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[Q] One Click Ubuntu installer for 3.1.10 kernel ?

Hi,
i'm currently thinking about installing ubuntu on TF101. I recently saw that new kernel 3.1.10 is becoming really stable and supports many tf101 features that 2.x kernel doesn't (in my opinion ubuntu with 2.x was more like a "proof of concept" than a real usable system)
So i think time is mature to a "one-click ubuntu" installer or, even better a dual boot rom with both android 4.0.3 AND ubuntu with 3.1.10 kernel (but i think maybe this technically will never be possible, what do you think ? ).
As today, installing ubuntu on tf101 is really too much of a hassle and, if you succeed (think about sbkv2 users using also wheelie) you then have to manually add files to upgrade kernel.
We are in 2012 and still using 1950's command line
What do you think ? could someone initiate this new project (i have a little knowledge, but really no time ).
Thanks !
TheMac

Eventually, It's on my list.
List:
1) APX 1-click root for peri.
2) APK version of peri..
3) scream at asus for patching root exploit (This is bound too happen..)
4) ???
5) Profit!
6) Workaround root for new patched firmware
7) Update PERI
8) Ubuntu 1-click installer.

Thing O Doom said:
Eventually, It's on my list.
List:
1) APX 1-click root for peri.
2) APK version of peri..
3) scream at asus for patching root exploit (This is bound too happen..)
4) ???
5) Profit!
6) Workaround root for new patched firmware
7) Update PERI
8) Ubuntu 1-click installer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uhm !
I like number 5 AND number 8
TheMac

I like the 1950's command line!!

still trying to finish my 1click installer foe Ubuntu on sbkv2 devices. Once that's done ill look into adding the newer kernel from jhinta. Ill see about making a 1click from that. If its all working.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using xda premium

If kenshin is doing it im not gonna bother xD If he needs any help though I'm totally willing.

Thing O Doom said:
If kenshin is doing it im not gonna bother xD If he needs any help though I'm totally willing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you can do it, it would be better. I have been trying to rip apart exactly how everything is flashed still. Being slowed down from personal projects.

Linux on TF300?

Hi Guys,
I am looking for linux working on TF300T, is there anyone who has anything working? I am planning to start with linux for TF300T, I want to know if anyone has tsarted, how do I collaborate and not reinvent the wheel. I have questions regarding what bootloader to use, lilo / grub / u-boot as Nvidia has a ubuntu distribution for its chip, which uses U-boot. Lot of questions can any dev please reply, so I can think of a place to start.
Thanks
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300T using xda premium

So far I'm quite satisfied with my android linux device ( with some chroot debian thrown in for good measure).

I'm wondering about this as well. I've got some experience with linux (servers) but not a clue how the android boot structure works.
I have found this though: http://eeepadhacks.net/transformer-hacks/how-to-install-native-ubuntu-on-eeepad-transformer/

Not to spam, but does anybody have *NIX running on the TF300? I'm very interested since Android is based on the Linux kernel, so I would think that there is some form of *NIX running on this device, since I'm hoping that there is so I could actually use this as a "laptop" for my school work.

I am fairly sure that Android is Linux. However what people are missing is the GNU environment (and tools) that the majority of the Linux distributions have. You can see that Android/Linux is vastly different from GNU/Linux.
Thus, I think the question becomes something like "Is there anyone who has GNU/Linux working on the TF300T?"
There are two methods I know of to get GNU/Linux running on Android: Chroot and Dual boot.
* The chroot method runs the linux services and programs inside Android, but is available for basically most devices.
* The dual boot method works (mostly) with the original transformer (as Citruspers has mentioned)
I myself don't have a tablet yet, but I have been looking to get a TF300T (if I don't buy a TF700T - but that is for another discussion) on the basis I can dual boot Android with a GNU distribution.

Linux = kernel. Android runs a Linux kernel. Android IS Linux.
The two biggest differences between Android and "ordinary" Linux distributions are libc (called bionic in Android) and the lack of a real X server on Android (there is a Java version at https://code.google.com/p/android-xserver/ , but it's wayyyy too slow to get anything done (it's still awesome, though). It needs to be implemented in a lower level language).

/dev/void said:
Linux = kernel. Android runs a Linux kernel. Android IS Linux.
The two biggest differences between Android and "ordinary" Linux distributions are libc (called bionic in Android) and the lack of a real X server on Android (there is a Java version at https://code.google.com/p/android-xserver/ , but it's wayyyy too slow to get anything done (it's still awesome, though). It needs to be implemented in a lower level language).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any chance Wayland will work any better with Android than X? I wouldn't mine tossing a *box or even WindowMaker on my tablet (assuming they play nicely with Wayland).
Edit: Yes, I realize that Wayland barely works with GNU/Linux as it is, and it probably won't be usable even on the desktop until I'm upgrading to a new tablet. I'm not expecting it anytime soon.

