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Hello,
I want to compile Android from source. I want to just build a fully default Gingerbread that would run nice on my phone. I got the Android source, kernel source (kernel-2.6.32-U8800-Froyo) and now I don't know what to do next. I compiled the generic one already (lunch full-eng) and it ran fine on the emulator.
My most important question is, if I make it otapackage and flash it, would it start? If it doesn't, can I recover? What folders/files are essential if I make my own device for example in "device/huawei/u8800"
Also, where can I find a GOOD porting guide? I have found some that are old and not used anymore.
Some links
Start by going through source.android.com for the general basics if you havent already.
Also, even though Google removed the PDK (Platform Developer's Kit) from the site, it has been mirrored on kandroid here: http://www.kandroid.org/online-pdk/guide/index.html
The stuff in the the PDK, although inadequate, is still very important and explains how to create the necessary makefiles to add to the build, configuring for a new market, etc. etc.
Also,
watch these two videos over here. These were very helpful in my ROM development:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_H4AlQaNa0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFqELLB1Kk8
Learn to use github. It is helpful for you to keep track of your changes as well as incorporate others works into your own.
http://help.github.com/
Finally, Cyanogenmod repos are your BEST friend. Almost all major AOSP ROM devs owe some sort of thanks to those guys who have done so much. If you want to check out some of the code changes and patches that you want to incorporate look here on their gerrit:
review.cyanogenmod.com
If you want to look at the other changes that are actually in the cyanogenmod builds, best to look at their git repos here:
https://github.com/CyanogenMod
I am still learning right now while I create my ROM but your welcome to PM me if you have any questions
Glad someone helped. Now that ICS is available, I will build that instead. Now, I will follow the kandroid tutorial and add hardware_msm7x30 from cyanogenmod's repos. Then I'll make my own makefiles in the huawei/u8800 and I'll see if that works.
Also, some things I am not still clear. If I am not adding any recovery files, it shouldn't replace it, right? I want to make sure I can recover. However, my phone has a bootloader mode, which should still work, even if other's messed up. And the kernel, if I already have a compiled kernel for android 2.2, should it work for newer versions?
Thanks
Well AOSP as far as I know adds the stock recovery into the build so if you have a stock ROM, then you will lose your recovery (unless you change the source to skip the adding of recovery to otapackage).
Your bootloader should be fine. so you will theoretically be able to re-flash a custom recovery with fastboot as long as your bootloader is unlocked (assuming your phone is already rooted and has a custom rom, then it should be unlocked)
If you are using CM7 as base, then you dont have to worry about it as it is configured to NOT replace the recovery during the building and creating the otapackage.
The kernel should not be compatible as there were significant changes from Froyo and you should not use it. By the way, for now, work on the ROM first. Creating a custom kernel from scratch is hard work and should be left as the last task to do (assuming you know linux kernel development). Just use the stock pre-built kernel that comes with the source.
Also, according to Google:
Starting with IceCreamSandwich, the Android Open-Source Project can't be used from pure source code only, and requires additional hardware-related proprietary libraries to run, specifically for hardware graphics acceleration.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This means you need to find the correct hardware drivers first. Where to find that is beyond me. Check CM repos. It would be easy if everyone had a Nexus S/ Galaxy Nexus as the drivers are immediately available on source.android.com. Ah...well....
Personally, I am going to wait a few weeks before dabbling into ICS ROMs. Wait till CM7 comes out with a nightly for my nexus one and then rip the drivers from their ROM and use it for mine
I got ICS source and made the necessary Android.mk, AndroidProducts.mk, BoardConfig.mk and u8800(my device).mk, also vendorsetup.sh . Now, when I am trying to build it doesn't give me an error, more of a suggestion. It says to include "LOCAL_MODULE_TAGS := optional" in the hardware/msm7k/liblights/Android.mk. I added that, and tried again. Got that message again, but with other type /libril/Android.mk
About fastboot, I am not sure if my device has that. It can be turned on with volume up and down + power, but it boots to so called "pink screen". When I mount phone using usb to my pc, I can browse the recovery.img and other related stuff. If I have the otapackage, can I just take the recovery out from there or what should I modify in source? Add something to the makefiles?
Yeah I am pretty sure you should add the LOCAL_MODULE_TAGS to all of the relevant pre-built files. maybe they made the compiler less harsh in ICS when compared to the one for gingerbread. In gingerbread, it outright crashed the compile and asked you to add the tags.
According to Google engineers, here is the reason why they use these tags:
Short answer: lack of time.
The urgent concern was to prevent new modules from using a user tag
(implicitly or explicitly), and we took care of that. We haven't had
time to deal with the existing modules, there are over 1000 of those.
JBQ
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By the way, I hope you have git setup and the changes you have made are being staged and commited to your repo in github. If you ever make a mistake that hardcore crashes your compile and you dont know what you did, git will be there for you to rollback the changes as well as keep track of everything you have done from commit to commit
As far as I know, CM repos dont have everything complete for a full build of ICS but I could be wrong.
So you are working with AOSP correct?
As for the fastboot every android phone should have a fastboot by default but I believe each phone has a slightly different version. I will post how my fastboot looks like in a bit.
As for the removal of recovery, there should be somewhere in either source, makefiles or argument for the otapackage command that should leave out the recovery when making update.zip. You could just remove the recovery from the update.zip, change the updater-script and repackage it but its not a clean solution and those changes should be done in a uniform manner so you dont repeat this step every time you do a new build.
Where exactly is it, I have yet to know. Still learning much of this myself.
I now completely understand what modes of turning on my phone has... First one is normal, second is recovery, third is update-bootloader(I can access all files with it too) and four being the fastboot. The custom recovery I have on has an issue that it wants to boot to charging mode when I type "adb reboot bootloader". I can get to fastboot with the custom ROM I have on right now though. I think I am safe if I have issues.
I edited msm7k Android.mk to remove libaudio and libgralloc (errors with those), and it compiles to the step where it says it has no rule to make kernel requied by boot.img. I have put into BoardConfig.mk the line TARGET_PREBUILT_KERNEL with my kernel. I don't understand, what's wrong now...
My goal is to simply get it booting up. I'll look into libraries and other later.
-e-
Got the kernel thing sorted out. Copied device.mk from tuna device and edited to fit my device. Also modified full_u8800.mk and made the call to inherit from device.mk. Compiling now and I think I got past that.
-e2-
Got it built successfully. Fastboot won't let it install, because it has no mount points. Added mount points and let's see...
Nice to see you are making progress.
Got it built, but the fastboot is kinda buggy in my device, maybe custom rom issue. I can't make otapackage, it says "no rule to make target otapackage". I have a possible fix, trying that later.
Otherwise, I read its possible to flash system.img from recovery via advanced restore, update.zip package or advanced flash_image, but I don't know. Will post results.
Sent from my u8800
-e-
Tried make otapackage again. It still says "make: *** No rule to make target `otapackage'. Stop.". Maybe some things are still missing, I don't know. adb flash_image command will always post -1 to me, update.zip didn't work, advanced restore is not for this. I have a compiled image and I can't wait to test it, but I can't flash it...
If nothing works I'll revert to stock ROM and try again.
Blefish said:
Got it built, but the fastboot is kinda buggy in my device, maybe custom rom issue. I can't make otapackage, it says "no rule to make target otapackage". I have a possible fix, trying that later.
