate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
Yes that was my first thought as well, tablets are rooted yes but there is no CWM for the tablet. Its an obscure Chinese branded tablet.
Unless there is another way to do nandroid backups?
hmm tricky situation. Catch 22 ! From what I know, your best bet is to backup all possible things through Titanium Backup given that you don't have the use of Nandroid backups. You can include wifi settings, messages etc but it's modular & not systemic.
I did a quick google search with no luck - time to upgrade your fleet dude :-0
Best of luck.
This is a cross-post from a reddit thread I started, but this is probably a more appropriate location for it.
I have been trying to modify files in the system folder for the Android container on the Asus Flip so I can install SuperSu, but have run into some problems.
The system folder is contained in a squashfs image on the chromebook at /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img. Mounted squashfs images appear to not support read-write access. I have been able to unsquash the image, add the SuperSU apk to the /system/priv-app folder and su to the /system/xbin folder, and remake the image. This boots, but SuperSU force closes as soon as it starts.
To make tinkering easier, I've tried building a writable image using dd and mkfs. I placed it in a location that has rw access and modified the /etc/init/android-ureadahead.conf script which mounts it to enable rw access. Unfortunately though it won't boot. The boot logs for the android container show a litany of SELinux errors for different things that it could not set context, operation not permitted. I can post the exact log if necessary. Some googling led me to find that the SELinux security context attributes weren't being replicated in my image, so I tried mounting with context and fscontext options equal to the contexts from the original image, but I get the same problem.
If anyone has any ideas I'd be especially grateful.
lionclaw said:
This is a cross-post from a reddit thread I started, but this is probably a more appropriate location for it.
I have been trying to modify files in the system folder for the Android container on the Asus Flip so I can install SuperSu, but have run into some problems.
The system folder is contained in a squashfs image on the chromebook at /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img. Mounted squashfs images appear to not support read-write access. I have been able to unsquash the image, add the SuperSU apk to the /system/priv-app folder and su to the /system/xbin folder, and remake the image. This boots, but SuperSU force closes as soon as it starts.
To make tinkering easier, I've tried building a writable image using dd and mkfs. I placed it in a location that has rw access and modified the /etc/init/android-ureadahead.conf script which mounts it to enable rw access. Unfortunately though it won't boot. The boot logs for the android container show a litany of SELinux errors for different things that it could not set context, operation not permitted. I can post the exact log if necessary. Some googling led me to find that the SELinux security context attributes weren't being replicated in my image, so I tried mounting with context and fscontext options equal to the contexts from the original image, but I get the same problem.
If anyone has any ideas I'd be especially grateful.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wayyyy out of my area of expertise, but here's my (completely novice) best guess.
>All Chromebooks are write-protected with a screw on the motherboard
>Putting a Chromebook in developer mode allows for some tinkering ie things like chroots, and on the asus flip, the ability to install apks from unknown sources.
>Unscrewing the write-protect screw allows for the ability to completely install a new operating system or dual boot setup.
>Maybe you need to do that before you're able to accomplish root access?
My other idea would be to try and figure out a way of doing a systemless root?
Also, total aside but since this is the only thread I've found on XDA about this device, I think chroots are theoretically possible now without the need to be in developer mode via Android apps (even without root on Android). Download the GIMP port from the Play Store to see what I'm talking about. Playing around with that for a few minutes really made me wish that it didn't use emulated mouse/keyboard in it's implementation. Also, it appears that apt-get is broken, but regardless it might interest someone out there looking for a project.
back from the dead, any progress on this?
I have been able to successfully root the Android image on my Asus Flip.
I built a blank image with dd in /usr/local, formatted it with mkfs, mounted it to a folder, mounted the original system.raw.img to a folder, copied the files across, placed *all* the SuperSU files listed as 'required' in the SuperSU update-binary in the relevant places in /system in my new image, set permissions & contexts for those files, edited arc-system-mount.conf and arc-ureadahead.conf to point to the new image and, finally, patched /etc/selinux/arc/policy/policy.30 with the SuperSU sepolicy patching tool in order to boot my rooted Android instance with selinux set to enforcing.
I have created a couple of scripts which more-or-less fully automate this procedure, which can be downloaded from nolirium.blogspot.com. Please feel free to download, open the scripts in a text editor to check them out, and try them out if you like. Only tested on Asus Flip, though.
I seem to be unable to post attachments at the moment so I will just add the descriptions here, I could probably post the entire scripts here too if anyone wants. Feel free to let me know what you think.
DESCRIPTIONS:
1-3.sh
Combines the first three scripts listed below.
01Makecontainer.sh
Creates an 900MB filesystem image in /usr/local/Android_Images, formats it, then copies Android system files therein.
02Editconf.sh
Modifies two system files: arc-system-mount.conf - changing the mount-as-read-only flag and replacing the Android system image location with a new location; and arc-ureadahead.conf - again replacing the Android system image location. Originals are renamed .old - copies of which are also placed in /usr/local/Backup.
03Androidroot.sh
Mounts the previously created Android filesystem image to a folder, and copies SuperSU files to the mounted image as specified in the SuperSU update-binary.
04SEpatch.sh
Copies an SELinux policy file found at /etc/selinux/arc/policy/policy.30 to the Downloads folder, opens an Android root shell for the SuperSU policy patching command to be entered, then copies the patched policy back to the original location. A copy of the original policy.30 is saved at /etc/selinux/arc/policy/policy.30.old and /usr/local/Backup/policy.30.old
Uninstall.sh
Removes the folder /usr/local/Android_Images and attempts to restore the modified system files arc-system-mount.conf and arc-ureadahead.conf.
ok so two questions, one do you think this would work on the Acer r13 convertable? and 2 where can I find the actual instructions/scripts
keithkaaos said:
ok so two questions, one do you think this would work on the Acer r13 convertable? and 2 where can I find the actual instructions/scripts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The R13 has a 64-bit Mediatek processor, right?
