Related
I am trying to work with haykuro to get apps on sd for his cupcake roms, but I ran into a problem. They replaced mountd with vold, and there is no known documentation on how to format the config file. This does not seem to be the same vold that is used on SUN or other unix operating systems. If anyone has any useful info, please share it with me so I can look into this further.
Maybe this will get you started...
*EDIT* didnt read your post correctly... Didnt see that it was not related to the Sun version.
Darkrift,
Maybe the vold.conf in the android system is similar to the vold.conf in my Solaris 10 Sparc Server.....
Code:
> > For Solaris 8, you have to fake a change on the vold.conf
> > configuration file, otherwise the HUP signal is ignored:
> >
> > touch /etc/vold.conf
> > + pkill −HUP vold
>
> I stopped vold & commented out the one /etc/vold.conf line:
> # use rmdisk drive /dev/rdsk/c*s2 dev_rmdisk.so rmdisk%d
If you want vold to automatically mount an usb mass
storage device on a reboot (or a re−start of vold, or the above
mentioned touch / SIGHUP sequence), you have to make sure to remove
the comment character from the "use rmdisk" line in /etc/vold.conf.
Study some of the Sun Solaris docs I have listed below and maybe you will find the right recipe you are looking for...
Sun Solaris USB Flash Drive Mount Command
Solaris 10 - System Administration Guide - Devices and File Systems
Hope this helps...
I'm on Gtalk as AndroidSamurai if you have any questions.
While I'm at it, this is the command to mount a floppy in Solaris...
Code:
mount -f pcfs /dev/diskette /mnt
/mnt is the mount point
Here is what is currently in the file:
Code:
## vold configuration file for Sapphire
volume_sdcard {
## This is the direct uevent device path to the SD slot on the device
media_path /devices/platform/msm_sdcc.2/mmc_host/mmc1
emu_media_path /devices/platform/goldfish_mmc.0/mmc_host/mmc0
media_type mmc
mount_point /sdcard
ums_path /devices/platform/usb_mass_storage/lun0
}
I tried adding:
Code:
volume_apps {
## This is the direct uevent device path to the SD slot on the device
media_path /dev/block/mmcblk0p2
media_type mmc
mount_point /system/sd
}
with no luck. And yes, I tried doing the media_path in the same format as the first one, which also did nothing.
Would the "mount_point" not be "/sdcard"?
I cannot work the terminal on my G1 bc of the keymapping error preventing me from using "/"...
Would it not be:
Code:
media_path /dev/block/mmcblk0p1
seeing that a fat partition(vfat) would be "p0" ?
Have you tried looking at "vold/mmc.c and vold/mmc.h" ?
Also try looking at the following:
Code:
vold/volmgr_ext3.c
vold/volmgr_ext3.h
vold/volmgr_vfat.c
vold/volmgr_vfat.h
If you would please e-mail me the vold.conf in a zip archive so I can play around with it a little...
Sorry, my resources are a little bare at the current time due to a surge knocking out all my equipment.
Email Me
or find me on GTalk under androidsamurai.....
No, i am trying to add apps to sd, which go in /system/sd/app. this would mount my second partition (ext2) /system/sd
Let me also state that the top part is working. that is what loads the sdcard to /sdcard. what I am trying to do is load the second partition to /system/sd by adding a *second* block to the file, which is not working.
Hi Darkrift,
I don't have a second partition on my sd card nor have I installed any of the cupcake builds so I can't test my thoughts myself but thought I'd share them with you...
Have you tried browsing to the directory referenced by the original vold.conf? I was just wondering how this structure compares to a device using a partitioned sd card? Maybe a comparison would give us some clues as to how the new volume manager works.
Mine looks like this:
sys/devices/platform/msm_sdcc.2/mmc_host:mmc1/mmc1:d516
With no other similarly name directories below the msm_sdcc.2 level.
Why don't we use Fat32 partition as extra memory? why can't we run application from a Fat32 partition?
#1 FAT32 doesn't support case-sensitivity, and that is enabled on the internal FS's
#2 extfs is way better than FAT
#2 FAT sucks
@wellsie: I think the problem is the name I am giving it "volume_apps {
" but if i change it to volume_sdcard { like the first one, it adds those config options to teh top block. Also I have tried adding all different versions of the media path (in /dev, in /system/devices and more) with no luck.