Otherwise, I read its possible to flash system.img from recovery via advanced restore, update.zip package or advanced flash_image, but I don't know. Will post results.
Sent from my u8800
-e-
Tried make otapackage again. It still says "make: *** No rule to make target `otapackage'. Stop.". Maybe some things are still missing, I don't know. adb flash_image command will always post -1 to me, update.zip didn't work, advanced restore is not for this. I have a compiled image and I can't wait to test it, but I can't flash it...
If nothing works I'll revert to stock ROM and try again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you successfully compiled, take the boot.img and system.img and package them into a zip and use dsixda's kitchen to make it flashable
Blefish, is it possible for you to share your device/vendor structures somewhere? I just finished setting up a build machine for ICS (using Cyanogenmod's repos in my case), and made a working full-eng image that seems to boot just fine in the emulator, so I'm seemingly all ready to hack around our device's specifics. But I would rather not do duplicate work, so I decided to ask
I'm also grabbing Huawei's new 2.6.35-based package to get the new kernel config, can't wait for them to release the actual sources for the update.
I'll share them on GitHib once I get a working build. I haven't got much time, and I changed to CM9 alpha now (repo branch ics). Since we got a 2.3 update, my first task is to port the latest clockworkmod recovery and then the ICS.
Compiling Android is long task and I'll do it in weekends, but the recovery should be available sometime, it shouldn't be hard to port that.
Oh yeah, look up stockwell's, dzo's and genokolar's github, they have done the device configuration. You can get much help from there. This weekend I'll propably test the build, I got otapackage command working now (it needed some things I can't write on mobile).
Sent from my U8800 using Tapatalk
Well, it only took 2 years lol!
What is Kexec?
Kexec (kernel-execute) is a function of the Linux kernel that allows it to act as a bootloader to boot other kernels. Unfortunately, the standard implementation of kexec doesn't work quite right on most ARM devices due to poor driver support for hardware resets. The workaround is kexec-hardboot, a patch set that allows a kernel to be staged in RAM before performing an actual hardware reset through the phone's bootloader. Upon reboot the kexec-supporting kernel will check the magic location in RAM to see if a previously stored kernel is available, and if so, it will transfer execution to that kernel instead of booting itself.
Why use Kexec
It's a second-stage bootloader. The standard Android bootloader only allows two kernels to be installed at once - boot and recovery. This means that if you want a working recovery, you're only allowed one real OS kernel. If you want to dual-boot (or tri-boot or more) you're screwed. Kexec provides an answer to this. By replacing the boot kernel, kexec (with the kexecboot GUI) acts as a "second stage bootloader" allowing you to boot any number of kernels from any available storage devices. For instance, you have kexecboot in your boot partition and you can keep a kernel for Android installed in your Android system partition as well as an Ubuntu kernel and root filesystem on your SD card and be able to switch between Android and Ubuntu at boot time.
What is kexecboot
http://imgur.com/4GYomKX
Kexecboot is a graphical front-end for kexec. I have modified it to work with the kexec-hardboot patches. It scans all available storage devices for a boot.cfg file in which you define kernels, ramdisks, and kernel commandlines. You control it using volume up and down to move cursor, power to select.
Download
Get it here: https://mega.co.nz/#F!0ct3EaTD!wHWnGo1M_2smyKdzGMIYmw
The code
Kernel builder: https://github.com/CalcProgrammer1/kernel_quincyatt_kexec
This repository contains all the things you need to build a flashable kexecboot/kexec-hardboot enabled kernel image. It contains the ramdisk with the kexecboot binary and a script to package a flashable zip file. Included as submodules are the kernel source itself (kexec-hardboot branch, required to build the image) and the kexecboot source (optional, not used by default as you must build it using an ARM system, a pre-built binary is included if you don't want to build your own). The kernel source includes a defconfig called kexec_quincyatt_defconfig that sets the required config options for building a kexec-hardboot kernel.
Kexecboot Configuration File
Kexecboot replaces your boot kernel, so when you power up your phone it will go straight to the Kexecboot screen. The issue is now to provide kernels for kexecboot to boot into. This requires some work on your part, as you will have to store the kernel files (zImage and initrd) in a partition and write a configuration file to tell kexecboot where they are. This configuration file may contain multiple kernels, allowing you to have several different kernels available for the same OS or multiple OSes entirely. If you're coming from an Android system that distributes their kernel as a boot.img, you can use the abootimg program to extract it into a separate zImage and initrd.img binary.
The configuration file must be located on the path /boot/boot.cfg. This is relative to whatever partition/disk you are on, so for instance if you're setting up Android to boot from kexecboot, you would put your configuration file in /system/boot/boot.cfg (/data/boot/boot.cfg would work as well). You can also put a boot.cfg file on your SD card as long as you follow the /boot/boot.cfg path. Kexecboot automatically scans all available partitions for a boot.cfg file before it starts and builds a list of all available kernels across all detected boot.cfg files, so you may have Android in your /system partition and Debian on your SD card and both kernel lists will be shown together.
The Kexecboot web site provides a nice tutorial: http://kexecboot.org/documentation/how_to_write_config
The Note i717 bootloader passes a fairly long string of kernel arguments to the boot kernel. Since kexecboot overrides this for the kexec-booted kernel, you must provide this boot string in your boot.cfg file. Additionally, you may edit or add arguments to the command string here (such as setting console=tty0 instead of the default console=null so you can use the framebuffer console).
For example, here is my /system/boot/boot.cfg for CyanogenMod 11 (with kernel and initrd.img, extracted via abootimg, in /system/boot/)
Code:
# kexecboot configuration file
# CM11 default kernel
LABEL=CyanogenMod 11
KERNEL=/boot/zImage
INITRD=/boot/initrd.img
APPEND="androidboot.hardware=qcom usb_id_pin_rework=true no_console_suspend=true zcache [email protected] [email protected] sec_debug.reset_reason=0x1a2b3c00 pmem_sf_addr=0x7a000000 pmem_sf_size=0x6000000 console=null sec_debug.enable=0 sec_debug.enable_user=0 appsbark=0 msm_watchdog.enable=1 msm_watchdog.bark_time=30 msm_watchdog.bite_time=31 vmalloc=512m hw_rev=12 lpj=67702 androidboot.emmc=true androidboot.serialno=32c245ca androidboot.baseband=csfb"
I'm not sure how much of that you actually need, but you do need at least some of it because with an empty APPEND= it does not boot. You also do have to put the quotation marks around it or else parsing of one of the options will fail.
I'll admit limited understanding of what you're accomplishing here, but seems to me that this could lead to dual booting on the Note. Nice work.
Good luck.
Nice work! Thanks for the work you've done thus far. Unfortunately I have no way to help you out other than morale support! :highfive:
lactardjosh said:
I'll admit limited understanding of what you're accomplishing here, but seems to me that this could lead to dual booting on the Note. Nice work.
Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Pretty much what it comes down to, testing kernels and roms without having to flash into nand. I can't wait for dualbooting from Sd on the Note.
I have ORD , please help!!
My main goal here is native Linux, but if kexec works then you can boot custom Android dev kernels, native Linux kernels, other mobile OS'es, etc. The SGSIII team seems to have found some interesting kexec solutions for the Verizon SGSIII due to its locked bootloader. They've posted a good deal of kexec patches which I'm trying to bring to the Note, including a custom kexec-hardboot option that fully reboots the device into the new kernel (apparently to make sure the radio and such are working).