Extracted from http://androidroot.mobi/2012/06/17/ubuntu-on-the-transformer-prime-preview/ regarding Ubuntu on Prime 201...
It has been a while since the last post about ubuntu on the Transformer Prime. This post is going to explain a few of the new changes, and show a video preview of the system in action.
There have been a few changes since the last update:
3.1.10 Kernel -- Asus don’t update the kernel while remaining on the same android major release, so they won’t update the kernel until at least Jellybean, but we have worked really hard to bring us up to the latest kernel. This has given us the ability to use the latest Tegra ULP GeForce binary from nvidia and maintain acceleration with the latest releases.
Linux as a bootloader -- With some work to the process we have managed to get kexecboot working to give us a boot menu that will boot not only multiple kernels from eMMC, but also to allow booting from USB, SD, and MicroSD. At this point in time the guest kernel also requires two patches, one for speed (it is really slow to boot without this patch, 30sec-5minutes) and the second to copy ATAGS, this second patch is important so that the new initrd and command line get used.
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS -- The last image was 11.10 which is a little less stable. 12.04 has a new gpower applet which can read the battery levels. 12.04 also includes the mtrack driver allowing the trackpad to work. The biggest change with the new image is the use of armhf over armel.
LVM -- Turning mmcblk0p8 (/data under android) to an lvm volume group has allowed both android and ubuntu to coexist on the eMMC without needing nvflash for reformatting. This however does require a modification to the android initrd to reflect the change and for the lvm binary to be included so it can mount /data. Ubuntu natively supports booting from logical volumes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know, I know this is TF300 forum, but it seems the TF300 is more similar to the TF201 than the primitive TF101

EndlessDissent said:
Any chance Wayland will work any better with Android than X? I wouldn't mine tossing a *box or even WindowMaker on my tablet (assuming they play nicely with Wayland).
Edit: Yes, I realize that Wayland barely works with GNU/Linux as it is, and it probably won't be usable even on the desktop until I'm upgrading to a new tablet. I'm not expecting it anytime soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good call. While we're on the desktop managers, how about KDE's entry in the mobile device space? Aren't they supposed to have a native linux tablet going to retail soon?

My chroot runs smooth but native would be fun! Hope someone get's this working.

I hope once the guys at androidroot.mobi release the installer package for Ubuntu for the Prime, it works on TF300.

I'm looking for the ubuntu on my tf300t too.
Its strange, I know Ubuntu showed off dual booting kernel for android devices like 6 months ago. You basically docked your phone and it became a full Linux desktop with unity. But haven't heard anything since, only a page on Ubuntu's site for hardware manufacturers.
http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

(Sorry to revive this old-ish thread, but I didn't think it was any better to start a new one and clutter up the forum)
It seems that no one gave an honest shot into loading linux NATIVELY (not via the "linux on android" project). The original poster mentioned being interested into giving it a shot -- so how things are going on your end aditya?
I am by no means an Android rom developer, hacker, or even linux hacker, but I started my first steps into it, I thought of getting things done by this method:
Instead of wiping the whole recovery partition like the guy on the TF100 did, i'd use a somewhat altered version of a recovery where I launch a recovery-like menu where the user can continue to the "real" recovery, or boot linux
(Basically, I got myself a version of the /sbin/recovery, which has its menus altered to only show "linux" or "recovery". Selecting recovery launches the real /sbin/recovery)
If the user choose to boot linux (which could be automatically selected after a timeout), that's where kexec steps in and boots the right kernel and linux pre-baked image files
I got all that covered (my pre-recovery menu is 90% working, custom kexec'd kernel w/kexec binaries packed into my recovery), but i forgot a small detail: There is no way I could load a full 1Gb Ubuntu image into memory, (in other words, what does happen to the old mount points managed by the first kernel when I load the second kernel via kexec? Gets broken, right?) So I came into realization I would need an initial ramdisk to mount my mmc so I could finally load/mount my main 1 Gb image file.
Honestly, for somebody not into hacking, I am under the impression this is getting out of hand. This could work, but I heard we could have nvflash fully working (read: re-paritioning coming our way, just like for the TF100 where there's linux natively on its own partition).
Is there anybody else trying to do such things like I do? I might also need a reality check on what i'm doing-- altough it seems the right way to me now

Linux and GNU
It's true, Linux is the OS kernel, but with the word Linux you can also mean the GNU/Linux environment with the kernel and all the applications running on top ("The gimp" or "Libre Office" for example).
Should be nice to have a GNU/Linux system running on a tablet device; I read that Canonical (Ubuntu) is working on a project for multi-core devices but I don't know about the development stage.
/dev/void said:
Linux = kernel. Android runs a Linux kernel. Android IS Linux.
The two biggest differences between Android and "ordinary" Linux distributions are libc (called bionic in Android) and the lack of a real X server on Android (there is a Java version at .... , but it's wayyyy too slow to get anything done (it's still awesome, though). It needs to be implemented in a lower level language).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Trying to make this work too.
I have a basic changeroot with gentoo and compiled a kernel and initrd. I wanted to try it out using fastboot (fastboot -i 0x0b05 -c real_root=/dev/sdb1 boot kernel-genkernel-arm-3.3.8-gentoo initramfs-genkernel-arm-3.3.8-gentoo) but it doesn't even try to load the kernel. I get an error 0x120000 on the screen of the TF300. I googled a bit and found out that the TF201 has the same problem, you have to flash a boot image.
How can I make a boot image using the gentoo files? I looked into abootimg but it seems it won't work. At least it won't split up the original images, so I fear it uses another format. Has anybody tried mkbootimg?