@funbacon: Joushou's ideas make sense, but neither of those are the reason. Each application installed on the G1 has an owner, group and set permissions. That is part of the "sandbox" that keeps apps from accessing each others files. Fat has no permissions, so an app on fat would not be able to have the needed permissions to be used.
Oh yeah, permissions aswell
I have been too long in unix, so i just expect that to be there
But i believe that fits under the "FAT sucks" category
I agree with that one
C'mon. I know someone has gotta have some ideas or maybe know how to browse the source and figure stuff out more than I could. I tried checking out the source but its fairly foreign to me. I know a little scripting, but not much as far as coding goes. I really would like to help get apps-to-sd working in cupcake but this is a major stumbling block for that.
I just want to say that even i am not proficient on this type of stuff i voluntere to test whatever setup you come up with.
I really apreciate your work on this as this is the only reason I have not moved to haykuros or anybodys cupcake build.
So thanks tanks to every body for pitching in.
oh by the way, If you set it up i will donate to the cause!!!!!
I'll try and look at the code over the weekend...family time comes first though so it may have to wait until next week when I'm at work ;-)
I think the main problem is the naming convention for a new "block". sdcard is already in use, and adding a second one just adds to the first one. I think there might be "sdcard2" or something else that it is expecting. I tried just naming it whatever I wanted hoping that would work but it didnt seem to.
im with carlos im not a good with all that code stuff, but im down to test whatever u come out with,
also for i heard haykuyo is coming out with a fix for the physical keyboard soon
If you are speaking about "Keyboard Fix" in the terms of the Keyboard Mapping being messed up, then chack out the first post of the Sapphire/Magic G1 Port thread... Keyboard mapping has been fixed.
I honestly cannot believe that Google hasn't had any hits on the android site about this problem yet...
Instead of partitioning, maybe we can try this other method for apps to sdcard.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3402719&postcount=683
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3402947&postcount=687
This method creates an ext2 filesystem object as a file under the fat32 filesystem so there would be no need to partition.
I'm doing my taxes today, but if I get a chance to play around with it, I'll try to implement this tomorrow. Looks pretty straightforward.
well, nobody would know about this problem unless they are breaking the rules. A, having a rom which we should not have, and B, making changes to the OS and "hacking" it to read apps somewhere its not supposed to. Android should not have 2 partitions, so this is not something they would even answer.
Trying to setup a script to automatically encrypt/mount/dismount the SD card using dm-crypt (the same tool used in Froyo's app2sd).
Targets as below...
A wizard to setup disk/partition encryption.
The key can be randomized by the device itself, or manually configured by user, and stored on the phone's memory (the point is that the content on the SD card will NOT be readable once removed from the device.
Automatically mount and dismount during boot and shutdowns.
Compatibility with the native USB mount feature.
It's my understanding that the encryption/decryption will be done in the background and transparent to the user. I also understand that there will be a hit on the performance and battery life.
It seems that Android uses vold, and most dm-crypt guides out there involves editing /etc/fstab which is not used on Android at all.
Pardon my ignorance, and any pointer will be appreciated!
Anybody...?
Anybody knows how Froyo's A2SD system works? There's no cryptsetup whatsoever but somehow it can use dm-crypt to store the apps on SD card?
It seems that Android's vold has parameters hardcoded and compiled into the binary.
Furthermore, it's not necessary to to use vold to mount the sdcard, good ol' mount can be used (no auto-mount through), but there's no cryptsetup to setup the partition.
I would like to do some rough experiments but needs crypsetup, or setup a cross-compile platform for compiling a static cryptsetup first.
P.S. Someone had worked on encrypting /data but it wasn't finished before he's switched to N900... (my target is a bit difference through, to encrypt the sd card which is more easily stolen... if the phone itself is stolen, it wouldn't do much good anyway cause someone can use adb to access /data, assuming the key is stored on the device not entered manually during each boot)
http://androidvoid.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/android-encryption-using-cryptsetup-and-luks/
P.P.S. The DROID PRO is said to have both device and SD card encryption as well. I suspect dm-crypt is used. Look forward to see how it's being handled...
Any pointers...?
: ).......................
Sorry, that I am not able to help you - although I would in fact appreciate if you achieve the aim somehow!
I'm really surprised this hasn't gained more attention. I sincerely hope someone discovers a way to fully encrypt SD cards.
Damian works on a kernel (still alpha) which so far already has cryptsetup.