CalcProgrammer1 said:
My main goal here is native Linux, but if kexec works then you can boot custom Android dev kernels, native Linux kernels, other mobile OS'es, etc. The SGSIII team seems to have found some interesting kexec solutions for the Verizon SGSIII due to its locked bootloader. They've posted a good deal of kexec patches which I'm trying to bring to the Note, including a custom kexec-hardboot option that fully reboots the device into the new kernel (apparently to make sure the radio and such are working).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wonderful, wonderful work!!! :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
Uh...It all sounded like this:
dual kernel (i'm gonna brick) kexec will allow (me to brick my phone).....with native linux applications ('im gonna brick my phone cause i'm stupid)....LOL
while i know what your doing, that in no way means i will ever understand it...LOL
But i will thank you in advance for what sounds like a sick mod for our notes...
Many thanks Dev !!!!
Kexec is actually (if done right) a good way *not* to brick your phone. To run kernels, you usually have to flash them to a restricted boot section of the memory, and if you flash all non-working kernels (to download, recovery, and main) then you have no way to use your phone, as it won't boot up. If you use kexec, your working kernel is safely stored on the boot partition and your development kernels can be wherever, and if it doesn't boot you can just hold down POWER to hard reboot into your good kernel.
The problem is that it doesn't seem to be working, I think I have the kexec support built properly but haven't been able to boot any kernels without it crashing.
CalcProgrammer1 said:
Kexec is actually (if done right) a good way *not* to brick your phone. To run kernels, you usually have to flash them to a restricted boot section of the memory, and if you flash all non-working kernels (to download, recovery, and main) then you have no way to use your phone, as it won't boot up. If you use kexec, your working kernel is safely stored on the boot partition and your development kernels can be wherever, and if it doesn't boot you can just hold down POWER to hard reboot into your good kernel.
The problem is that it doesn't seem to be working, I think I have the kexec support built properly but haven't been able to boot any kernels without it crashing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know you'll crack it ....
And when you do ....you'll be the galaxy note GOD !!!....LOL
your effort is much appreciated Sir ....even if I'm scared to use it , but will anyway ...lol
So I'm still confused as to why my kexec didn't work. I'm going to build a TouchPad kernel with it enabled and repeat the test on it, since I have a known-good kernel to boot against. I'll let you know how that goes.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717
Ok, so long-time-no-see but I'm reviving this post! Now that my Note 3 is happily running Cyanogenmod I have no urgent need for my Note 1 and can hack on it!
So far I haven't gotten kexec working, but I do have:
1. Kexecboot (graphical kexec frontend) is working, detects OS images appropriately
2. Framebuffer Console (text-mode display, USB OTG keyboard supported for interactive command line)
3. Overriding bootloader command line (to enable the fbconsole you need console=tty1 but the bootloader passes console=null)
4. Framebuffer console rotation (boot up in landscape or portrait, no way to switch without recompiling at the moment)
5. Most of kexec-hardboot ported from the HP TouchPad port, no clue if it's promising or not as so far it just crashes after a while of nothing
6. Ubuntu 13.04 (desktop edition) rootfs installed on SD card in a chroot, also taken from HP TouchPad
What I'm working on:
1. Kexec-hardboot port (needed to use kexec properly and boot kernels)
2. Fixing fbconsole glitching (framebuffer console displays garbled text that slowly clears up, no clue why...reading /dev/fb0 repeatedly clears up the display immediately and is a dirty hack that works well enough for testing)
3. Networking (either USB Ethernet or integrated WiFi, going to try backported brcmfmac driver)
4. Ubuntu (that's the long-term plan here)
5. Note 3 S800 port if I get everything figured out here
CalcProgrammer1 said:
Ok, so long-time-no-see but I'm reviving this post! Now that my Note 3 is happily running Cyanogenmod I have no urgent need for my Note 1 and can hack on it!
So far I haven't gotten kexec working, but I do have:
1. Kexecboot (graphical kexec frontend) is working, detects OS images appropriately
2. Framebuffer Console (text-mode display, USB OTG keyboard supported for interactive command line)
3. Overriding bootloader command line (to enable the fbconsole you need console=tty1 but the bootloader passes console=null)
4. Framebuffer console rotation (boot up in landscape or portrait, no way to switch without recompiling at the moment)
5. Most of kexec-hardboot ported from the HP TouchPad port, no clue if it's promising or not as so far it just crashes after a while of nothing
6. Ubuntu 13.04 (desktop edition) rootfs installed on SD card in a chroot, also taken from HP TouchPad
What I'm working on:
1. Kexec-hardboot port (needed to use kexec properly and boot kernels)
2. Fixing fbconsole glitching (framebuffer console displays garbled text that slowly clears up, no clue why...reading /dev/fb0 repeatedly clears up the display immediately and is a dirty hack that works well enough for testing)
3. Networking (either USB Ethernet or integrated WiFi, going to try backported brcmfmac driver)
4. Ubuntu (that's the long-term plan here)
5. Note 3 S800 port if I get everything figured out here
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Long time in the making. Glad to see you're still at it. Hope you are able to get it working. Would be pretty cool. Good luck
If you can get this working up to kernel with freedreno I'd be all over working on getting Plasma Active onto this thing. I've missed having a real linux phone since my n900 died.
Got Bluetooth working from the command line!
Code:
# rfkill unblock all
# hciattach /dev/ttyHS0 any
# hcitool scan
It detected my Note 3 which I had set to visible! Hopefully I can pair a BT keyboard with this and lose the USB OTG dependency. Still working on figuring out WiFi, I have the brcmfmac driver from 3.13 backports compiled and loaded but the WiFi chip isn't being detected so the driver never creates an interface for it. The chip is a Broadcom BCM4330 WiFi/Bluetooth chip, and although both WiFi and Bluetooth share the same chip they use different interfaces to the SoC (UART for BT and SDIO for WiFi).
I plan on doing more research into getting the hardware working before I do any more work on kexec. It will be much easier to debug kexec I think knowing how to use WiFi/BT/USB/etc. The only hardware I'm not going to attempt at all is the modem as I don't use this device as a phone anymore and don't have a SIM card in it. That said, all the rmnetX entries that I think are modem interfaces show in ifconfig -a so maybe it is working.
My kernel source is here:
https://github.com/CalcProgrammer1/ubuntu-kernel-quincyatt
The kexec branch will have the kexec hardboot patches once I figure them out. I've also got a folder set up with a script to automatically build the kernel zImage, build the modules, build the backport driver modules, build the ramdisk from a ramdisk root folder, build the boot.img, and then package that up in a flashable .zip. I'll upload parts of this system as I complete them. I also have an Ubuntu rootfs on my external ext4 (or was it 3?) SD card that I ripped straight off my TouchPad. For now I'm just using a busybox shell in my ramdisk, dropping out of kexecboot into ash, setting up a chroot for the SD card, and chrooting into the Ubuntu rootfs that way. It's not ideal since Ubuntu's init process doesn't run but it does allow me to run all the installed utilites from said rootfs.