I have added a version for ARM64, but I haven't tested it.
You can find the instructions and scripts at nolirium.blogspot.com
ya, its a mediatek. and thanks ill go see if i can find it
---------- Post added at 03:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:58 AM ----------
wow, ok. i can do this but im not sure i want to.. after reading the possible problems i may run into. Im going to be getting the G. Home in a couple weeks and i gotta keep things running smooth. This seems like going a tad too far then i need to. The other day i had action launcher going and it looked pretty damn good but i really want to try and get the action3.apk that i have put into the pri-app folder or whatever the chromebook uses i found the syst folder but cant access it. Im wondering if i make the machine writable it would work but im afraid of losing my updates, as long as i could do them manualy, i guess that would be cool. Also since im already going on... has anyone found a way to disable the dev boot screen without tinkering with the physical chromebook yet?
SuperSU on Chromebook
Hey there I love this post but unfortunately im on the mediatek (well not unfortunately cause i love it) but i do really want super su .. But i found this other post that i tried out but i am having a problem executing the scripts. When i go to run the first one, it says can not open "name of script" but the dev takes a pretty cool approach. Im still new to Chrome OS but thanks for the post and if you have any advice on executing scripts id love to hear it!! http://nolirium.blogspot.com/
I'm guessing the above post was moved from another thread...
Anyway, it turns out that zipping/unzipping the files in Chrome OS's file manager sets all the permissions to read-only. Apologies! sudo chmod+x *scriptname* should fix it...
Regarding OS updates, I actually haven't had a problem receiving auto-updates with software write-protect switched off; the main possible potential issue I could imagine arising from the procedure I outlined would involve restoring the original conf files if both sets of backups get deleted/overwritten. This seems unlikely, but in that case either manually editing the files to insert the original string (/opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img), or doing a powerwash with forced update might be necessary in order to get the original Android container booting again.
I don't think anyone's found a way to shorten/disable the dev boot screen without removing the hardware write-protect screw - from what I've read, the flags are set in a part of the firmware which is essentially read-only unless the screw is removed. Perhaps at some point the Chrome OS devs will get fed up of reading reports from users whose relatives accidentally reset the device by pressing spacebar, and change the setup. Here's hoping.
Hey just jumpig in the thread right quick to see if these instructions are old or what-- got a chromebook pro and the notion of having to update a squashed filesystem every timeto install su seems like a pain..
Is there any kind of authoritative documentation/breakdown regarding what Chromeos is mounting where before I start breaking things? Also anyone happen to know if there's a write-protect screw anywhere in the chromebook plus/pro?
Other questions:
* adbd is running, but is not accessible from adb in the (linux) shell, which shows no devices. Do I need to access adb from another device (i'm short a usb c cable right now) or can I use adb (which is there!) on the chrome side to access adbd on the android side?
* Anyone know if adb via tcp/ip is available? Don't see it in the android settings.
Hey,
There's no real documentation AFAIK, the thing is that ARC++ is a bit of a moving target, as it's so actively being developed/reworked. For instance, with the method described earlier in the thread - it started off being possible to just swap out a file location in arc-ureadahead.conf, then they changed it to arc-setup-conf, and now, since a few CrOS versions ago, the rootfs squashfs image is mounted in a loop fashion via the /usr/sbin/arc-setup binary instead, making an overview of the setup somewhat opaque to the casual observer.
I was kind of hoping to implement a kind of hybrid systemless root style setup myself, but unfortunately I haven't really managed to find the time to sit down and fully figure out a few parts of the puzzle, in particular relating to minijail and working with namespaces. So, I'm still using the method mentioned in posts above for my rooting needs at the moment, the only significant changes being that at the moment I'm replacing /opt/google/containers.android.system.raw.img with a symlink to my writeable rooted rootfs img, and also that in recent CrOS versions the mount-as-read only and debuggable flags can be found in /etc/init/arc-setup-env ("Environment variables for /usr/sbin/arc-setup").
In general though, one can kind of get an idea of what's going on in the default setup by reading through the various /etc/init/arc-* Chrome OS upstart jobs (and their logs in /var/log). Though, like I say, things keep changing around somewhat with every CrOS update, as the implementation 'improves'. As time goes by, and the subsystem matures, it'll certainly be interesting to see what other approaches are possible relating to customizing Android on Chrome OS.
There should definitely be a write protect screw somewhere on the motherboard for the Samsungs, but so far I haven't come across any pics showing exactly which screw it is. So far, no-one seems to have been brave/foolhardy enough to fully tear down their own machine and locate the screw!
Regarding adb, on my device I found the following in arc-setup-env:
# The IPV4 address of the container.
export ARC_CONTAINER_IPV4_ADDRESS=100.115.92.2/30
adb 100.115.92.2 (in Chrome OS's shell) works fine for me, the authorisation checkbox pops up and then good to go. su works fine through adb as expected. There's also a useful little nsenter script in Chrome OS to get into the android shell; /usr/sbin/android-sh, which I've been using in my script to help patch SE linux.
I actually just updated my rooting scripts recently to support 7.1.1, though I've only tested on my own Armv7 device (Flip C100).
I'll attach them to this post in case anyone wants to take a look. There's a readme in the zip, some more details can also be found here and below
EDIT: Fixed the SE Linux issue occurring with the previous version I uploaded (it was launching daemonsu from u:r:init:s0 instead of u:r:supersu:s0).