AEblefisk said:
I have a basic changeroot with gentoo and compiled a kernel and initrd. I wanted to try it out using fastboot (fastboot -i 0x0b05 -c real_root=/dev/sdb1 boot kernel-genkernel-arm-3.3.8-gentoo initramfs-genkernel-arm-3.3.8-gentoo) but it doesn't even try to load the kernel. I get an error 0x120000 on the screen of the TF300. I googled a bit and found out that the TF201 has the same problem, you have to flash a boot image.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I only know a part of the story here, but here's my findings so far. I never got "fastboot boot" to work on my TF300, always giving me that 0x120000 error. I am under the impression (I MAY BE WRONG) that "fastboot boot" requires a more devloper friendly device (think HTC G1, GNex, anything Google branded).
That being said, I am curious why you wrote "real_root=/dev/sdb1" as your kernel parameters
AEblefisk said:
How can I make a boot image using the gentoo files? I looked into abootimg but it seems it won't work. At least it won't split up the original images, so I fear it uses another format. Has anybody tried mkbootimg?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Personally I was able to look at how a recovery image was used and flashed onto a TF300. Without going into the details, I looked at how xplodwild's recovery was being made, and hacked around that recovery to use my own (basically trivial modifications from his).
To flash my image files, I am using "fastboot flash recovery" with my own recovery, which is basicaly a mkbootimg based image file like you said (you were on the right track), but wrapped around in a BLOB file format (using blobpack / blobunpack, see this xda thread).
So to answer your question, the only way I found so far to boot my custom kernels and init rootdisks is to flash it onto the device outright.
BTW: if you were to look at a pre-baked img file, (or, if you had no idea whats the file contents like), you could load the file into a hex editor (I use 'hexer' on ubuntu/debian, thats a command-line one). If you see "SIGNED-BY-BLOB", thats a blob file (a nvidia tegra and/or asus file format). If you see something else (usually starting with "ANDROID.."), thats usually something you can either mount or unpack using linux natively (most probably with "mount -o loop file /mnt/mountpoint")
EDIT: Slightly off topic, but still for AEblefisk: if you compile your own kernel, i suggest turning on activating the framebuffer tux logo option. More importantly, you could as well try and activate the framebuffer console too, however apparently "fbcon is broken on 2.6.39.4", so says Rayman. But at least, you'd get a hint that your own kernel is loaded and running if you see 4 tuxes on screen (one per core)

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
Now I managed to make a blob with the gentoo kernel and ramdisk. It flashes sort of OK with fastboot, sending in 2 seconds, but the write time is 0.016s and it seems nothing is written. I boot into Android when I reboot. (I'm flashing to boot, not recovery). Maybe I'm missing some offset or blocksize parameters?
bilange said:
...
That being said, I am curious why you wrote "real_root=/dev/sdb1" as your kernel parameters
...
EDIT: Slightly off topic, but still for AEblefisk: if you compile your own kernel, i suggest turning on activating the framebuffer tux logo option. More importantly, you could as well try and activate the framebuffer console too, however apparently "fbcon is broken on 2.6.39.4", so says Rayman. But at least, you'd get a hint that your own kernel is loaded and running if you see 4 tuxes on screen (one per core)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The real_root is for the gentoo initrd to find the real root filesystem on microSD. I have no idea if it will turn out to be mmcblk1p1, sdb1 or something completely different. I'll probably have to correct that once my initrd boots.
Yes I'm definitely trying to make the framebuffer logos work. Seeing that lineup of 4 tuxes is a goal in itself
I'm using 3.3.8 in gentoo so I hope fbcon is fixed.

AEblefisk said:
Now I managed to make a blob with the gentoo kernel and ramdisk. It flashes sort of OK with fastboot, sending in 2 seconds, but the write time is 0.016s and it seems nothing is written. I boot into Android when I reboot. (I'm flashing to boot, not recovery). Maybe I'm missing some offset or blocksize parameters?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never touched boot so far to tinker around Linux booting, for the simple reason we never use the recovery partition except to flash/nandroid backup (which I rarely do), plus it gave me with Android booting if I dont press the volume button on startup. As far as development went, I think this was a win/win situation, although lilstevie (the guy who did make Ubuntu boot natively on his TF101/200) told me to "never touch recovery, flash boot instead", he was most probably talking about deploying our custom OSes to the world to use.
Now i'm kinda lost as to why the regular Android boot is being shown up. Having 0 experience with the boot partition (which i thought was similar to recovery), i can't really help you. Maybe you should get on freenode into the #asus-transformer and ask around (Don't let the numbers of nicknames scare you, this is a low activity channel, but the most knowledgables people are hanging in there. Just be sure to do your homework (aka Google etc) before asking, you should be fine )
As a sidenote, you should probably use some (most?) of the kernel parameters used in /proc/cmdline from a live Android OS. Most specifically the "tegraboot=sdmmc gpt gpt_sector=..." part. This makes sure your kernel reads the partition table at the right (unusual) location instead of reading where ever it was on a regular system (the first 512 bytes of the drive? don't quote me on this). I suppose this doesn't prevent the kernel from booting, but it will make the SSD partitions visible from your OS.
AEblefisk said:
The real_root is for the gentoo initrd to find the real root filesystem on microSD. I have no idea if it will turn out to be mmcblk1p1, sdb1 or something completely different. I'll probably have to correct that once my initrd boots.
Yes I'm definitely trying to make the framebuffer logos work. Seeing that lineup of 4 tuxes is a goal in itself
I'm using 3.3.8 in gentoo so I hope fbcon is fixed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would that be a 'vanilla' 3.3.8? I'm asking because, in case you don't know, I think you can't have much success using the regular kernel from kernel.org, and hope it will detect all the devices (specifically touch, sensors, wifi, gps(?), etc). It will maybe boot (your guess is as good as mine), but it will surely lack a few things here and there. That's why there are a ton of devices specific github kernel code base here and there: it's basically a 'stock' kernel source code, with the constructor's additions to make their various devices work, with community enhancements on top of all that. I may be wrong on the following (if there are any veterans reading this, feel free to call me a noob and point me to the right direction), but if you try to compile ASUS' kernel source code for the TF300, funnily enough everything compiles silently UNTIL it gets to the Tegra parts where it gets noisy with over 9000 warnings all along (but it compiles). That led me to believe that 1) NVidia or ASUS are lousy coders and 2) They added (most likely) OR modified a bunch of code to the stock kernel tree to make it 100% functioning on their devices.
All that wall of text only to say that I assume that the broken fbcon issue is most probably due to either ASUS/NVidia additions to the kernel code, or a bug from the 'stock' kernel code, and i'm assuming it was fixed in later versions (which lacks device's constructor modifications then again).
--
Offtopic: it seems ASUS has released the kernel source code for TF300 for their JB update! Compile all the things!! (And hope fbcon as been fixed so I can see something out of the screen)