Edit: Rii Mini Bluetooth Keyboard paired and working! It was a roundabout way of doing so because dbus and upstart don't work in chroot so I had to use an old package called bluez-compat which provides the hidd command. I sideloaded the .deb with a flash drive. The command to pair a keyboard:
Code:
# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX Bluetooth device name
# hidd --connect XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX &
XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX will be a hex value that is your keyboard's address. You find the address with the scan command and enter it on the hidd command to connect. I didn't have to enter any kind of passcode or pairing key, after running hidd it just started working.
http://imgur.com/2sV3TJr
I got it! I finally managed to get kexec hardboot working! I had to rewrite a bit of code in the kexecboot program to support kexec-hardboot better but I now have a bootloader that is working correctly, if slowly. I'll be posting my kernel source soon (it's a branch off of CyanogenMod's msm8660-common kernel) as well as my modifications to kexecboot itself. The kexec-tools binary I took out of the HP TouchPad port unmodified so I don't have the source for that (though it shouldn't be hard to find). I'll be looking into a Note 3 port soon, basically used the Note 1 as the guinea pig for this experiment.
If, somehow, you could adapt this for the ATT Mega 6.3 so as to bypass the locked tight bootloater.....you would be considered a hero!! People would build statues of you....write songs and name their children after you!!!!!?
Sent from my SM-T310 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Unfortunately you require an unlocked bootloader to install the kexecboot kernel. This isn't going to be a magic bullet for locked bootloaders. People have tried. For devices with exploitable bootloaders, it may help as you won't have to fake-sign kexec-booted kernels though.
CalcProgrammer1 said:
Unfortunately you require an unlocked bootloader to install the kexecboot kernel. This isn't going to be a magic bullet for locked bootloaders. People have tried. For devices with exploitable bootloaders, it may help as you won't have to fake-sign kexec-booted kernels though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Grasping at straws, My Friend. Hoping that maybe this could be something like SafeStrap and could be d/l and installed as an APK.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I527 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Got Debian booting! I also figured out how to get WiFi working from a non-Android Linux OS so this is definitely on track towards a full desktop OS!
To-do:
* X server, preferably with Freedreno GPU driver eventually
* Audio (q6.* firmware files and possibly an ALSA config)
* Startup scripts for Bluetooth initialization
* Figure out how to rotate the screen
dparrothead1 said:
If, somehow, you could adapt this for the ATT Mega 6.3 so as to bypass the locked tight bootloater.....you would be considered a hero!! People would build statues of you....write songs and name their children after you!!!!!?
Sent from my SM-T310 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wont be having anymore children to name, but I can do a dog. He is too stoopid to know the difference. I can say aluminum foil and he will come running.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I527 using XDA Free mobile app
Hello.
I noticed that kernels for ubuntu seem a bit old. I was thinking that maybe someone could modify cm10(or 3.0.21) kernel to support ubuntu/teach me how to add ubuntu support to android kernel. I did a bit googling, but results were filled with those loop ubuntus, not native.
I am also thankful if someone can point me to right direction.
(Trevd, i am counting on you )
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app
julle131 said:
Hello.
I noticed that kernels for ubuntu seem a bit old. I was thinking that maybe someone could modify cm10(or 3.0.21) kernel to support ubuntu/teach me how to add ubuntu support to android kernel. I did a bit googling, but results were filled with those loop ubuntus, not native.
I am also thankful if someone can point me to right direction.
(Trevd, i am counting on you )
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well as seeing as you ask so nicely, I'm far from an expert however especially in the ways of ubuntu kernels, A1Pha got the original ubuntu image going but ubuntu have done an official arm release now so that changes things ( probably ) I can only point you in the direction of more, hopefully better resources.
The Blaze Tablet seems to have have been the Development Platform for the G9 so you'll probably get some purchase from following that route.
Here's some links for you.
http://omappedia.org/wiki/Source_Trees
http://omappedia.org/wiki/OMAP_Ubuntu_Main
My days on the G9 could well be numbered, I foolishly overwrote the bootlloader in one of my more Laissez-faire moments. meh! That's what I get for having a caliver approach to consumer electronics.
trevd said:
Well as seeing as you ask so nicely, I'm far from an expert however especially in the ways of ubuntu kernels, A1Pha got the original ubuntu image going but ubuntu have done an official arm release now so that changes things ( probably ) I can only point you in the direction of more, hopefully better resources.
The Blaze Tablet seems to have have been the Development Platform for the G9 so you'll probably get some purchase from following that route.
Here's some links for you.
http://omappedia.org/wiki/Source_Trees
http://omappedia.org/wiki/OMAP_Ubuntu_Main
My days on the G9 could well be numbered, I foolishly overwrote the bootlloader in one of my more Laissez-faire moments. meh! That's what I get for having a caliver approach to consumer electronics.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for answering. I'm out of thanks for today, so i press that button when i have more.
Now to business.
After doing some research, and asking few questions on #ubuntu-arm, this seems a bit hard project because there are no sources. There is no source for CM10 kernel(Or i can't read the github) nor Ubuntu kernel, so i can't just apply tweaks of them both to archos 3.0.8+ kernel. A way to unpack the zimage from ubuntu kernel and cm10 kernel would help, but atleast the script i tried couldn't unpack the zimage of ubuntu. Lets see what i figure out next.
julle131 said:
After doing some research, and asking few questions on #ubuntu-arm, this seems a bit hard project because there are no sources. There is no source for CM10 kernel(Or i can't read the github) nor Ubuntu kernel, so i can't just apply tweaks of them both to archos 3.0.8+ kernel. A way to unpack the zimage from ubuntu kernel and cm10 kernel would help, but atleast the script i tried couldn't unpack the zimage of ubuntu. Lets see what i figure out next.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure what you mean by the CM10 Kernel, I don't think CM have any different settings from what is required by JellyBean itself. Plus the Kernel we originally used for the Archos CM10 is an ICS kernel with IPV6 Mangling adding, we got away with that because the Init.rc used to boot the Rom is a mashed up ICS Version. After thinking about it let me add the bit of knowledge I think I do know.
The kernels on arm platforms, to paraphrase Linus Tovalds was a complete mess, something which Linaro are working hard to fix, and are unique to the SOC vendor.
You need to get the Archos specific sources which are located on GItorious @ git://gitorious.org/archos/archos-gpl-gen9-kernel-ics.git, clone the 3.0.21 branch, in the directory there's a file called linux.config.g9 ( or something similar ). that's the config file. I just copy that to .config, change the settings I need to (if any) compile. That should setup an archos kernel which should run android
Code:
git clone git://gitorious.org/archos/archos-gpl-gen9-kernel-ics.git -b linux-icc-3.0.21
cp linux.config.g9 .config
make menuconfig
make -j8
Like I say I was thinking about it and the main difference between a standard kernel and android kernels is the binder, the switch class support and the log driver ( this is things I've noticed when building an android x86 Kernel )
When doing menuconfig the Android Driver settings are found in devices/staging/android, I suppose a place to start is to turn them off then switch on SYSV IPC ( i think that's in genral kernel settings ), from what I understand this is the sysv binder and should create a node at /dev/binder, standard kernel switch class support is set in Device Drivers ( Switch Class Support ).