Anyone considering giving them a spin should bear in mind that the method does involve creating a fairly large file on the device as a rooted copy of the android rootfs. (1GB for arm, 1.4GB for Intel). There's a readme in the zip but the other couple of important points are that:
a) The SuperSU 2.82 SR1 zip also needs to be downloaded and extracted to ~/Downloads on the Chromebook.
b) Rootfs verification needs to be off. The command to force this is:
Code:
sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh --remove_rootfs_verification --force --partitions $(( $(rootdev -s | sed -r 's/.*(.)$/\1/') - 1))
or the regular command to do it is:
Code:
sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh --remove_rootfs_verification
c) If, subsequent to running the scripts, there's a problem loading Android apps (e.g. after a powerwash or failed install), the command to restore the original rootfs image is:
Code:
sudo mv /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img.bk /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img
Hey this is a great response.. thanks!
Nolirum said:
Hey,
There's no real documentation AFAIK, the thing is that ARC++ is a bit of a moving target, as it's so actively being developed/reworked. For instance, with the method described earlier in the thread - it started off being possible to just swap out a file location in arc-ureadahead.conf, then they changed it to arc-setup-conf, and now, since a few CrOS versions ago, the rootfs squashfs image is mounted in a loop fashion via the /usr/sbin/arc-setup binary instead, making an overview of the setup somewhat opaque to the casual observer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
verity
Yeah playing with it now, I'm looking at these /etc/init/arc-*-conf files... I see that the /dev/loop# files are being set up... (more below)
Nolirum said:
I was kind of hoping to implement a kind of hybrid systemless root style setup myself, but unfortunately I haven't really managed to find the time to sit down and fully figure out a few parts of the puzzle, in particular relating to minijail and working with namespaces. So, I'm still using the method mentioned in posts above for my rooting needs at the moment, the only significant changes being that at the moment I'm replacing /opt/google/containers.android.system.raw.img with a symlink to my writeable rooted rootfs img, and also that in recent CrOS versions the mount-as-read only and debuggable flags can be found in /etc/init/arc-setup-env ("Environment variables for /usr/sbin/arc-setup").
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry not sure what you mean by "hybrid systemless root style setup"? I take it you're modifying the startup script and replaced the squashfs file in /opt... my concern about doing it was whether they were implementing some kind of dm-verity equivalent to the squashfs file to make sure it hasn't been tampered with (say, by adding /sbin/su or whatever) or whether it's safe to replace that file.. Sounds like you're saying it is? (update: I guess that's what rootfs verification does, and we can turn it off....)
Also you mean arc-setup.conf:
env ANDROID_DEBUGGABLE = 0
right?
Nolirum said:
In general though, one can kind of get an idea of what's going on in the default setup by reading through the various /etc/init/arc-* Chrome OS upstart jobs (and their logs in /var/log). Though, like I say, things keep changing around somewhat with every CrOS update, as the implementation 'improves'. As time goes by, and the subsystem matures, it'll certainly be interesting to see what other approaches are possible relating to customizing Android on Chrome OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hadn't realized the boot was still in flux-- I'd have figured they'd worked that out by now...
Nolirum said:
There should definitely be a write protect screw somewhere on the motherboard for the Samsungs, but so far I haven't come across any pics showing exactly which screw it is. So far, no-one seems to have been brave/foolhardy enough to fully tear down their own machine and locate the screw!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Heh.. not gonna be me..
Nolirum said:
Regarding adb, on my device I found the following in arc-setup-env:
# The IPV4 address of the container.
export ARC_CONTAINER_IPV4_ADDRESS=100.115.92.2/30
adb 100.115.92.2 (in Chrome OS's shell) works fine for me, the authorisation checkbox pops up and then good to go. su works fine through adb as expected. There's also a useful little nsenter script in Chrome OS to get into the android shell; /usr/sbin/android-sh, which I've been using in my script to help patch SE linux.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool-- adb connect 100.115.92.2 does indeed work I was gonna use netcat to open port 5555 in chromeos and pipe it through, but looks like nc isn't here and I'm not yet ready to start changing the FS..though probably will be soon... btw any idea which partitions get overwritten when chrome it does it's updates? Will /root and /etc get overwritten, for example... would a "powerwash" overwrite it or can you get easily get into an unbootable state on these things?
It's also kind of strange that adb is listening to port 30 at that (internal?) bridge address by default witho no UI to turn it off.. and it's inaccessible from outside.. i wonder if there's an easy way to change the bridge to share the same IP as the actual interface...
Final thought-- I'd love to build that system image myself soup-to-nuts, but I can't find any "caroline" device tree set up... do you or anyone else happen to know if there's a standalone AOSP device tree for the chromebooks? It would be cool to have a mashup AOSP/lineageos if such a think could be possible-- I'm guessing chromiumos is just taking the android tree, building it and then adding it into their build... I Haven't build chromiumos for many years now so I can't even begin to imagine how this android build integrates with the whole emerge thing they had going.. but I bet it takes a while
Nolirum said:
I actually just updated my rooting scripts recently to support 7.1.1, though I've only tested on my own Armv7 device (Flip C100).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool I'll take a look at these scripts.