Section galaxy s
I think this could be more easy achieved with steam recovery than cwm.
So far full encryption of blackberries is THE killer argument why android still doesnt go professional and get more attention.
Lets change that!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Push for implementating it in Android, please *star* the issues.
Issue 11211 - android - Android too insecure - Encryption of the SDcard is crucial - Project Hosting on Google Code
Issue 3748 - android - Add support for partition/block device encryption - Project Hosting on Google Code
I was able to get encrypted file system to work within a chroot'd debian environment; the key was to get the right cipher to work with the android kernel (aes-cbc-essiv:md5). The only reason I couldn't get it to work directly in android was the lack of the cryptsetup command.
Here's a guide, where a 64M file "dummy" is created filled with random junk, turned into a device, LUKS formatted, and mkfs'd. The second section mounts it, the third dismounts and frees resources.
HTH
Paul
Code:
=== create ===
dd if=/dev/urandom of=cryptvol.raw bs=1024 count=65536
mknod /dev/loop21 b 7 21
losetup /dev/loop21 /home/cryptvol.raw
cryptsetup --cipher aes-cbc-essiv:md5 --key-size 256 luksFormat /dev/loop21
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/loop21 cr_cryptvol
mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/cr_cryptvol
cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/cr_cryptvol
losetup -d /dev/loop21
=== use ===
mknod /dev/loop21 b 7 21
losetup /dev/loop21 /home/cryptvol.raw
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/loop21 cr_cryptvol
mount /dev/mapper/cr_cryptvol /data/local/cryptvol
mkdir /data/local/cryptvol
cd /data/local/cryptvol
echo "this is a file in encrypted file system" >> README
== close ==
umount /data/local/cryptvol
cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/cr_cryptvol
losetup -d /dev/loop21
@speculatrix
Are you able to use the chroot Debian rmount in Android at all?
Yes, it is possible to use Debian (or any other ARM based distribution) binaries instead of busybox. These devices have plenty of horsepower, and a fair amount of space on them. There should be enough room to get proper versions of command line apps baked in
NOTE: This is a PROOF OF CONCEPT. Do not attempt unless you are familiar with linux, chroot, and are fine with potentially screwing up your phone!
Frankly, I got tired of the limited feature set and compatibility issues that come with busybox. So, I decided to see if I could come up with something better... all it took was a free app from the market, 4 GB carved out of my SD card, and a little bit of time.
I've played a bit with chroot (mostly using the "Linux Installer" app):
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.galoula.LinuxInstall&hl=en
My SD card has a 4GB SD-EXT partition on it, formatted as EXT4, and then a FAT32 partition. I have my phone set up to never unmount the SD-EXT partition. And, since I'm using ICS, it's not using that partition for anything yet anyways.
In any case, to save a whole lot of trouble and deal with potential corruption issues, I set up the linux chroot to use a folder instead of an image. This turned out to be handy, because I can access files and play around with bind mounts much more easily than I can with an image file.
Right now I've got Debian Stable installed using chroot to my SD-EXT partition. After getting to a Debian prompt, I updated apt:
apt-get update
apt-get install build-essential
Now we have a fully working GCC environment to use. However, the environment that Linux Installer provides comes with most tools already at your disposal.
Now what? I don't want to have to chroot to use these utilities. That's a waste of my time
Here, we have two options... one is somewhat easy, and one is really easy.
These are not statically compiled applications, so we do need a few libraries. To replicate the functionality of busybox (and so much more), you really only need about 15 of them.
---------------------- THE REALLY EASY WAY ----------------------
The really easy way to do this is to bind mount the following folders from the "chroot" (in my case it's /sd-ext/linux) to the root of the android device:
/bin
/lib
/usr
/sbin
I'm writing this from memory, but I believe (off the top of my head) the proper command is:
busybox mount -o bind,rw /sd-ext/linux/bin /bin
busybox mount -o bind,rw /sd-ext/linux/lib /lib
busybox mount -o bind,rw /sd-ext/linux/usr /usr
busybox mount -o bind,rw /sd-ext/linux/sbin /sbin
Please correct me if I'm wrong (and this is assuming that your chroot environment is in /sd-ext/linux
On some devices, /bin and /sbin already exist. Deal with that however you want.