I'm not sure about logging , It basically breaks down like this. The Android Kernel has a specific logging driver this creates device node at /dev/log/main /dev/log/system etc , Ubunutu ( on x86 at least ) has a single log device node which is created at /dev/log, I don't know weather this is something created by the kernel or something created in userspace by syslogd or something similar. I also don't know whether the Android Logs are compatible with ubuntu, or the android binder for that matter. I'll try and boot my x86 ubuntu with my Android Kernel later on , I suspect It won't work but speculation is one thing, knowing for sure is better
With regards to unpacking the zImage, I'll say this , Not all zImages are created equal , I notice you are using a samsung mobile ( galaxy s, if I'm not mistaken ) , so you're probably using the samsung zImage as a frame of reference... How I understand it Samsung pack the initramfs into the zImage, similar, but not same to the way android AOSP pack a boot.img. Samsung however do this in kernel itself, this is why Samsung zImage a) can be unpacked and b) require different tools than the standard tools used for unpacking boot images which work on just about every other device ( expect Archos of course ) . So you generally don't unpack zImage because It's just a binary blob that contains all the kernel functions, this is in the assembly language of whatever architecture you built your kernel for.
Given all that info you should now be able to build a working archos android kernel ( I assume you using linux etc and your not stupid ) , You now need the Ubuntu side of things..... Have you asked in the Archos G9 Ubuntu Development thread, they may be able to shed light on the changes to the config you need to make or alternativaly you could download the Ubuntu for Arm OMAP Image from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/OMAP , unpack/mount it and see if there is the kernel .config file, It is normally packaged somehow with the distro for example x86 lubuntu has .configs in /lib/modules/3.5.0-19-generic/build/.config, the arm distro may have something similar. Then it's a case of see what configuration options are different, You can't just copy the config whole sale however because there are Archos Specific board settings in the Archos Kernel. Failing that the kernel sources will be somewhere as it is a legal requirement under the GPL and Cannonical are compliant, at least I've not read anywhere to the contrary.
This is just really how I understand it at the minute, Some of it could be inaccurate or just plain BS but hopefully should give you something to run with, there is a bit of a barrier to entry on the whole subject kernels/android kernels as the information is in little pieces all over the internet, when I was first getting to grips with it, it did feel like a bit a of treasure hunt for knowledge. Also knowing the Keywords to search for in the first place can be difficult It sounds quite an interesting challenge, shame about my brick!!
If you want to understand more about the kernel generally ( and lets face it, who doesn't ) then Linux Kernel in a nutshell ( http://www.kroah.com/lkn/ ) is a free e-book written by one of the kernel maintainers a should be a useful reference.
JUST IN CASE: Don't forget prefixing a filename with a fullstop (.) makes that file hidden and won't display in normal file listings, using ls -a to display all file in a directory
The CM10 kernel i was refering to is the CM10 in dev section. I thought there were other "hacks" than just a IPv6 addon, and that's why i counsidered it as a totally diferent kernel.
I think i need to download the kernel source as soons as i get to my laptop then. I have some experience on it, because i have made a few builds of B2G, but that was mainly just: download source, choose the device and build.
For the differences, that is what i consider as the hardest part. Merging them and then getting the kernel to build might take some time. Luckily I have plenty of time.
For the zImage, I was trying to unpack the ubuntu zImage one, because I'm working on archos device . Unpacking Galaxy S2 kernel wouldn't make any sense. atleast to me . I was trying to use a general unpacker, but it didn't work, just as you wrote.
For the OS & Knowledge, i am using linux indeed. Backbox, which is based on ubuntu 11.04 to be precise. I didn't even think about unpacking the IMG file... Maybe i am stupid . I think i am able to mount it to folder, so it is easy to explore.
I think I know the basics, and folders starting with . is part of them
Lets see what happens the next time i pick my laptop, boot it and start fooling around :good:.
Edit: Well, after the menuconfig, i can't fand anything related to ipv6 mangling. There was a file on the root of cloned folder called linux.config, but it was the default config for kernel, not archos specific.
julle131 said:
The CM10 kernel i was refering to is the CM10 in dev section. I thought there were other "hacks" than just a IPv6 addon, and that's why i counsidered it as a totally diferent kernel.
I think i need to download the kernel source as soons as i get to my laptop then. I have some experience on it, because i have made a few builds of B2G, but that was mainly just: download source, choose the device and build.
For the differences, that is what i consider as the hardest part. Merging them and then getting the kernel to build might take some time. Luckily I have plenty of time.
For the zImage, I was trying to unpack the ubuntu zImage one, because I'm working on archos device . Unpacking Galaxy S2 kernel wouldn't make any sense. atleast to me . I was trying to use a general unpacker, but it didn't work, just as you wrote.
For the OS & Knowledge, i am using linux indeed. Backbox, which is based on ubuntu 11.04 to be precise. I didn't even think about unpacking the IMG file... Maybe i am stupid . I think i am able to mount it to folder, so it is easy to explore.
I think I know the basics, and folders starting with . is part of them
Lets see what happens the next time i pick my laptop, boot it and start fooling around :good:.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 3.0.31 Kernel started by Quallenauge in the dev section is an Highly Expirimental effort. this was started before Archos released the 3.0.21 Kernel with their 4.0.2x roms which covered what was trying to be achieved by this development, It's best left alone unless you really want to get you're hands dirty with device bring up code, There's a version on my github which I think boots the G9A101's as well as the 80's......... anyway
You shouldn't have to do any merging of code, more a case of selecting the right options in the config, Thinking back, I've have booted Ubuntu using mainline kernel sources from kernel.org that I built myself so that kinda of suggests there's nothing special about ubuntu's kernels per se' .
Your main problem won't be with building , more booting, It should compile fine but I wouldn't be surprised to be looking at a blank screen then your problem is monitoring the output....There's an option in the archos config to get early debug output over USB, I think there's some modification you need to make to the USB Cable, Quallenauge knows about that, he did it , I was ghetto and used adb for my debugging. which can be probably made to work when booting ubuntu but I'd go the correct route , I just have my wierd ways of doing things.
Another thing that spring to mind with android "specialisms". Android runs /init in the root directory ubuntu normally likes /sbin/init. This is something that is specified again in the kernel config using the kernel cmdline option , just something to be aware of... If anything else springs to mind I'll let you know.
So I suppose as you say, Just fool around and see what happens. :good:
I think I know the basics, and folders starting with . is part of them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just Checking LOL.
trevd said:
The 3.0.31 Kernel started by Quallenauge in the dev section is an Highly Expirimental effort. this was started before Archos released the 3.0.21 Kernel with their 4.0.2x roms which covered what was trying to be achieved by this development, It's best left alone unless you really want to get you're hands dirty with device bring up code, There's a version on my github which I think boots the G9A101's as well as the 80's......... anyway
You shouldn't have to do any merging of code, more a case of selecting the right options in the config, Thinking back, I've have booted Ubuntu using mainline kernel sources from kernel.org that I built myself so that kinda of suggests there's nothing special about ubuntu's kernels per se' .
Your main problem won't be with building , more booting, It should compile fine but I wouldn't be surprised to be looking at a blank screen then your problem is monitoring the output....There's an option in the archos config to get early debug output over USB, I think there's some modification you need to make to the USB Cable, Quallenauge knows about that, he did it , I was ghetto and used adb for my debugging. which can be probably made to work when booting ubuntu but I'd go the correct route , I just have my wierd ways of doing things.