So I haven't yet run the scripts-- just looking through them-- I noticed the section starting:
if [ -e /etc/init/arc-setup-env ]; then
echo "Copying /etc/init/arc-setup-env to /usr/local/Backup"
This doesn't exist on the x86 CB Pro. There's an arc-setup.conf that sets up the environment variables though. It sets WRITABLE_MOUNT to 0, but then so does arc-system-mount.conf
Not sure if these are different between x86 and ARM or if it's just in the latest update.. but figured I'd let you know. Wanna throw thse scripts up on github somewhere? (Or I can do it) and we can maybe look at keeping them up to date and/or standardizing them? It wouldn't be hard to determine if it's running on ARM or x86_64 (uname -i for example)..
fattire said:
So I haven't yet run the scripts-- just looking through them-- I noticed the section starting:
if [ -e /etc/init/arc-setup-env ]; then
echo "Copying /etc/init/arc-setup-env to /usr/local/Backup"
This doesn't exist on the x86 CB Pro. There's an arc-setup.conf that sets up the environment variables though. It sets WRITABLE_MOUNT to 0, but then so does arc-system-mount.conf
Not sure if these are different between x86 and ARM or if it's just in the latest update.. but figured I'd let you know. Wanna throw thse scripts up on github somewhere? (Or I can do it) and we can maybe look at keeping them up to date and/or standardizing them? It wouldn't be hard to determine if it's running on ARM or x86_64 (uname -i for example)..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, the arc-setup-env thing is intentional. There does appear to be another issue with the x86 version though. I've written up a detailed response to your previous post; it's in a text file at the moment so I'll copy it over and format it for posting here with quotes etc now - should only take a few minutes. Yeah, sticking them on github might be a good idea; I've been meaning to create an account over there anyway.
Yeah, so... Regarding the scripts, since I've put them up here for people to download - I should mention that the first person to test them (aside from me) has reported that something's not working right (I'm waiting for confirmation but I think he tried out the x86 version). It's likely either an error on my part when copying across from my Arm version, or perhaps something not working right with conditionals, meant to deal with the various OS versions ('if; then' statements, I mean). Once I find out more, I'll edit my earlier post...
fattire said:
Sorry not sure what you mean by "hybrid systemless root style setup"? I take it you're modifying the startup script and replaced the squashfs file in /opt... my concern about doing it was whether they were implementing some kind of dm-verity equivalent to the squashfs file to make sure it hasn't been tampered with (say, by adding /sbin/su or whatever) or whether it's safe to replace that file.. Sounds like you're saying it is?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, sorry for being a bit vague - I just mean perhaps implementing a kind of systemless root à la Magisk/SuperSU (from what I understand of how these work) - avoiding the need to actually replace files in /system. Since I'm mainly just using su for the privileges rather than actually wanting to write to /system, I had the idea that perhaps a sort of overlay on e.g. xbin and a few other locations, rather than actually rebuilding the whole of /system, might be an interesting approach....
Yep, I've been replacing /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img with a symlink to my modified image lately. Works fine... I think they've been focused on just getting the apps working properly, maybe something like dm-verity is still to come.
Although, one of the cool things with Chromebooks IMO is that once the Developer Mode (virtual) switch has been flipped, the system's pretty open to being hacked around with. I think a large part of the much-trumpeted "security" of the system is thanks to the regular mode/Dev mode feature, once in Dev Mode with verified boot disabled on the rootfs, we can pretty much do what we want (I like the message that comes up in the shell when entering the first command I posted under the spoiler - it literally says "YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN!").
So yeah, with Dev Mode switched off, verified boot switched on, we can't even get into the shell (just the walled-off 'crosh' prompt), making the system indeed rather secure (but, for some of us, rather limited).
fattire said:
Also you mean arc-setup.conf:
env ANDROID_DEBUGGABLE = 0
right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I mean by a moving target, lol. On my device the Canary channel is at Chrome OS version 61; I think they started to move out some ARC++ (the acronym stands for Android Runtime on Chrome, version 2, if anyone's wondering, btw) environment variables to a separate file in version 60, or maybe 61. Problems with being on the more 'bleeding edge' channels include:
#Sometimes stuff gets broken as they commit experimental changes.
#Any updates sometimes overwrite rootfs customizations; the higher the channel - the more frequent the updates occur.
#Some of the stuff that gets updated, may later get reverted.
And so on...
fattire said:
I hadn't realized the boot was still in flux-- I'd have figured they'd worked that out by now...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah you'd think so. Honestly, the more I use CrOS the more it seems like a (very polished) work-in-progress to me. Though, I guess most modern OSs are also works-in-progress though. (I don't mean the former statement in a critical way; I'm very happy that new features keep getting added to the OS - Android app support being a perfect case in point, that was a lovely surprise, greatly extending the functionality of my Chromebook).
fattire said:
Cool-- adb connect 100.115.92.2 does indeed work I was gonna use netcat to open port 5555 in chromeos and pipe it through, but looks like nc isn't here and I'm not yet ready to start changing the FS..though probably will be soon...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Netcat's not there but socat, which I haven't any experience with but have seen described as a "more advanced version of netcat", is listed in /etc/portage/make.profile/package.installable, meaning that adding it to CrOS is supported, and as simple as:
Code:
sudo su -
dev_install #(sets up portage in /usr/local)
emerge socat
I tried socat out and it seems to work, might be interesting to play around with.
fattire said:
btw any idea which partitions get overwritten when chrome it does it's updates? Will /root and /etc get overwritten, for example...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Theres a question. I forget some of the exact details now (gleaned from browsing the developer mailing lists and the documentation on chromium.org), but from what I do remember and my experiences tinkering, I can say:
The auto-update model uses kernel/rootfs pairs, e.g. at the moment my device is booting from partition 2 (KERN-A) with the rootfs being partition 3 (ROOTFS-B). My understanding is that with the next OS update pushed to my device, CrOS will download the deltas of the files to be changed, and apply the changes to partitions 4 and 5 (KERN-B and ROOTS-B), setting new kernel GPT flags (priority=, tries=, successful=), which will, post-reboot, let the BIOS know that 4 and 5 will form the new working kernel/rootfs pair. Then the following update will do the same, but with partitions 2 and 3, and so on and so forth, alternating pairs each time. It's a pretty nifty system, and I think something similar might be happening with new Android devices from version O onward (?).