I'll definitely do my homework now I'm worried I may have flashed some other place than boot, since Android is still booting, so now checking all corners of the tablet is on top of the agenda.
I know some things may not work with a vanilla kernel, but I was hoping enough would work for it to boot. Then I could worry about the rest afterwards. Maybe using the JB kernel source will be easier, but I don't know how much has been changed in android which is used in linux. I suspect Google has worked more on modifying linux for android use than ASUS has worked to make their hardware run in android. Another option is to work on what Nvidia has published.

Now I'm getting more experienced. I hope I get some real progress before I brick it
It turned out I wasn't writing anything to flash. It seems the first blob(un)packing tools mentioned in http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1697227 aren't working (for me on my tab anyway). But when I tried the BlobTools2 with the blobpack -s option my resulting linux blob was written to flash (using fastboot -i 0x0b05 flash boot boot.img).
Unfortunately my gentoo linux kernel wasn't any good. I never got past the first Asus logo and on top of that CWM recovery couldn't restore Android. CWM went through the motions but nothing booted. I had to flash the stock blob, then I got my Android back.

Tubuntu - questions and issues

This should probably be posted here, but I sadly don't have the required 10 posts to do so.
There's one issue that I noticed that is actual in 0.2.2alpha. When you choose to flash Jhinta 3.1x kernel and not 2.6x kernel, it is still linux.img that is being flashed, instead of jlinux.img.
Also there's one question (or rather a feature request). Once you have dual boot up and running it would be nice to be able to flash linux rootfs only (ubuntu.img) without changing the partition table and loosing current android install. You can't currently do that with Tubuntu, right?
Best regards,
Alex

Serkenar said:
This should probably be posted here, but I sadly don't have the required 10 posts to do so.
There's one issue that I noticed that is actual in 0.2.2alpha. When you choose to flash Jhinta 3.1x kernel and not 2.6x kernel, it is still linux.img that is being flashed, instead of jlinux.img.
Also there's one question (or rather a feature request). Once you have dual boot up and running it would be nice to be able to flash linux rootfs only (ubuntu.img) without changing the partition table and loosing current android install. You can't currently do that with Tubuntu, right?
Best regards,
Alex
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi!
that will be on my next release cause i flash my tubuntu image so much. i'm trying to push out a backup menu along with that new rootfs option

x3maniac said:
hi!
that will be on my next release cause i flash my tubuntu image so much. i'm trying to push out a backup menu along with that new rootfs option
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I'm really glad to hear that! Looking forward to the next Tubuntu release
I'd also like to ask to include cifs kernel module in your kernel build.
Thank you

Serkenar said:
Hi,
I'm really glad to hear that! Looking forward to the next Tubuntu release
I'd also like to ask to include cifs kernel module in your kernel build.
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
new version is up with Flash rootfs only :laugh:
future release of kernel i will put cifs. right now i'm trying to get zram and overclocking right 1st.
lol i feel like a one man operation. make the program to flash ubuntu images, didn't find one i liked. so i went ahead and made one. feel that the kernel is missing too much stuff. and went ahead and i'm making that now lol... am i missing anything else i need to learn/do? hahahaha
but i'm loving it!
thanks for the support

x3maniac said:
new version is up with Flash rootfs only :laugh:
future release of kernel i will put cifs. right now i'm trying to get zram and overclocking right 1st.
lol i feel like a one man operation. make the program to flash ubuntu images, didn't find one i liked. so i went ahead and made one. feel that the kernel is missing too much stuff. and went ahead and i'm making that now lol... am i missing anything else i need to learn/do? hahahaha
but i'm loving it!
thanks for the support
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your effort
Speaking about your own kernel, I tried compiling one from Jhinta source, but I received odd errors at boot time. First it was this kind of errors:
lists.litmus-rt.org/pipermail/litmus-dev/2012/000215.html
it was suggested there to try changing CONFIG_DEVTMPFS_MOUNT kernel config value, I did that, and then I got some other odd errors, so I gave up
Right now I have a more or less stable 12.04 kubuntu+3.10.1 jhanti kernel with hw acceleration, sound, zram (used netinstall 0.6). I'm only missing overclocking and a cifs module, that's why I tried building my own kernel, but never got it booting. I don't know any sane methods of backing up and restoring linux on tf101 (well, dd + gzip should work, but that's rather stupid), so I'm a little hesitant about flashing your lubuntu right now. I think I'll still give it a go, but before I do that, don't you know any easy way to back up my current linux install?
Thank you