Another thing that spring to mind with android "specialisms". Android runs /init in the root directory ubuntu normally likes /sbin/init. This is something that is specified again in the kernel config using the kernel cmdline option , just something to be aware of... If anything else springs to mind I'll let you know.
So I suppose as you say, Just fool around and see what happens. :good:
Just Checking LOL.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
At the moment i'm trying to find the archos config file. there is a defcon file, which looks like a config file in arch/arm/configs called android_archos_defcon. It sounds correct. Next thing for me to do is to find the right place to put it. I guess the root of the project is correct, and rename it to .config and linux.config. After building I need to test it. [email protected] or 4.0.26 root will suffice, right? I also need to figure out if there is a way to force adb on through kernel. And the IPv6 Mangling is nowhere to be found
julle131 said:
At the moment i'm trying to find the archos config file. there is a defcon file, which looks like a config file in arch/arm/configs called android_archos_defcon. It sounds correct. Next thing for me to do is to find the right place to put it. I guess the root of the project is correct, and rename it to .config and linux.config. After building I need to test it. [email protected] or 4.0.26 root will suffice, right? I also need to figure out if there is a way to force adb on through kernel. And the IPv6 Mangling is nowhere to be found
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The config file " linux.config.g9" should be in the root kernel directory, if it's not there then your on the wrong branch and you need to checkout the 3.0.21 branch explicitly using
Code:
git checkout linux-ics-3.0.21
If your using ICS builds to check with, which I probably recommend then don't worry about IPV6 managling , I don't think It's named that exactly but something like that!, For reference , I've just had a check the option is "Networking support/Networking options/Network packet filtering framework (Netfilter)/IPv6: Netfilter Configuration /Packet Managling"
You have to look pretty deep on some of these settings
As a test. Boot with a normal kernel configure your android debug options , then swap the kernels out , that should give you adb while booting, when I've tried to force adb on an uncofigured rom it got a bit confused with itself
If your struggling a bit with git, http://gitimmersion.com/ has a great tutorial you can step through in about 10 minutes to get the basics and get it configured a bit better
---------- Post added at 09:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:20 PM ----------
EDIT: Make sure you building for arm as well
Code:
$ export ARCH=arm
$ export SUBARCH=arm
$ export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi-
Reference: http://source.android.com/source/building-kernels.html
Huuuh i'm late... most had been pointed out already.
Just to add this...
As you might know Android is put on top of a Linux base system more or less.
In most cases a kernel built for Android will suit most linux distributions as well.
Trevd already highlighted the main aspects.
The other way round is more evil... unmodified linux kernel (or a kernel set up to run well with Ubuntu) will refuse to boot up an Android system.
Some addon's on the default config may be nice though, depends on how the whole rootfs stuff is arranged in the end and if your system heavily depends on udev and stuff.
Keep track of the startup scripts at /etc/init.d.
It's good to have an extensive look at the /etc directory of your distribution image... to much to point at here.
The kernel may handle to boot into a lot of different scenarios.
On the Archos tablets initramfs plays an important role.
You may even tweak this jumpboard and locate your final rootfs on an USB stick if you like.
It's all about handling mounts, chroot and similar during start up.
There are limits on the Archos with stock loader though, because you might need to influence the kernel command line at a certain point.
I'm aware that this is not very specific but there are so many ways to set things up.
Just follow the useful links trevd gave already... these are good starting points :fingers-crossed:
...and just to add this:
I don't speak of fine tune the system in the end. This is another story and sometimes very hard stuff, where you may need to reverse engineer some proprietary libs or executables.
Best regards,
scholbert
Well, I have now built my first kernel... And it was 3.0.8+... I think I downloaded wrong source . I have ipv6 mangling enabled on it, so I should try it with CM10 now. I think I should search the 3.0.21 source, and download it.
Edit: Well, my 3.0.8+ Kernel image can boot CM10, AOKP and 4.0.7 roms... Now i have to figure out why i downloaded 3.0.8+ kernel and not 3.0.21 kernel. Maybe i had wrong branch.
Edit:Yep, wrong branch. I did realize when i downloaded the srce that it informed that the branch does not exists. i had icc instead of ics
Do you have any tips where i can find info about kernel modifications, like adding governors? I tried adding few, but all i got was bunch of errors. I propably forgot something.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app
mer
Still working on this? I have been using Mer kernels with Ubuntu and they seem to be working fine.
Archos Gen9 Mer Adaptation Kernel --> http://gitorious.org/archos-gen9-mer-adaptation-kernel/
Archos Gen9 Mer Adaptation Kernel ICS --> https://gitorious.org/archos-gen9-mer-adaptation-kernel/archos-gen9-mer-adaptation-kernel-ics
I am using the 3.08 kernel from a Plasma Active distribution. --> http://share.basyskom.com/plasma-active/archos_gen9.html
Just mount the data partion in linux and convert it to ext4, write the linux image to it. Then cp the files from mer /boot /lib/modules to new rom, modules file in etc to load your modules, modify fstab, cp mtev.so to /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input, change or add a few other files.
/etc
modules
Code:
cypress_tma340
tr16c0_i2c
hso
compat
cfg80211
mac80211
wl12xx
wl12xx_sdio
cpt_i2c_tsp
pixcir_i2c_tsp
hci_uart
fstab
Code:
/swap none swap sw 0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p2 /media/system ext4 ro,noauto,users,uid=1000,gid=0,noatime 0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p4 /media/data ext4 ro,noauto,users,uid=1000,gid=0,noatime 0 0
none /proc proc rw,relatime,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /sys sysfs rw,relatime,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /dev devtmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,relatime,gid=5,mode=0620,ptmxmode=0666 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw 0 0
none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec 0 0
none /dev/bus/usb usbdevfs defaults 0 0
none /sys/kernel/security securityfs (rw) 0 0
/etc/udev/rules.d
70-persistent-net.rules
Code:
# net device ()
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="08:00:28:90:64:31", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="wlan*", NAME="wlan0"
# USB device 0x9710:0x7830 (usb)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:13:3b:04:02:6c", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"
70-touchscreen.rules
Code:
KERNEL=="event*", SUBSYSTEM=="input", SUBSYSTEMS=="input", ATTRS{name}=="cypress-tma340", SYMLINK="input/touchscreen"
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
Add to the end of 10-evdev.conf, cypress-tma340 is the touchscreen on my G9.
Code:
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Archos Touchscreen"
MatchProduct "cypress-tma340"
Option "Ignore" "off"
Option "CorePointer" "on"
Driver "mtev""
EndSection
openSUSE --> http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:eek:penSUSE_on_your_ARM_board
Ubuntu --> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/OMAP
Kubuntu 12.10 --> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/12.10/release/kubuntu-12.10-desktop-armhf+omap4.img
Please i am using Backbox Linux Distribution (Dual booted ) wit my windows 7....... now i wish to use a dail up connection on my modem !! PLEASE HOW DO I GO ABOUT IT ...
Sent from my L3 using XDA Free mobile app
UPDATE: See second post for initial downloads of AOSP, CM , Arndale and Linaro/Arndale builds. These are very much a work in progress and may not even work. I am putting them forth for testing for the dev community to try out on their chromebooks.
These builds will be based on the latest JB builds. There is still alot of work to be done here. The AOSP builds initially have been put up. The other builds will go up as they are completed. I am working on the documentation for putting this together as a repeatable process is doable. In time there will be an installer and other goodies, but for now this will just be a very vanilla and manual process.