Now, all you have to do is:
EXPORT PATH=$PATH:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin
If you've done it properly, you can shut down your chroot environment, go to /bin, and run ./ping 8.8.8.8
If it doesn't work, you screwed up somewhere (or I did!).
---------------------- THE SOMEWHAT EASY WAY ----------------------
On the android side, make the following folder structure:
/bin
/lib
/sbin
/usr
/usr/bin
/usr/lib
/usr/local/bin
Also, set your path so you can actually use the programs:
EXPORT PATH=$PATH:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin
Now, let's say we want to have Debian's version of 'ping' without having to chroot. Do the following:
Pop into your chroot environment, head into the /bin folder, and run the following command:
ldd /bin/ping
This will tell you what shared libraries ping uses. In my case, it uses:
/lib/libgcc_s.so.1
/lib/libc.so.6
/lib/ld-linux.so.3
Pop back over to the android side, and run the following commands (assuming that /sd-ext/linux is your chroot environment, and adjusting as necessary for the libraries that are actually used by the program you are attempting to make work)
cp /sd-ext/linux/bin/ping /bin
cp /sd-ext/linux/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 /lib
cp /sd-ext/linux/lib/libc.so.6 /lib
cp /sd-ext/linux/lib/ld-linux.so.3 /lib
Now type:
/bin/ping
You will get either get an error message about a shared library, command not found, or (if you're lucky) the Debian version of ping.
If you're not so lucky, i'd suggest copying over /usr/bin/ldd from the debian side and using it to figure out (on the android side) which libraries you're missing.
***HUGE NOTE***: Remember that folder structure we're using? It will disappear when you reboot your phone, so back it up! I would actually recommend using bind mounts and a shell script to have a more "persistent" folder structure, but that's just me...
Like I said, there's really only about 15 shared libraries or so that are needed to give us a plethora of applications at our disposal. I'll give up a bit of my phone's system space to be able to drop to a proper bash command line and pull up nano, use the full and complete version of tar, gzip, or whatever utility I want.
As I'm still playing with this, I don't have a test package or anything to put up. This is more of a proof of concept idea (that I've already partially implemented on my phone).
Also, GCC can get you a long way Since we're compiling on-device, there is no cross-compiler necessary. Inside of the chroot, I compiled patchELF
http://nixos.org/patchelf.html
I thought that utility might come in handy. Compiles slowly (this is a phone we're compiling on), but it works great.
The next step is to see if I can bake it in...
Hello friends! I'm a year long follower of the LinuxOnAndroid project. I have always wanted to install ubuntu on my sdcard instead of using image files. I waited a long time for an instruction to crop up somewhere on the internet about how to do this, and in the meantime, learnt a lot of things. Then I decided to experiment with the idea a few days ago and also managed to get satisfying results. There was a significant performance boost compared to using a linux image.
While writing this tutorial, I have assumed that you are already quite familiar with the LOA project and that you have already managed to run a linux distro on your android device.
Please note that while this tutorial aims to be applicable for all distros released under the LOA project, I have only run Ubuntu 12.04 small, Ubuntu 13.10 small and Debian small images. I have never had any experience with the other distros. But I'm pretty confident that the instructions can be applied to other distros without any problem. If you encounter any problem while applying the instructions for your device and distro, I'm willing to help you as much as I can.
Warning: I've never bricked my android devices while rooting, modding or hacking them and I hope you will be as lucky. But please remember that I will not be held responsible for any damage or losses suffered by you or your devices while following the instructions given in this tutorial. You will do so at your own risk.
Let's begin.
First of all, Things You'll Need:
Root access on your android device
Busybox
An sdcard of optimum storage capacity. You decide what's optimum for your case. I have a 16GB card with a 4GB partition for ubuntu small image.
Init.d script support for auto-mounting second sdcard partition on boot. You can skip this if you want to mount the second partition only when booting up linux.
Attached zip containing bootscript.sh and 03ubuntu files.
Step 1: Partitioning the sdcard
WARNING: This will erase all data on your sdcard!
Use MiniTool Partition Wizard for windows, gParted for linux or aParted for Android to create the two partitions on your sdcard. I reccomend that you do the partitioning on your PC. Note that you cannot partition your sdcard by connecting your device to your PC my USB. You need to use a card reader. If you have a USB modem with built in card reader, you can use that too.