So partitions 2,3,4,5 are fair game for being overwritten (from the perspective of the CrOS updater program). Partition 1, the 'stateful partition') is a bit special, in addition to a big old encrypted file containing all of the userdata (/home/chronos/ dir?), it also has some extra dirs which get overlaid on the rootfs at boot. If you have a look in /mnt/stateful/, there should also be a dir called 'dev_image', which (on a device in Dev mode) gets mounted up over /usr/local/ at boot. As I mentioned above, if you do
Code:
sudo su -
dev_install
you can then emerge anything listed in /etc/portage/make.profile/package.installable (not a great deal of stuff admittedly, compared to Gentoo), which gets installed to subdirs in /usr/local/. So I think stuff in partition 1; /mnt/stateful/, should be safe from being overwritten with an OS update. I think crouton chroots get put there by default.
Most of the other partitions don't really get used, and shouldn't get touched by the updater, here's a design doc on the disk format, and here's a Reddit post (from a Google/Chromium employee) mentioning dual booting from partitions 6 and 7.
fattire said:
would a "powerwash" overwrite it or can you get easily get into an unbootable state on these things?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not too hard to mess up the system and get it into an unbootable state, lol. The "powerwash" just seems to remove user data, mainly. If you change up (the contents of) some files in /etc, or /opt, for example, then powerwash, normally they won't get restored to their original state (unless you also change release channel).
But, as long as the write-protect screw's not been removed and the original BIOS overwritten, it's always possible to make a recovery USB in Chrome's Recovery Utility on another device, and then restore the entire disk image fresh (this does overwrite all partitions). Another thing that I did was make a usb to boot into Kali; I was experimenting with the cgpt flags on my internal drive and got it into an unbootable state, but was still able to boot into Kali with Ctrl+U, and restore the flags manually from there. (To successfully boot from USB, it was essential to have previously run the enable_dev_usb_boot or crossystem dev_boot_usb=1 command in CrOS). I understand also that the BIOS type varies with device release date and CPU architecture, and that Intel devices may have some extra potential BIOS options ('legacy boot').
fattire said:
It's also kind of strange that adb is listening to port 30 at that (internal?) bridge address by default with no UI to turn it off.. and it's inaccessible from outside.. i wonder if there's an easy way to change the bridge to share the same IP as the actual interface...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think I saw something related to this on the bug tracker. If I come across any info, I'll let you know...
fattire said:
Final thought-- I'd love to build that system image myself soup-to-nuts, but I can't find any "caroline" device tree set up... do you or anyone else happen to know if there's a standalone AOSP device tree for the chromebooks? It would be cool to have a mashup AOSP/lineageos if such a think could be possible-- I'm guessing chromiumos is just taking the android tree, building it and then adding it into their build... I Haven't build chromiumos for many years now so I can't even begin to imagine how this android build integrates with the whole emerge thing they had going.. but I bet it takes a while
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I haven't built Chromium OS or anything, but apparently, there's an option to create a 'private' overlay for the build, which doesn't get synced with the public stuff.
I think that the higher-ups at Google might be still umming and ahing as to whether or not to make source code available for the Android container, it's certainly not been made public yet. Actually, I remember seeing a Reddit post from a Google/Chromium employee mentioning this.
"That article is a little misleading in terms of open source. While the wayland-server and services that communicate with the ARC++ container are open source, the actual ARC++ container is not."
Perhaps they're waiting to see how similar implementations of Android within a larger Linux setup (e.g. Anbox) fare.
There doesn't seem to be too much that differs from AOSP in the ARC++ container - a few binaries and bits and pieces linking the hardware to the container (e.g. the camera etc), maybe some stuff related to running in a container with the graphics being piped out to Wayland?, and so on.
Oh, I was searching the bug tracker for something else, and just saw this (quoted below). Looks like it might be possible to run AOSP based images on CrOS soon!
arc: Implement android settings link for AOSP image
Reported by [email protected], Today (72 minutes ago)
Status: Started
Pri: 1
Type: Bug
M-60
When ARC started without the Play Store support there is no way for user to activate Android settings. We need implement corresponded section that has
Title: Android settings:
Link: Manage android preferences:
Inner bug: b/62945384
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great response! I read it once and I'll read it again in more detail then will probably have questions For whatever it may be worth, my only experience with chromiumos was building the whole thing maybe 4 years ago for my original 2011 Samsung "snow" Chromebook-- and making a bootable USB (or was it an SDcard?) to run it on (with a modified firmware that did... something I can't remember.. i think it was basically a stripped down uboot and I remember adding a simple menu or something-- I think I was trying to bypass that white startupscreen or something..). However, after doing this a few times to play with it, I realized that Chromiumos without the Chrome goodies kinda sucks and I promptly forgot everything and went back to stock.
I did have it re-partitioned to run linux as a dual boot from the SD slot or something-- I remember using that cgpt thing to select the different boot modes and vaguely recall the way it would A/B the updates (which "O" is now doing)... but anyhoo I was using the armhf ubuntu releases with the native kernel and ran into all kinds of sound issues and framebuffer only was a little crappy so...
I'm gonna re-read in more detail soon and I'm sure I'll have questions-- one of which will be-- assuming that most stuff is the same on x86 vs arm, why are there two scripts? How do they differ?
ol. On my device the Canary channel is at Chrome OS version 61; I think they started to move out some ARC++ (the acronym stands for Android Runtime on Chrome, version 2, if anyone's wondering, btw) environment variables to a separate file in version 60, or maybe 61.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the -env file I'm missing, I presume?
I think that the higher-ups at Google might be still umming and ahing as to whether or not to make source code available for the Android container, it's certainly not been made public yet. Actually, I remember seeing a Reddit post from a Google/Chromium employee mentioning this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It looks from the response that the gapps portion might be what's in question-- just like ChromiumOS vs Chrome has all the proprietary bits taken out?