My goal is to get a working port of JB on the Samsung Chromebook. There has been no significant work on this front AFAIK. So I am taking it on myself to learn and try this out. Any community input would be helpful in making this work. I am fairly n00b at this but am looking to make this work.
I found some promising information. I might be able to build this using the binaries from arndaleboard which appears to mostly use the same hardware.
FYI for anyone experimenting to make this work please note that the following MUST be done for any chance of these root files to boot from SD.
SD/MMC boot
vold.fstab
* Change the sdcard0 and sdcard1 lines so that the first line is sdcard1 and the second is sdcard0.
fstab.arndale
* Change all references to mmcblk0px to mmcblk1px.
init.arndale.rc
* Change the 2 references to mmcblk0px to mmcblk1px.
mountd.conf
* Change the reference to mmcblk0 to mmcblk1
http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://forum.insignal.co.kr/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=62
http://forum.insignal.co.kr/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63
Now that the rootfs part is addressed I am tackling the booting issues. Current uboot methods focus mainly on linux distro booting. Android appears to require its own ramdisk (which is in the links below) there will be some extra downloads such as a working uboot.
Once there are working versions of all the needed components working. An installer or installer script will be put together along with documentation. I may release this to a separate thread which I will post here.
Additional info on flashing the actual arndale. http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/ind...Flash_a_Device
Arndale is the base hardware also used on a Samsung series 3 Chromebook. Most if not all the components will work.
Additionally MANTA aka nexus 10 hardware is similarly identical and can be used with some success. I am working on compiling base builds based on CM10, AOSP, Linaro and Arndale's git.
Some more info on the bootloader
http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/...arm-chromebook
Im using this post to keep notes on what I find and build. I might edit some more to update as I find stuff. I will create a separate post if I have any success. I got two of these. I can live with bricking one if it happens. And I imagine there is a way to restore the system if needed. I figure I will figure that part out first. To avoid any mishaps and have a brick.
CREDITS: Musical_chairs for his invaluable input and resources he has linked in this post. I will update credits for other contributors once I get through the whole thread and credit all those obviously who build the original code these builds will be based on.
DISCLAIMER: For advanced users ONLY!! Not responsible if your chromebook gets bricked, struck by lightning or eaten by a pack of wild boars or attacked by crab people! Anything you do strongly recommended it be done on an SDcard to ensure easy rollbacks and no destruction of firmware.
Here are the first downloads of the rootfs and ramdisk (both of which are needed for a working android install on chromebook) These are based on AOSP. More files will be coming as I am compiling. Basic instructions on how to set up uboot will be posted above as well as how to properly flash an SDcard. This assumes you know how to get your chromebook into dev-mode. Please note this is strictly for anyone with android system experience. The system may not even boot properly at this point. This is pre-pre-alpha at this point. There is alot of work to do before it even comes close to being usable. But if you get it working, please make a DD image (instructions above) and post it for all to use and work from. FOSS means sharing and sharing means caring. This will speed up the work needed to make this work for all of us.
aosp-ramdisk.img
https://mega.co.nz/#!sZgVmIQY!M9ANXXEJYAWR0TlRxV_mC3CdEXkTKC_Tgr1PdOD0Hxo
aosp-rootfs.tar.bz2
https://mega.co.nz/#!ZNgAFYqR!HkXcLxead3Zgm7lNcUzjb0YlfzEbbogTL5CnZDuUtIA
arndale-kernel
https://mega.co.nz/#!gIQXVLRC!U_L0WSutAXdGzdqhFrlzD1ij750Q8lTlKwHVoC28C14
arndale-ramdisk.img.ub
https://mega.co.nz/#!RB4XBAjS!JtNgciYJrLL_TDmjXjnZkTouPKwAhva26b7U9zvBYA0
arndale-rootfs.tar.bz2
https://mega.co.nz/#!xJwBVALa!QnwJRjQzhC218tcjMtKnimKZE2kn73sGs8XgeC75fDU
I'm super excited that you're working on this Opieum. This would be absolute dream come true. I'd love to help out but I can't be a tester lol. After I get my next few paychecks I'd love to send a donation to you sir!
Im still working on it. Its a bit tricker than I thought to get it working. Not impossible tho. I just lack the experience and knowledge to get this up and running. I figured I could do it over the weekend lol. Humbling experience. Once I have something working that is moderatly usable I figure I will take some donations to support other types of chromebooks, for now tho I will just do this cause I want to get android working on the samsung chromebook series 3.
opieum said:
Im still working on it. Its a bit tricker than I thought to get it working. Not impossible tho. I just lack the experience and knowledge to get this up and running. I figured I could do it over the weekend lol. Humbling experience. Once I have something working that is moderatly usable I figure I will take some donations to support other types of chromebooks, for now tho I will just do this cause I want to get android working on the samsung chromebook series 3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May want to wait for IO until after if Chrome and Android get close enough to jump from one to the other.
Also, I guess you could try and use the Cyanogen Mod port tool to try and get Android on it. It's what I used to try and get Ubuntu-Phone on my Nook. Nearly have it, but got the black screen of doom.
Thanks moocow, I appreciate the advice. I had not considered the Cyanogen tool. I know google IO is right around the corner but I want to see if I can get it working. Part of it is as much a technical exercise to see if I can do it as much as it is just doing it.
Do you have a link for this porting tool? I was looking for one. If its just porting from the git I guess I can do that too. I was just wondering if there was a specific tool do this with. I was not aware there actually was a tool.
I'm so excited someone is trying to make this work! I'm no dev, but I'd love to help in anyway. Subbing now.
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Doc:_porting_intro
This might help also.
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Development
Amazing! I wish you the best of luck on this
I've seen some great development for the ARM Chromebook over on the Linux side, so anything is possible
Hope your efforts will be fruitful
Thanks!
I'm excited to see some effort being put into this!
I don't think you need to worry about flashing procedures just yet, and I certainly would forget about messing with uboot until way later in the game. It's pretty easy to get a dual-boot setup on the chromebook, getting the files in place is way easier than it is on a typical Android device because you can write them to an sdcard from inside ChromeOS, then reboot to the sdcard. We can worry about booting Android from the internal storage later, shouldn't be too hard. And to do anything with uboot, you're going to need to physically disassemble the chromebook and remove the write protect screw/sticker, IMO it would be best to avoid that.
Maybe we should start by adapting this procedure, but putting an Android filesystem and kernel on the sdcard instead of Linux?
http://blogs.arm.com/software-enablement/848-running-linux-on-the-series-3-chromebook/
Thanks. I have been hitting wall after wall with u-boot so yea I am working on the dualboot method for now. That post is great! I had not seen it before. Bookmarked among many. Hopefully I can find the issues keeping me from making this work.
The first obstacle I am seeing is that while ChromeOS uses a pretty standard Linux kernel and no ramdisk (and that is what uboot will be looking for), Android uses a kernel and ramdisk on a /boot partition. I don't know enough about Android to know if it's possible to boot it with a different configuration, but I've got a hunch that if we're going to get Android to boot on this thing, we're going to need to do it a lot more like the Android x86 people do it than like a typical Android ROM.