Serkenar said:
Thank you for your effort
Speaking about your own kernel, I tried compiling one from Jhinta source, but I received odd errors at boot time. First it was this kind of errors:
lists.litmus-rt.org/pipermail/litmus-dev/2012/000215.html
it was suggested there to try changing CONFIG_DEVTMPFS_MOUNT kernel config value, I did that, and then I got some other odd errors, so I gave up
Right now I have a more or less stable 12.04 kubuntu+3.10.1 jhanti kernel with hw acceleration, sound, zram (used netinstall 0.6). I'm only missing overclocking and a cifs module, that's why I tried building my own kernel, but never got it booting. I don't know any sane methods of backing up and restoring linux on tf101 (well, dd + gzip should work, but that's rather stupid), so I'm a little hesitant about flashing your lubuntu right now. I think I'll still give it a go, but before I do that, don't you know any easy way to back up my current linux install?
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i'm now compiling from his source. for the 3.1.10 kernel i'm using. why try to reinvent the wheel? i just recompiled and added oc and cifs, i didn't run into any compile issues but i did run into boot issues so changing the kernel to compress with lzmo instead of gzip fixed it. hope that helps

Thank you for your work on this
x3maniac said:
i'm now compiling from his source. for the 3.1.10 kernel i'm using. why try to reinvent the wheel? i just recompiled and added oc and cifs, i didn't run into any compile issues but i did run into boot issues so changing the kernel to compress with lzmo instead of gzip fixed it. hope that helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
x3maniac I was wondering if you have ever checked out openELEC linux. They just pushed out a new version on Distrowatch and it looks like it will have support for ARM devices. It is very lightweight at 106mb and is made to run XBMC out of the box. Might be worth a try due to its size and media streaming abilities.
Thanks

thelangosta said:
x3maniac I was wondering if you have ever checked out openELEC linux. They just pushed out a new version on Distrowatch and it looks like it will have support for ARM devices. It is very lightweight at 106mb and is made to run XBMC out of the box. Might be worth a try due to its size and media streaming abilities.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the info. i will look into it, i do have a arch linux version working with 3.1 which is only about 200mb.
edit:
they have a arm version 83mb! lols

Cool
x3maniac said:
thanks for the info. i will look into it, i do have a arch linux version working with 3.1 which is only about 200mb.
edit:
they have a arm version 83mb! lols
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow that is small. I have seen Roms that small but never an os. Wait, is that openELEC or Arch you are talking about.
On another note if I do end up getting around to trying your method with arch which desktop would you recommend?
Thanks

thelangosta said:
Wow that is small. I have seen Roms that small but never an os. Wait, is that openELEC or Arch you are talking about.
On another note if I do end up getting around to trying your method with arch which desktop would you recommend?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
openelec(rasbery pi)
if you want it to look nice then enlightment e17. for a light weight DE they make it very pretty with all the effects like compiz
or lxde

x3maniac said:
i'm now compiling from his source. for the 3.1.10 kernel i'm using. why try to reinvent the wheel? i just recompiled and added oc and cifs, i didn't run into any compile issues but i did run into boot issues so changing the kernel to compress with lzmo instead of gzip fixed it. hope that helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Compression was already set to lzma. I can't figure out what I was doing wrong. Yet, you're right, no point to reinvent the wheel.
I see you've recently released your Lubuntu V1.1-rc1. The specs sound great! Could you please post the rootfs download link and also post your kernel img?
Thank you for the great work you're doing!

Serkenar said:
Compression was already set to lzma. I can't figure out what I was doing wrong. Yet, you're right, no point to reinvent the wheel.
I see you've recently released your Lubuntu V1.1-rc1. The specs sound great! Could you please post the rootfs download link and also post your kernel img?
Thank you for the great work you're doing!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the link to image and kernel is up. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1995157

x3maniac said:
the link to image and kernel is up. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1995157
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I gave it a go First of all, Tubuntu flashes .\images\linux.img when choosing to flash "2.6x x3maniac kernel", I assume it should flash .\images\xlinux.img
That's not a big issue, but should be fixed
A quick list of things I noticed.
1. Things that work:
-1.2 GHz OC
-Usb mouse (when plugged before system boots, otherwise not - that's due to 3.1.10 kernel, I guess)
-cifs module
-chromium
-terminal (right clicking on your tf101linux gadget -> Shortcuts -> Terminal)
-screen brightness up/down buttons. You just have to be mindful to avoid turning the screen off this way - it won't turn on afterwards and you'll have to force reboot.
-ntfs read/write
2. Things that don't work:
-touchpad
-XF86poweroff button
-System Tools -> XTerm/UXTerm
-sound: Audacious complains "ALSA error. No suitable mixer element found. snd_mixer_find_selem failed". Gnome MPlayer just won't produce any sound, and youtube html5 videos too.
-plugging in an external usb drive. It's totally ignored. A pen drive doesn't even blink, nor the drive appears in /dev it works now. It didn't during initial launch. Don't know why, but a reboot cured this.
Also, it happens quite often that system freezes for no apparent reason and only force reboot helps. It happened twice with me already, although it's been less then an hour since I flashed lubuntu.
Tell me if you need some additional info
Regards