Here's what I'd ideally like to see:
* Rooted Android, with a toggle switch to hide su in settings a la lineage (requires a kernel patch something like this one) + settings changes from lineageos
* adb access from outside the device-- critical for quickly testing apks from android studio w/o a cable. Basically put the chromebook in a "device mode" where adb is passed through... I'm going to see if I can pipe adb through with socat as you suggest...
* what else... I dunno watch this space.
An update from a couple of guys that have tested out the scripts on Intel: It seems to be that while they are able to launch daemonsu manually (with daemonsu --auto-daemon), it apparently does not seem to be getting launched at boot.
I am waiting for some more information on this. Previously, for Marshmallow, the script was setting up the app_process hijack method in order to to launch daemonsu at boot; to support Nougat I changed it to instead create an .rc file with a service for daemonsu, and add a line to init.rc importing it. This works for me, and from what I can gather, it copied/created all files successfully on the testers devices, too, so I'm not sure at this point what the issue is there.
Edit: Fixed the issue. I updated my previous post with further details.
fattire said:
I realized that Chromiumos without the Chrome goodies kinda sucks and I promptly forgot everything and went back to stock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol yeah. True, that.
fattire said:
...assuming that most stuff is the same on x86 vs arm, why are there two scripts? How do they differ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's literally just two things that differ: the few lines where we copy the su binary over e.g.
/x86/su.pie → /system/xbin/su, daemonsu, sugote
vs
/armv7/su → /system/xbin/su, daemonsu, sugote
...and also the size of the created container. The x86 container is about 30 percent larger than the Arm one.
I had a little look at how to determine the CPU architecture programmatically on Chrome OS a while back, but couldn't seem to find a reliable way of doing this, at least not without maybe getting a bunch of people with different CrOS devices to run something like, as you mentioned, uname -i (which returns 'Rockchip' on my device, uname -m (which returns 'armv7'), or such similar, and collating the results. It was just easier to do separate versions for x86/arm, rather than introduce more conditionals (with potential for errors). I'm certainly not averse to adding a check for $ARCH, and thus standardizing the script, as long as it's reliable.
fattire said:
This is the -env file I'm missing, I presume?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep! It's just the same few envs as in the .confs, moved into a new file. I'm fairly confident that the script's conditionals deals with them OK.
fattire said:
It looks from the response that the gapps portion might be what's in question-- just like ChromiumOS vs Chrome has all the proprietary bits taken out?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, although the respondant there perhaps doesn't seem to realise that he's talking to a Google/Chromium dev, the way he responds. Not that that makes anything he says in his post is necessarily less valid, though.
fattire said:
Here's what I'd ideally like to see:
* Rooted Android, with a toggle switch to hide su in settings a la lineage (requires a kernel patch something like this one) + settings changes from lineageos
* adb access from outside the device-- critical for quickly testing apks from android studio w/o a cable. Basically put the chromebook in a "device mode" where adb is passed through... I'm going to see if I can pipe adb through with socat as you suggest...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting... I agree, those would both be useful additions to the functionality of ARC++...
Quick question-- has Samsung provided the source for the GPL components (including the kernel, obviously)? I looked here but didn't see anything...? Previously the kernel was included along with the chromium source and there was like a kernel and kernel-next repository.. but this was like five years ago. I think the codename for the samsung chromebook pro is called caroline... let me quickly see if I can find a defconfig in the chromium source...
Back.. nothing here in the chromeos-4.4 branch. Nothing here either in the master branch. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong branches-- master is probably mainline kernel. Also the directories.. it took me five minutes to realize it wasn't going to be in arch/arm - force of habit I guess. I'll keep looking unless anyone knows. This "chromium-container-vm-x86" one seems to have dm_verity as an unused option. Ah, this is looking promising.
...and... here!
So it would seem that this would be built as part of the chromiumos build system, which seemed to be half gentoo five years ago building out of a chroot and was kind of a pain to set up... still, I'm guessing that since it's got that weird script to make the defconfig, what you could do is use google's chromiumos build script to make the kernel image (with whatever changes you want), then, assuming that it doesn't care if you replace the kernel, just throw it over the right Kernel A/B partition and see if it boots and starts up chromeos... it's weird cuz the kernel has to do double-duty for chromeos and android.. but I bet you can just replace it and it would work fine...
I had a cursory go at building a couple of kernel modules for my Flip C100 a while back - I didn't get too far though, lol. People do seem to have had success building their own kernels and running them with Chrome OS though, as with most things I suppose it's just how much time/effort you're willing to put in.
I think I used this and maybe this, from the crouton project to guide me.
From what I remember, I just got fed up of all the arcane errors/config choices. I remember that even though I'd imported my current device config from modprobe configs, there were then such an incredibly long string of hoops/config choices to have to go through one by one, to then be confronted with various errors (different every time ISTR) that I think I just thought "screw this". I think there were some other issue with the Ubuntu version I was using at the time as well. I know that sort of stuff's kind of par for the course with kernel compilation, but I was mainly only doing it so I could edit xpad in order to get my joypad working, in the end I found a different solution.
It shouldn't be too much hassle though, in theory I guess.... Oh, also, in order to get a freshly built kernel booting up with the CrOS rootfs, in addition to the gpt flags, I think you might have to sign it, too? (just with the devkeys & vbutil_kernel tool provided on the rootfs), some info here, and here.
From what I remember, the build system would do whatever key signing was necessary.... although I do now remember you're right there was some manual step when I was building the kernel, but I can't remember if that's because of MY changes or that was just part of the build process.
