So, I actually own an Atrix 2, but I figured I'd post this here as webtop/linux development is much more active. I've gotten my device set up with a custom linux installation, but it seems the OS could run much faster were it not hampered by the phone running its own OS at the same time. Would it be possible to, say, modify the android boot scripts to launch webtop instead if it detects a dock? Just have the phone with a blank screen fully powering the /osh environment on the lapdock. Once undocked, you'd have to manually reboot so the system could actually boot up android again.
It seems like there's no reason why this shouldn't be possible. Just a simple boot script that uses the phone's ability to detect whether or not it is docked; if it is, boot into webtop, if not, run android. Once, my phone had a forced reboot while I was in webtop mode. However, instead of webtop going down with the phone, I opened the mobile view and actually watched the phone's boot animation and boot process, with webtop still running. Maybe there could be a script that runs android until webtop is fully "hooked", then shuts down android and continues running webtop?
Secondary question, is it possible to upgrade the linux install itself with the sudo dist-upgrade command?
I think it is actually quite possible to do this. The reason I say that is because I have seen the Android component of the phone reboot whilst being docked into the Lapdock. The whole Android environment is then reloaded once again meaning that Ubuntu is running as the host OS.
The challenge is if you can get it to boot directly into the Ubuntu shell primarily as opposed to going directly into Dalvik.
bchliu said:
I think it is actually quite possible to do this. The reason I say that is because I have seen the Android component of the phone reboot whilst being docked into the Lapdock. The whole Android environment is then reloaded once again meaning that Ubuntu is running as the host OS.
The challenge is if you can get it to boot directly into the Ubuntu shell primarily as opposed to going directly into Dalvik.
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That's exactly what happened to me! Te webtop environment stayed booted, but just ran the boot script again. All you'd have to do would be to edit the android boot script to check if RM_IS_DOCKED, right? Or does the webtop rely on certain android components to run?
Secondary question, if I were to go the route of letting it load android, then webtop, then unload android, how would I send a command to android to shut down without *actually* shutting down?
Sent from my ATRIX 2 using Tapatalk 2
I dont know enough about the technical details of the boot scripts to do this. But just as a observation, it does look plausible from the Dalvik rebooting separate to the Jaunty instance I have running.
I would like to know how to do this as well
Sorry guys, this is technically not possible.
At boot, the Linux kernel starts first. It is a custom kernel with Android patches - that implies, as far as I know, some extra security (only users with uid of 3000something have IP access) and something that breaks udev. The latter thing messing up init scripts of most modern Linux distros.
Then the Dalvik VM is started - which is the one that sucks the RAM.
Then the mountosh command is started, which takes care of mounting the webtop partition.
Then ubuntu.sh is started, which takes care of initializing the webtop environment.
The "docked" event launches a script in /etc/init.d (don't remember the name, probably stg like StartWebtop.sh) which starts the Moto's customized Xorg and some other software for the trackpad.
I think that what you have seen rebooting is probably the Dalvik VM - not sure why, I've seen it too at times.
IMHO webtop is slow because the Linux apps in Ubuntu are memory-hungry and not optimized for ARM.
I think Moto was hoping that HTML5 apps would take off sooner - so to make webtop useful just with the bundled firefox - but that never happened.
In the meanwhile, android tablet apps are getting more and more mature, and they are optimized for lower memory and less CPU than Ubuntu apps (eg Quickoffice vs Libreoffice, maildroid vs thunderbird). Hence Moto killing the webtop the way we know it and replacing it with TabletUI ICS.
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Interesting thread. I have always been amazed by the Atrix with webtop (only had it for a few days, until I hard bricked it ).
Actually, from what I was able to see, it was not Android as host OS, then running Ubuntu. It was 1 kernel (the Linux kernel for Android, as we always have on an Android phone), and on top of that kernel, two different OSes: "Android" and "Webtop (ubuntu based)". It was especially visible when running ps from one or the other, you could see there was actually no distinction, no isolation between both. From Android you could see all the webtop processes, and from webtop the android processes as well. It was amazing!
(confirmed in https://books.google.nl/books?id=E9...btop a second OS on same linux kernel&f=false, Figure 6.8)
Technically it 's the once and only time I have seen this happen actually. Never before, and never since.
So, yes, it was very possible to "soft reboot" any of the two OSes and keep the other one running, as long as the kernel was kept running (not rebooting the phone). That would mean restarting the Android zigote or Ubuntu/Webtop init (or whatever was doing that function).
Related
Why can we not chroot out of osh into a standard linux of our choice as the open-osh... script launches the desktop? Have sfalv launch a wrapper script that chroots then launches the actual stuff. Or if that can not work, hack the sfalv code (assuming moto has published the source).
I assume this requires a custom launcher in the real linux to chroot back in order to launch the mobility app.., but that should be easy.
Just seams like this would be somewhat cleaner than the 2 custom OS launch methods I have seen to date. The wbtop2sd hack has a clean launch, but restricts you the osh base system. The Debian hack leaves you with awn on the wrong root (as far as I am concerned).