Serkenar said:
I gave it a go First of all, Tubuntu flashes .\images\linux.img when choosing to flash "2.6x x3maniac kernel", I assume it should flash .\images\xlinux.img
That's not a big issue, but should be fixed
A quick list of things I noticed.
1. Things that work:
-1.2 GHz OC
-Usb mouse (when plugged before system boots, otherwise not - that's due to 3.1.10 kernel, I guess)
-cifs module
-chromium
-terminal (right clicking on your tf101linux gadget -> Shortcuts -> Terminal)
-screen brightness up/down buttons. You just have to be mindful to avoid turning the screen off this way - it won't turn on afterwards and you'll have to force reboot.
-ntfs read/write
2. Things that don't work:
-touchpad
-XF86poweroff button
-System Tools -> XTerm/UXTerm
-sound: Audacious complains "ALSA error. No suitable mixer element found. snd_mixer_find_selem failed". Gnome MPlayer just won't produce any sound, and youtube html5 videos too.
-plugging in an external usb drive. It's totally ignored. A pen drive doesn't even blink, nor the drive appears in /dev it works now. It didn't during initial launch. Don't know why, but a reboot cured this.
Also, it happens quite often that system freezes for no apparent reason and only force reboot helps. It happened twice with me already, although it's been less then an hour since I flashed lubuntu.
Tell me if you need some additional info
Regards
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i love your report! keep up the good work. this helps me narrow down the problems but without a dock i can't fix some of the issues. but try this
touchpad:
edit /etc/X11/Xorg.conf
Code:
Section "InputClass"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Identifier "Touchpads"
Driver "mtrack"
EndSection
should fix the touchpad issue.
i will look into fixing my script for the brightness issue. located int /usr/local/bin/tfbright
what were you doing when you freeze? i don't have a dock(still waiting for it in the mail) so i don't know if it's related to that.
i've been looking at nvidia git and downloaded there source for the linux4tegra kernel. it' compiled fine but wont boot. don't know why yet

x3maniac, I know it is off topic a bit but I just wanted to mention that I appreciate your attitude towards your work and especially criticism (aka feedback) from others about your work. Reminds me of my EVO 4G days running tommytomato's classic rom. His threads were always friendly and optimistic, much like your own.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

x3maniac said:
i love your report! keep up the good work. this helps me narrow down the problems but without a dock i can't fix some of the issues. but try this
touchpad:
edit /etc/X11/Xorg.conf
Code:
Section "InputClass"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Identifier "Touchpads"
Driver "mtrack"
EndSection
should fix the touchpad issue.
i will look into fixing my script for the brightness issue. located int /usr/local/bin/tfbright
what were you doing when you freeze? i don't have a dock(still waiting for it in the mail) so i don't know if it's related to that.
i've been looking at nvidia git and downloaded there source for the linux4tegra kernel. it' compiled fine but wont boot. don't know why yet
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Strange, but there's no /etc/X11/xorg.conf
I tried creating it with `Xorg :1 -configure`, but I get "No devices to configure. Configuration failed."
I also tried creating /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the following content
Code:
Section "InputClass"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Identifier "Touchpads"
Driver "mtrack"
EndSection
but touchpad wont' work.
Like I said, there appears to be no apparent reason for those freezes The only things they had in common are the following:
(as far as I can remember)
-I had a cifs share mounted
-pen drive was plugged in
-chromium was opened
I understand that isn't helpful at all, but atm I can't reproduce those freezes myself. They occur kind of randomly.
I hope linux4tegra kernel does boot after all
Thank you for your work
EDIT: 30 minutes without freezes, I hope they're gone for good! :laugh:

djlenoir said:
x3maniac, I know it is off topic a bit but I just wanted to mention that I appreciate your attitude towards your work and especially criticism (aka feedback) from others about your work. Reminds me of my EVO 4G days running tommytomato's classic rom. His threads were always friendly and optimistic, much like your own.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 Totally agree

djlenoir said:
x3maniac, I know it is off topic a bit but I just wanted to mention that I appreciate your attitude towards your work and especially criticism (aka feedback) from others about your work. Reminds me of my EVO 4G days running tommytomato's classic rom. His threads were always friendly and optimistic, much like your own.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Serkenar said:
+1 Totally agree
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
as far as i see it, you guys are helping me get a working version. user/tester are as important as the devs making them. or else dev's would be out of the job. lols that's how i see it

I let lubuntu running and it froze smth like 20 minutes ago Without me doing anything. Chromium was running, pen drive plugged in and a cifs share mounted.
I'll leave it running without a pen drive plugged in, shares mounted and chromium running to see if it freezes eventually.

Serkenar said:
I let lubuntu running and it froze smth like 20 minutes ago Without me doing anything. Chromium was running, pen drive plugged in and a cifs share mounted.
I'll leave it running without a pen drive plugged in, shares mounted and chromium running to see if it freezes eventually.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i'm guessing jhanti's kernel is not stable. i was starting to use it more and got a random freeze. cpu1 went to sleep and wont wake up. looking into that.. i might just take nvidia's kernel 3.1.10 and try to get that working.

TF101 Linux, that... WORKS?

Is there any way to install linux distribution aside from android onto my TF101, dual boot if possible, with not-so-many-bugs?
I tried x3maniac's way of installing it, however, I had 1.35GB available disk space (which ****** sucks), and I couldn't even load pages in Chromium, so basically, it was no use. After apt-getting codeblocks, i couldn't save a .cpp file lol.
Thank you in advance.

You can get an app called complete Linux installer from the market. Thing is, you need a kernel that supports loop devices, and it runs on TOP of android. That's the best I've seen
Sent from my Transformer using Xparent Blue Tapatalk 2

erik.loncarek said:
Is there any way to install linux distribution aside from android onto my TF101, dual boot if possible, with not-so-many-bugs?
I tried x3maniac's way of installing it, however, I had 1.35GB available disk space (which ****** sucks), and I couldn't even load pages in Chromium, so basically, it was no use. After apt-getting codeblocks, i couldn't save a .cpp file lol.
Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For x3maniac's you need to run 'sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p8' in the terminal after installing to resize the partition to ~5gb, the chromium issue has also been fixed with the new kernels and they are also overclocked. The only problem is that x3maniac's kernels have problems with the system freezing.
NoDiskNoFun's net-install was very stable especially with jhinta's kernel, the only problem I had with it was that the boot time would take 1-2 minutes extra if the system couldn't connect to a known wifi network. The major thing is that you wont be able to complete the install without a wifi connection (has to download several hundred megabytes of packages to setup).
lilstevie's 11.10 image while stable, was fairly slow, lacked hardware acceleration and couldnt report battery levels (only from the terminal).
NoDiskNoFun's ubuntu would probably be the most stable and the fastest for you, x3maniac's still has it's issues.