I I just dug out the old VM (Xubuntu) I was using to build and, well, let's just say I'll be doing a LOT of ubuntu updates before I can even realistically look at this. I do kinda recall setting up the environment was a huge pain so I'm going to see if I can just update the 5 year old source, target the pro and just build the kernel image and see what pops out the other end. At least I won't have to deal with the cross compiler, though I think it should hopefully take care of that itself.
Interesting to see that those crouton projects have emerged (no pun intended) so I'll check them out too while ubuntu updates itself
Thanks for the github links.. I'm going to go read that wiki.
Update: Looked at it-- funny they just stripped out the chromeos-specific parts they needed rather than emerge everything which is smart. My only question is now that Android is involved, there's that script I linked to earlier that seems to say "if you want Android support you'll need these bits too"-- wonder if the same config scripts apply, and if there are any other device tree considerations as well...
I may play a bit and see how smoothly it goes.. Unfortunately I don't have unlimited time either :/
Also, please do let me know if you put the scripts on github and I can send you pull requests if I come up with anything.
Update: Finally updated like 3 major versions of ubuntu... the "depot_tools" repo had its last commit in 2013, so I updated that. Wow, this is so much clearer than previous docs... it looks like something called gclient is used now, which I configured with:
gclient config --spec 'solutions = [
{
"url": "https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git",
"managed": False,
"name": "src",
"deps_file": ".DEPS.git",
"custom_deps": {},
},
]
'
that let me do gclient sync --nohooks --no-history ...which i think is updating the ancient source. I probably should have just started over, but anyway... we'll see what happens.
Update again: After updating with this new gclinet tool, it appears that the old repo sync method is still required as described here. That hasn't changed after all, so now I'm going to go through this old method, which will probably completely overwhelm my storage as it's downloading with history.. but anyway, in case anyone is trying this-- looks like the whole chroot/repo sync thing may still be how it's done... the /src directory described above may only be for building just the browser, not the whole OS...
...and here it is. I will have zero room to actually build anything tho, but hey.
* [new branch] release-R58-9334.B-caroline-chromeos-3.18 -> cros/release-R58-9334.B-caroline-chromeos-3.18
Note to self: use cros_sdk --enter to actually get in the chroot. Then:
~/trunk/src/scripts $ ./setup_board --board=caroline
to set up the build for caroline. Then to build:
./build_packages --board=caroline --nowithdebug
Useful links:
* Building ChromiumOS
* [URL="http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/how-tos-and-troubleshooting/portage-build-faq"]eBuild FAQ
[/URL]
"Blobs" are the files specific to each device that we need in order to compile custom ROMS that work on our device. The process of finding them is tedious and slow... I have been picking away at them for months when I have time. There are over 600 files so far! But there are also references to files that are not being found. They are either missing, or they are not located where they are expected to be located. This is where I need help.
So, if you want to help, go HERE:
https://github.com/mightysween/android_vendor_motorola_payton
and look through the proprietary-files.txt file for anywhere that it says "warning".... and then search inside of the firmware (working on 8.0+ now, not 7.1 please) and try to track down the file that it says is missing [obviously, you will need a system dump, or to search on a rooted device]. If you find it, please post below like this:
LINE NUMBER OF THE WARNING (from github)
PATH TO THE MISSING FILE (relative to /system... in other words, don't inlude your own local path)
Once this file is complete, we can use it to automatically pull the correct vendor files into our build environments... having a working recovery, active kernel developement and completed vendor blobs should open us up to more development efforts.
Also, if anyone has done any testing and knows of other proproetary files that are needed, please post them here so I can include them.
My time at the computer to work on this is really limited, so I have only identified a dozen or so daemons that definitely call for proprietary libs... I am sure there are more
I would love to pitch in on this but have zero experience with anything related to development. Do you think I could still be of help? Sounds like a basic enough task that it wouldn't be too difficult. Let me check and see that I understand the process.
Went to github and looked at proprietary-files.txt. The first warning I found was in line 49: "blob file libpn553_fw.so missing or broken". Then searched for that file in my device's system folder using ES File Explorer with Root Explorer enabled.
So is this what you're looking for?
49
/system/vendor/firmware/libpn553_fw.so
---------- Post added at 14:31 ---------- Previous post was at 14:07 ----------
I'd like to contribute in some way but if this is best not left to a complete noob then I totally understand
mightysween said:
Also, if anyone has done any testing and knows of other proproetary files that are needed, please post them here so I can include them.
My time at the computer to work on this is really limited, so I have only identified a dozen or so daemons that definitely call for proprietary libs... I am sure there are more
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have a link to a system dump?
TheBassDude said:
I would love to pitch in on this but have zero experience with anything related to development. Do you think I could still be of help? Sounds like a basic enough task that it wouldn't be too difficult. Let me check and see that I understand the process.
Went to github and looked at proprietary-files.txt. The first warning I found was in line 49: "blob file libpn553_fw.so missing or broken". Then searched for that file in my device's system folder using ES File Explorer with Root Explorer enabled.
So is this what you're looking for?
49
/system/vendor/firmware/libpn553_fw.so
---------- Post added at 14:31 ---------- Previous post was at 14:07 ----------
I'd like to contribute in some way but if this is best not left to a complete noob then I totally understand
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, that is all there is to it
Just time consuming (especially after the first 500)...lol
QWZR said:
Do you have a link to a system dump?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah, too big to conveniently upload... but if you are rooted, you can use the phone to search
mightysween said:
Nah, too big to conveniently upload... but if you are rooted, you can use the phone to search
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine gets here next week
mightysween said:
Nah, too big to conveniently upload... but if you are rooted, you can use the phone to search
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have root on the system you can find the files for, you should be able to find any given filename with:
find / -name "filename" -print
And it should output any filenames that match. I don't have time at the moment to dig into this any more, but would this resolve much of it?
ebrandsberg said:
If you have root on the system you can find the files for, you should be able to find any given filename with:
find / -name "filename" -print
And it should output any filenames that match. I don't have time at the moment to dig into this any more, but would this resolve much of it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any way that works is fine by me
I am on the road a lot and just don't have enough time to sit and work on it... so it is taking months. I bet a few people helping could finish it in a matter of hours.