Two exercises that I think will be very helpful here:
1. Install a Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Fedora, whatever) on the sdcard of a chromebook without using a script like chrubuntu
2. Install Android x86 on a 'normal' computer.
I have almost done the first (I cheated and ended up using a script to install Ubuntu), the second I may eventually do if I can find the time.
...and like I said, I think the best approach here is going to be a x86 style Android installation, but with an arm build.
---------- Post added at 01:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:27 PM ----------
...or maybe this is what we need - chainload uboot:
https://plus.google.com/117557107585466185396/posts/hVWc5EE9EK6
---------- Post added at 02:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:42 PM ----------
Okay, this looks to be the official documentation on using nv-U-boot (chainloading uboot):
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os...using-nv-u-boot-on-the-samsung-arm-chromebook
Upon further reading, I believe that this is the correct method:
1. Pack nv-U-boot as a signed kernel and dd it to a chromeos kernel partition.
2. nv-U-boot then boots Android using a typical Android boot command.
For the time being, I'm pretty sure it will be better to keep nv-U-boot and all the Android partitions on an sdcard, as it is no harder to boot from there than from the eMMc, and it's a whole lot safer to test stuff this way. Once we've got it working, we can repartition the eMMc and install everything there so it's faster and all that good stuff.
Bear in mind this is pretty much just academic at this point, I tried to chainload nv-U-boot but haven't actually gotten it to work. I'm pretty comfortable mucking around in Linux systems, but this uboot stuff is all new to me.
What I've done so far:
1. Set up partitions on my sdcard (including two kernel partitons) as per the first link I posted.
2. Got a working Lubuntu installation on the sdcard (cheated and used a chrubuntu-derived script).
3. Got a working Crouton (chrooted) Lubuntu setup on the internal storage (doesn't really apply here, though it comes in handy for some of the tools needed for manipulating files and stuff)
4. Tried the nv-U-boot image from opensuse:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/12.2:/ARM:/Contrib:/Chromebook/standard/armv7hl/
5. Tried the nv-U-boot image from the Chromium Projects:
http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromeos-localmirror/distfiles/nv_uboot-snow.kpart.bz2
In both cases, the process is the same. Pack nv-U-boot as a signed kernel, something like this (both commands are run in a shell from within ChromeOS, in dev mode):
Code:
vbutil_kernel --pack newkernel --keyblock /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel.keyblock --version 1 --signprivate /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel_data_key.vbprivk --vmlinuz u-boot.img --arch arm
write it to the sdcard with dd, something like this (remember you can hose almost anything with dd if you point it at the wrong place, so use with care:
Code:
sudo dd if=newkernel of=/dev/mmcblk1p2
(this writes it to partiton 2 of my sdcard, partition 1 is my good Ubuntu kernel.)
I haven't seen nv-U-boot yet but I think I'm close.
musical_chairs said:
Upon further reading, I believe that this is the correct method:
1. Pack nv-U-boot as a signed kernel and dd it to a chromeos kernel partition.
2. nv-U-boot then boots Android using a typical Android boot command.
For the time being, I'm pretty sure it will be better to keep nv-U-boot and all the Android partitions on an sdcard, as it is no harder to boot from there than from the eMMc, and it's a whole lot safer to test stuff this way. Once we've got it working, we can repartition the eMMc and install everything there so it's faster and all that good stuff.
Bear in mind this is pretty much just academic at this point, I tried to chainload nv-U-boot but haven't actually gotten it to work. I'm pretty comfortable mucking around in Linux systems, but this uboot stuff is all new to me.
What I've done so far:
1. Set up partitions on my sdcard (including two kernel partitons) as per the first link I posted.
2. Got a working Lubuntu installation on the sdcard (cheated and used a chrubuntu-derived script).
3. Got a working Crouton (chrooted) Lubuntu setup on the internal storage (doesn't really apply here, though it comes in handy for some of the tools needed for manipulating files and stuff)
4. Tried the nv-U-boot image from opensuse:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/12.2:/ARM:/Contrib:/Chromebook/standard/armv7hl/
5. Tried the nv-U-boot image from the Chromium Projects:
http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromeos-localmirror/distfiles/nv_uboot-snow.kpart.bz2
In both cases, the process is the same. Pack nv-U-boot as a signed kernel, something like this (both commands are run in a shell from within ChromeOS, in dev mode):
Code:
vbutil_kernel --pack newkernel --keyblock /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel.keyblock --version 1 --signprivate /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel_data_key.vbprivk --vmlinuz u-boot.img --arch arm
write it to the sdcard with dd, something like this (remember you can hose almost anything with dd if you point it at the wrong place, so use with care:
Code:
sudo dd if=newkernel of=/dev/mmcblk1p2
(this writes it to partiton 2 of my sdcard, partition 1 is my good Ubuntu kernel.)
I haven't seen nv-U-boot yet but I think I'm close.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea the u-boot stuff is real new to me. I have no issues either with linux its the bootloader stuff with android I am struggling with. I'm going to look at the arndale instructions as it uses similar hardware on how to load it from SDcard. The documentation there seems to show how to load the system. I already built and compiled the code from arndale seeing as it uses the exact specs needed. Since we have the ability to boot from SDcard on a chromebook this should be easily doable. The build will be the hard part. I am going to see what i can do with that method, I'm adapting from various sources. Ideally if I can come up with a simple image that can just be DDed over to a 32GB SD card that would be best for all to start and test with until a much easier method can be adapted. I had read elsewhere that the android method had been tried using the linux methods and it did not work. Hence why I havent looked as deeply into it. But I think at this point it seems like looking at this with a mixed methods might be the better approach. I'll post my results tomorrow as I am trying this out now.
UPDATE: I got some promising news. I am following this guide I have built android according to those instructions. http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/WiKi#How_to_Flash_a_Device (ignore the dipswitch references here as we got the ctrl-U option to boot and devmode)
The uboot install part is automated via a script which saves some time. Easy enough to break down the script to see how its done manually. The build will have 4.1.1 That said arndale provides pretty much all the tools to do this simpler. I think if we get this working then all we need to do is further automate the process OR provide an image with a simple script to image an SDcard with. Additionally I suspect (I have not confirmed) that the wifi and other components on the arndale are also the same on the chromebook.
Hmm, I wonder if the uboot from the arndale board will work on the chromebook? The chromebook's uboot doesn't have fastboot, and there's no way to interrupt it either (as in, hold down a key to access the uboot menu). BUT, if we put the arndale's uboot on the sdcard, as in, this:
http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/WiKi#Prepared_micro_SD.2FMMC_for_ARNDALE_bootable.
...that looks rather promising.
Yea that was the idea and portion I was looking at. I'm trying it out now to see if this will work.
I thought something similar might be done with Plop, the most awesomest boot loader in the world when Chrubuntu was first finding it's feet. Booting into a bootloader might be the answer for not just Android, but Windows 7.
But this is booting on ARM. So Win7 would not work here as there is no ARM capable version. The work now is being done for the Samsung Chromebook ARM version (series 3) which would also work on the Acer version that is also ARM based as well.
Nuh uh, Acer C7 is x86 based. RT can play on ARM, but a Chrome bootloader might be worth it.
You are correct sir on the Acer being intel. That being said. This project is to get android on the samsung chromebook (series 3) which is an arm EXYNOS 5xxx series CPU. The methods developed here would also likley apply to any other arm based books on the market.
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...
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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...
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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?
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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
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