The first partition will be used by your android device for mass storage. Make it FAT32 or exFAT or vFAT. Note that if you make the first partition exFAT, custom recoveries like CWM will not mount it. This can cause problems, for example, when you are trying to restore a nandroid backup from your sdcard.
As for the format for the second partition (let's call it the linux partition), it depends on what linux filesystems your device supports. You can't use (ex/v)FAT(32). You can only use linux filesystem for installing a linux OS.
If you are using aParted to partition the sdcard, not every format will work. My tablet supports mkfs.ext2 and make_ext4fs but
Code:
mke2fs -t ext3/4
doesn't work. So I used aParted to format the second partition as ext2 and ran
Code:
make_ext4fs /dev/block/mmcblk0p2
in terminal emulator. So my linux partition is ext4. You need to unmount your sdcard to use aParted.
NOTE: Before creating your second partition, make sure your device is able to mount the format that you want to use. Run the
Code:
cat /proc/filesystems
or
mount
command in terminal emulator to check for supported filesystems.
STEP 2: Mounting the sdcard partitions
WARNING: If you are using the Link2SD app or any other app2sd app, you might be prompted to create mount scripts for the second partition. DO NOT CREATE THE MOUNT SCRIPTS. Our linux partition is not meant for app2sd.
In this tutorial, we will be mounting the linux partition automatically on startup. For this, you'll need init.d script support on your device. You can use Uni-Init to check/enable init.d easily. If your device does not support init.d and you've failed to enabled it, you could go for more advanced methods like unpacking your boot image and editing init.rc to mount the linux partition. You could also try the Script Manager app. You can also choose to mount the linux partition only when you boot up linux. Let me know if you'd like instructions for this.
Assuming that you already have init.d support, let us proceed.
Download the attached 03ubuntu script and using a root explorer copy it to /system/etc/init.d/here. I use ES File Explorer. Set file permissions to rwx-rwx-rwx or 777(? I'm not very familiar with numerical permissions). rwx-r-xr-x might also work. You can also use terminal to copy, set file permissions, etc. It's up to you.
EDIT: WARNING! Depending on your device, your MicroSD card might me mmcblk1. You can check using the mount command or from the aParted app. It is mmcblk1 on one of my friends' phone. If this is the case you must edit the 03ubuntu script to replace mmcblk0p2 by mmcblk1p2
The 03ubuntu script mounts the linux partition as ext4 at /mnt/ubuntu. The mount options in the script are meant for the maximum performance but may reduce reliability. I haven't had any problems yet. If your linux partition is not ext4, edit the script accordingly. Some of the mount options used in the script are meant for ext4 filesystems only. Google "best/optimum ext(whatever your linux partition is) mount options" to learn more. My linux partition is mounted with noatime option but becomes relatime sometimes after shutting down linux. Somebody please tell me why this happens.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
After placing the script in the init.d directory, reboot your phone.
After rebooting, open the /mnt folder. If you see a folder named ubuntu, congratulations, the init.d script worked. But is the linux partition mounted? You can check by opening the /mnt/ubuntu folder. If you see a lost+found or LOST.DIR folder, the partition is very likely to be mounted. Confirm it by running
Code:
mount
in the terminal. Look for the line
Code:
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/ubuntu ext4 rw,noatime,user_xattr,barrier=0,data=writeback 0 0
If you see that line, we're ready to move to the next step.
STEP 3: Copying the files from linux image to linux partition
Now, we install your linux distro on the sdcard. Place the image (a fresh one or the one that you've been using) in your sdcard and run the following commands. Note: You might need to make changes to the commands according to your image location and format.
Code:
su
mkdir /data/local/mnt
mknod /dev/block/loop255 b 7 255
losetup /dev/block/loop255 /mnt/sdcard/ubuntu.img
mount -t ext2 /dev/block/loop255 /data/local/mnt
cp -dpR /data/local/mnt/* /mnt/ubuntu
## wait till copy is complete ##
umount /data/local/mnt
exit
So that was it. You have your favorite linux distro installed on your sdcard now.
But before you go ahead and press that BOOT LINUX button, we still have some things left to do to make it possible to boot from sdcard.
STEP 4: Editing the bootscript.sh and init.sh files
Actually, I did the bootscript editing part for you. I made all (and only) the changes that are required to boot from the sdcard. The modified bootscript is based on the latest (v8) version. Things like sdcard and external sdcard mounts and binds are unchanged. I added comments in the script with my name to mark places where I made the changes. You can look through it if you like.