I am hoping to have a few hours next week to work on it. But the sooner this is done, the sooner I can shift to trying to compile Lineage OS with working hardware.
BTW, Lineage *does* compile if I comment out all the stuff causing make errors... not much works, obviously.
The next step will be compiling with these blobs, then logging all the new errors and chasing down all the additional broken symlinks... and then adapting the kernel as needed.
Then, MAYBE we can get a base Lineage tree up and open up the X4 to building for other roms. I know someone started a skeleton tree for Carbon already on Github... they are likely just waiting for the completed device tree, too.
mightysween said:
Thanks, that is all there is to it
Just time consuming (especially after the first 500)...lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ebrandsberg said:
If you have root on the system you can find the files for, you should be able to find any given filename with:
find / -name "filename" -print
And it should output any filenames that match. I don't have time at the moment to dig into this any more, but would this resolve much of it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't own this device yet, but I was thinking of getting one. I figured this might help you all out (you'll need to be running linux):
First, let's get a list of all the files on the phone, to make searching faster.
Code:
adb shell
su
find / > /sdcard/allfiles.txt
exit
exit
adb pull /sdcard/allfiles.txt
Now you should have allfiles.txt on your machine. Also grab the proprietary-files.txt, and then run this:
Code:
grep -Po '(?<=(blob file )).*(?= missing or broken)' proprietary-files.txt | xargs -I @ grep "@" allfiles.txt
That should find the paths of all the missing files (except the ones marked "wildcard")
BLuFeNiX said:
I don't own this device yet, but I was thinking of getting one. I figured this might help you all out (you'll need to be running linux):
First, let's get a list of all the files on the phone, to make searching faster.
Code:
adb shell
su
find / > /sdcard/allfiles.txt
exit
exit
adb pull /sdcard/allfiles.txt
Now you should have allfiles.txt on your machine. Also grab the proprietary-files.txt, and then run this:
Code:
grep -Po '(?<=(blob file )).*(?= missing or broken)' proprietary-files.txt | xargs -I @ grep "@" allfiles.txt
That should find the paths of all the missing files (except the ones marked "wildcard")
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I had recently completed this, but your code worked fantastic for double checking, and actually helped me find one that I had missed :good:
Now, on to identifying any more daemons that need proprietary files... and then assembling the tree itself... PROGRESS!
PHASE 1 is complete!
https://github.com/mightysween/android_vendor_motorola_payton
I am 99% sure that this is only ~75% of what will be needed to actually build LOS15. But it is a good foundation to work off of now.
My plan is to start attempting to compile LOS and take error logs to chase down the remaning missing stuff. LOTS to be done still to get to that point...hoping for some other builders/devs to materialize here and help out
Hi! Just a question: it´s mandatory to use A/B partition scheme to build a custom ROM for this device or it will be possible to use a traditional partition scheme and free up some GBs of internal storage for use?
christianrj said:
Hi! Just a question: it´s mandatory to use A/B partition scheme to build a custom ROM for this device or it will be possible to use a traditional partition scheme and free up some GBs of internal storage for use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It would seem that we will still be stuck with A/B, as the bootloader does the initial check of the active slot. Perhaps there may be some clever ways around this in the future...but nothing I will be tackling.
mightysween said:
It would seem that we will still be stuck with A/B, as the bootloader does the initial check of the active slot. Perhaps there may be some clever ways around this in the future...but nothing I will be tackling.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You would probably need a custom kernel to do it properly. The bootloader passes a kernel param (androidboot.ro.boot.slot_suffix) specifying which slot to use. In the absense of a kernel param, the value is read from the ro.boot.slot_suffix build property.
That being said, you might be able to just repartition your device to only have 1 slot, flash your ROM, and use
Code:
fastboot --set-active=_a
. If your ROM has disabled OTA updates from the OEM, you should be fine.
I'm going to get an X4 in the coming weeks. I'd like to help with this soon. I'm a seasoned developer by trade and can collab on GitHub. Hope to be able to start working with you soon. :good:
I don't know if any of you have seen this article, but it seems promising that it might not be too difficult to achieve for this device:
https://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-redmi-note-4-project-treble/
Hariiiii said:
I don't know if any of you have seen this article, but it seems promising that it might not be too difficult to achieve for this device:
https://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-redmi-note-4-project-treble/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@vache at the Moto G5 Plus forums has already managed it using the /oem partition which is otherwise unused for custom ROMs
Hariiiii said:
I don't know if any of you have seen this article, but it seems promising that it might not be too difficult to achieve for this device:
https://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-redmi-note-4-project-treble/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool... seems it may be possible. Will follow the progress on the Redmi and G5 devices
navenedrob said:
I'm going to get an X4 in the coming weeks. I'd like to help with this soon. I'm a seasoned developer by trade and can collab on GitHub. Hope to be able to start working with you soon. :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The more I am reading about enabling Treble, the more I think it is entirely possible.... and probably the best direction to focus our efforts.
Seems like we have partitions that could be used as /vendor. I am reading up on exactly how the Treble vendor partition is set up. Tricky, but not implausible.
EDIT: Actually, none of the partitions we could potentially re-purpose for /vendor are big enough. So, it may be harder on this device than on others. It may require repartitioning.