[Am a complete noobie to the Atrix webtop, will replace the webtop OS somehow tomorrow night and just wondered if there was an obvious reason why this approach would be a waste of time]
This isn't bypassing the bootloader, thus I didn't want to step on the toes of the Devs on the other thread...but I came across this article!
Yes, I know the performance will never be as good as directly accessing the hardware, but the NT is a lot beefier than the NC, so it might not be as bad. It wouldn't be easy build the image, either, but if it's possible, what's learned doing this might be useful for the day, hopefully, that the boot loader is unlocked/bypassed.
I'm also thinking that it would be easier to port a modified android ROM vs another operating system like Ubuntu or Debian. Thoughts?
Nevermind.
I got a chroot of gentoo running just fine. I'm sure ubuntu or debian or whatever would be just as easy.
That's great that Linux is working...I was thinking more about running a CM7 or CM9 alpha modified iso inside of stock using chroot!
The thought being that CM7 (or similar Nook Roms) should be easier to setup than Ubuntu or Fedora, and that we wouldn't need to worry about the boot loader. Again, it's not as ideal as bypassing the boot loader, but it would be nice to have CM7 or CM9 while that's being worked on.
Good day guys!
I know this topic (of duel and triple booting) have been handled from a couple of different angles already but I am struggling to find any relating specifically to my issue I am having.
I started with an Acerone (that had 'good' ol' 1.6 preloaded with windows) and reformatted and repartitioned. Windows 7 Pro is installed and running fine. I then installed ICS and that also works great.
Unfortunately I've come across much needed apps that had not been developed to work in ICS or Android-x86 yet so I needed Honeycomb. I've been using 7 and ICS together for a while so I've done quite a bit on it. I then tried following the similar installation procedure for honeycomb (dont install grub, etc) and for some reason I could not get the grub (legacy) from ICS to open the Honeycomb install. I tried all the usual (editing menu.lst using ex2explorer within windows etc etc with all the right hd,xx values etc) but it just kept telling me that it could not find the files.
I thought it may be due to that sda not being mounted at the time grub comes up (which also didnt make too much sense since nowhere did I see it mount the Windows partition but yet I can boot to windows quite fine). So I ended up reinstalling Honeycomb with its own grub (which as you can expect done away with the ICS one). So Honeycomb works great with Windows - but again the same predicament (if not slightly worse since the honeycomb is fresh install and now I cant access my ICS which is wel run in with apps etc).
I can see all the partitions from within windows with the ext2 mounter and both the partitions with droid on have grub folders. I've tried setting different partitions active etc but to no avail. I've even now tried loading GAG bootloader and added the OS's, pointing them to the right partitions, but only the Windows one works from within gag.
My next step (since almost ALL the forums with posts regarding triple boots relates to having android, windows and ubuntu) is to install ubuntu and use ITS grub to control everything. Seems like a simpler way out, but quadruple boot? I've been called indecisive before but this is pushing it! lol.
So basically - either if someone can direct as to whats going wrong and why I can add the entry into the grub legacy's but when I select it, it says files not found.....OR how I can get GAG to successfully access those OS's.
Your site has been a really GREAT help...these my search tems in google include "xda-developers"...
You can quadruple boot. It's really not a big deal. I'm not sure about the grub for android x86 (I've only started playing with it a couple of days back) but if it's grub legacy, it can become a pain to set up other OSes other than the defaults. On the other hand, with grub2 (which comes with all standard linux distros) is very efficient at finding and loading the OSes so that would be the simplest way.
If it reassures you, I triple boot nearly all the time (Currently have Win7, Fedora 17 and Mint 13)
If you don't want to, you can perhaps try GRUB4DOS http://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos/
I haven't used it though so you'll need to go through it properly though. I'm sure you already know but just in case: make sure you keep another computer or at least some access to the internet while you are playing with GRUB in case of errors.
Hi.
I would like to run Debian Squeeze on Android.
Complete Linux Installer delivers Debian images that are very problematic and annoying.
Debian Kit doesn't let me install openssh-server and not only that, skipped many packages due to extracting problems.
Lil' Deby is very unstable, it hangs before it does everything to complete the installation.
Linux Deploy causes many errors to happen
Is there another app to do that? Or if there's a well explained way to do that manually? I'm having some software that would be great to have in my phone so let's just focus on it
I'm counting for help!
EDIT: Sorry, forgot to check "Is this a question". Yes, it is
I know this is going to seem like a dumb question, especially without root access. But why couldn't you install an entirely new system inside the already running system. For example, magisk (to my understanding) creates a seperate image on the disk to access from startup. Why wouldn't it be possible to apply the same concept with the phone already loaded and put the phones officiall hardware in like a sleep state. This could run like an emulator...just on android and emulating android. This could allow access to apps you couldn't use on newer devices plus so much more possibilities. I understand you would need a powerful operating system even with the official system in a sleep state but wouldn't the new phones be capable of running this. Even if it isnt a full system emulator, just one for running apps.
@Jaredkp92
Magisk does atually replace the included boot image with a modified version. Emulating android inside android could be possible, havent seen it, but it would likely need root access which defeats the entire purpose of keeping it stock plus it has other disadvantages.
@Jaredkp92
On A/B-ed devices it should be possible to run 2 different Android versions.