Net-install Wifi issues
Mn5612 said:
NoDiskNoFun's net-install was very stable especially with jhinta's kernel, the only problem I had with it was that the boot time would take 1-2 minutes extra if the system couldn't connect to a known wifi network. The major thing is that you wont be able to complete the install without a wifi connection (has to download several hundred megabytes of packages to setup).
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey Mn5612,
I've installed x3maniac's tubuntu, and while I do really like it and appreciate all of his work, I have heard that NoDiskNoFun's net-install had many advantages in terms of customization and stability. I flashed his img over my recovery partition, and everything was fine, booted into setup, but then I can't get the wifi to connect to complete the installation. I am running open WEP
Nothing comes up when I do a scan, status is "Could not get status from wpa_supplicant," and when I manually try to add values I get "Failed to enable network in wpa_supplicant configuration." So I go through setup, and nothing downloads while I'm completing all of the steps.
I tried using v0.5 where the install is primarily in terminal, tried all of the WEP options, then I tried tethering my phone with all of the different encryptions, then left it as an open hotspot, nothing, no detection, no connection.
I've looked all over the forums and at general llinux forums for solutions, but no one seems to have quite the same problem, or their solution is not feasible on this distro or someone working in windows. I have a very basic knowledge of linux, I mainly run a windows box, but I always like to learn more. In any case, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

erik.loncarek said:
Is there any way to install linux distribution aside from android onto my TF101, dual boot if possible, with not-so-many-bugs?
I tried x3maniac's way of installing it, however, I had 1.35GB available disk space (which ****** sucks), and I couldn't even load pages in Chromium, so basically, it was no use. After apt-getting codeblocks, i couldn't save a .cpp file lol.
Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey,
I had the same question about a year ago. I looked around and found this thread from lilstevie. It will guide you to install a dual boot setup between a nvflashable ROM of your choice and Ubuntu. I had it running very well with no major issues, but of course there will be some bugs. Heck, Linux often has bugs even on a normal PC platform. I remember flash player was probably the biggest issue, but I'm sure there are ways to get it working. If I remember correctly I think I gave Ubuntu 8gb and I gave Prime 3.2 whatever was left out of the 32gb tablet.

[Q] where are the x86 tablet hackers?

I just bought my first tablet. An acer Iconia a1 830. rooted it the first day, got some chroot linuxes going, ssh into some other boxes. awesome.
so my googles have come up short looking for people who are running (or trying to run) x86 linux on x86 tablets. Ive been building and breaking linux for about ten years now and i think i could help this effort. everything i have found is for arm ports and stuff. I know i am not the only one who is looking at his x86 tablet wondering how to get some dual boot action out of this.
send me a link to the place i need to go, to find the people who are thinking about this.
acer iconia a1 830
htc desire hd running some cyanogenmod

danharris said:
I just bought my first tablet. An acer Iconia a1 830. rooted it the first day, got some chroot linuxes going, ssh into some other boxes. awesome.
so my googles have come up short looking for people who are running (or trying to run) x86 linux on x86 tablets. Ive been building and breaking linux for about ten years now and i think i could help this effort. everything i have found is for arm ports and stuff. I know i am not the only one who is looking at his x86 tablet wondering how to get some dual boot action out of this.
send me a link to the place i need to go, to find the people who are thinking about this.
acer iconia a1 830
htc desire hd running some cyanogenmod
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I have an 830 and a Razr i, I've tried to get chroot running on both when I first got each of them, but didn't finish the things. I'm pretty sure if I gave it a few more hours I'd be able to get it running, but as of now no luck.
I will tell you the progress I made though.
You've probably heard of linux on android or complete linux installer http://linuxonandroid.org/, and I'm sure you worked out pretty quickly the version of busybox they gave you, along with the images, where for arm.
It might pay to message, but let's be honest, in this case WE are the developers, and unless one of us is willing to send them one of our devices we'll have a hole lot more luck trying it ourselves.
Busybox x https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bitcubate.root.busybox.complete&hl=en can install an x86 binary, and it certainly runs, but I had some issues that may be related to how it was compiled, or just me being an idiot.
You say you've been playing with linux for 10 years, so I know you probably already know this, but just in case, and for others reading this, it's probably worth explaining. chroot isn't a VM nor is it a system for traditional duel booting. It will allow you to run a linux userland from the already running linux kernal on the device, alongside android. It works by specifying a directory or image with a linux install in it, then telling the kernal to start that **** up, as if it where the kernal in the instalation.
Now, onto my progress. I was able to run chroot, so it was obviously an x86 binary, I was also able to mount an image of an x86 debian install made with debootstrap (What linux on android uses to make their ARM images) on my SD card. The first problem I had was android doesn't give stuff on the SD card execute permissions, and stuff got messy, but I eventually got that working. Do as you see fit.
I had numerous other issues, but the one I finally got stuck on was chroot not being able to find /bin/bash in the debian install directory.
I played around with the boot scripts you get with linux on android, but I don't think chroot evern ever ran from there. Neither was I able to run a plain "chroot /mnt/debianimagemounted/", I kept getting the "can't find bash" thing. I'm guessing this could have been because the linux for android scrypts made aliases before running chroot. Read them for yourself to see what I mean.
This all could be as simple as redirecting the linuxonandroid program from the arm version of chroot it uses to an x86 copy, or it could be more difficult.
Actually, I'll email them now, I'll post any response I get here.
I don't think there really are many people talking about this, I mean your post was the first google hit for "x86 android chroot", so this is probably gonna take some effort on our part.
I'm pretty busy with study right now, but in 2 weeks or so I'll dedicate a few solid days to getting this running.
As far as I can tell all we need is some good hard trial and error.
Can't wait to hear from you.

One other thing, I forget where but heard that you should try to stick to i386 binaries only, and that i686 ect could cause problems, but I don't know this for sure. Again, use your own discretion.
---------- Post added at 05:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 AM ----------
Sorry, last time I post, but I found this, you might want to check it out:
http://sven-ola.dyndns.org/repo/debian-kit-en.html

Yup, from what I've found, Debian-kit seems like the most promising project. Heres a link with a little more insight.
wdowiak.me/debian-kit/index.html
For anyone else who gets here... this is what I used to root the 830
androidfilehost.com/?fid=23578570567714700
then I got Debian-kit from fdroid because it has a newer version, but the one from google play works fine too. get your connect bot and RDP client and ur off to the races.
***sorry for the non linked links, Im not allowed to post real links yet

Dan, I think wdowiaks kit in your link is newer than the fdroid version and installs Wheezy. It definitely has good install info. I rooted my new a1-830 yesterday and installed the wdowiak version in the initial install version (not the one on the external sdcard). I had a little problem with the Iconia not mounting the external card formatted to two ext2 partitions, so the install was to internal memory aas a first try.
But today I removed the deb installation and reformatted the external card to 3 partitions with vfat on the first, and ext2 on the other two, and Android mounted the first partition where the deb script was located. So I'm hoping to install tonight. I was surprised the ext2s werent mounted automatically. But this might be a gtood thing, since there are warnngs not to let Android apps write data to them anyway.
Anyway, wanted to thank you for the above Debian info.:good:

Some notes as I'm installing the wdowiak debian-kit-1-6.shar:
I'm installing to the third partition on the sdcard (which shows up as /dev/block/vold/179:53)
At first I had trouble using the command:
mk-debian -i /dev/block/vold/179:53
I had to issue it as:
/data/local/deb/mk-debian -i /dev/block/vold/179:53
but even then it threw an error saying it couldn't fdisk 179:48 .
That seemed odd. But it didn't stop there and went on to query if I wanted to format 179:53 or " (A)bort " I decided to go ahead and typed a "Y" and was brought back to a prompt.
That didn't seem to work, so I tried again by just hitting <ENTER> . But that had the same result. Finally I figured out that the response it wanted to proceed was lowercase "e". That worked and the partition was formatted -- the install is going on now.
One other note -- though I originally partitioned as ext 2, the mk-debian command seems to be re-formatting to ext 3. There is a suggestion earlier that if it is to be a journaling format, rather than ext2, to turn journaling off. This reduces the number of writes and therefore extends the life of the sdcard.
---------- Post added at 10:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:05 PM ----------
More notes:
I got a lot of error messages from debconf about needing a certain screen size during:
apt-get install andromize
Nevertheless it proceeded through. I'm now at the stage in connectbot where Ive logged into my user through ssh and am adding the lxde desktop via
apt-get install andromize-lxde
That's a pretty big chunk of realestate for a desktop -- almost a gig unpacked -- I'm used to Puppy Linux which is about 100 megs total for everything, including OS, desktop, and a full suite of apps!
I'm hoping that with some experience w/Wheezy on the a1-830 I can try getting an Intel Atom optimized version of Puppy linux on board.

danharris said:
so my googles have come up short looking for people who are running (or trying to run) x86 linux on x86 tablets...send me a link to the place i need to go, to find the people who are thinking about this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi...I don't know much about this at all to be honest, but its an interesting thread and I found some links which will hopefully help you a little bit, though you may already be aware of them:
http://www.android-x86.org/
http://www.in.techradar.com/news/so...stros-to-choose-from/articleshow/38781789.cms
https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active
All the best!

Thanks ishaang.
The middle link was pretty interesting, though I wish they had elaborated on their installation method:
We're fairly sure you don't need to be told how to install a Linux distro - most now use an identifiable and easy-to-navigate installer - but we thought it would be interesting to see how well they coped, first as a live image, via a bootable USB, then secondly as a fully installed OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My own interest is in Puppy Linux, which is generally accomplished from an ISO live CD session running in memory (on most computers). You run the CD then install to HD or USB stick.
For a so-called "frugal install" (the kind I use) there's another option besides making and running the LiveCD, You can just extract three files from the ISO, place them in a folder on the HD and point a stanza of GRUB's menu.lst to them. Typically the files are:
initrd.gz
vmlinuz
puppyversion.sfs
and an example GRUB menu.lst boot stanza for the Racy 5.5 version of Linux located on sda5 of a hard drive would look like this:
title Racy 5.5
kernel (hd0,4)/Racy55/vmlinuz PDEV1=sda5 ro
initrd (hd0,4)/Racy55/initrd.gz
boot
So I'm wondering how this translates to an alternative OS boot on the Iconia tablet? -- I could easily put those three files on an external sdcard, but how do we point the boot process to it on the a1-830?

Any update to this since 2014, I know i'm resurrecting a old thread. Hoping to breath new life into an x86 android 4.2 device.