So now copy the modified bootscript.sh file inside /data/data/com.zpwebsites.linuxonandroid/files/here and set file permissions to rw-------.
After that, comes init.sh. Although the bootscript is common for all distros, it may not be the case for init.sh. You'll find it in /mnt/ubuntu/root/init.sh.
Copy it to your sdcard and keep a copy somewhere safe. Open the script in a text editor (I use Jota+ text editor) and find the following lines and remove them.
Code:
if [ $# -ne 0 ]; then
cfgfile=/root/cfg/$1.config
if [ -f $cfgfile ]; then
echo "Using config file $cfgfile"
else
echo "Config file not found, using defaults!($cfgfile)"
fi
fi
The original permissions for the init.sh file are rwx-rwx-rx
After that, place the modified init.sh file back inside /mnt/ubuntu/root/here and don't forget to set correct file permissions.
STEP 5: Final steps and booting linux
Everything is in place and now you can boot up your linux, or can you? Nope. The Complete Linux Installer app won't let you boot if it does not find an image file.
For this, create an empty file inside /mnt/ubuntu/here and name it ubuntu.img.
In the app, enter the location of linux image as /mnt/ubuntu/ubuntu.img and tap on the awesome boot button.
Voila! You've now successfully installed linux to your sdcard and managed to boot it up too! Well done, my son.
Aaaand...Just a reminder: Don't Update Script if you want to continue booting from thee linux partition.
If you have been successful in achieving the goal of this tut, please leave a feedback with your device name and any modifications that you had to make, if any, to the whole process. That will be of great help to others.
EDIT: RISK OF DOUBLE BOOTING!
In case of booting from linux image, when you (accidentally) tap on the boot widget or the boot button while linux is already running, the app would display a confirmation dialog to chroot into the mounted image. This may not happen when you are booting from the second sdcard partition.
To prevent errors when you accidentally tap on the boot widget/button, add the following code into the bootscript right after the error_exit() function at the beginning of the script.
Code:
echo "Boot up Linux? Make sure it is safe to boot before proceeding!"
read answer
if [ $answer != muchfunny ]; then
error_exit "Aborted"
fi
Replace "muchfunny" with y or yes or any word of your choice.
When you try to boot, you'll have to enter this word to proceed. If you type in the wrong word, it won't boot. This way, you will have a chance to prevent errors when you accidentally tap on the boot widget while linux is already running.
Any user of LOA, not just those who are booting from linux partition, can benefit from this. You could replace "muchfunny" with a secret code to prevent anyone from messing with your linux installation. So it's like implementing password protection.
I'm using this on my tablet.
hello david,
Looks nice and clear, haven't had the chance to try yet but will post my results when i do.
Just wanted to say big thanks for the write up.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
joesnose said:
Looks nice and clear, haven't had the chance to try yet but will post my results when i do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you do a factory reset in CWM (probably also in other recoveries), the second sdcard partition is wiped.
So it's best to store the backups in the internal sd and remove the sdcard before performing a reset.
If you don't already know, and if you have not run "apt-get clean", you can back up any packages that you downloaded on ubuntu (if you're using it) by keeping a copy of the contents of the archives folder in /var/cache/apt/. In case your linux installation gets corrupted or the partition gets wiped, you can restore the backed-up packages later. So you won't have to download them again.
I have used this thread to install Archlinux using LinuxonAndroid on a Samsung Epic 4G's SD card. I have some issues to sort out with using VNC to access the Archlinux installation but the commandline environment on the Epic 4G works fine.
If you're trying to use this with Ubuntu, there are several issues. First, the image hosted by the LoA project for Ubuntu 13.10 doesn't work for this application: you'll get errors when you try to mount the image for installation to the SD partition. Second, you might try the 13.04 image: it will mount and install but the repositories are all gone because 13.04 is no longer supported.
If you're trying to install this in order to use a specific program (in my case, I'm wanting to use this device as a Prosody server), it's probably best to see which available distro hosted by LoA has up-to-date packages for that program and use that to guide your decision. Based on this logic, I chose Archlinux.
If you aren't using Ubuntu, the bootscript.sh file included with this post becomes problematic as it is littered with Ubuntu-specific calls. It isn't overly difficult to edit: open it in Notepad+ (or similar) and read through it, changing $mnt and $ubuntu to whatever you've named your partition mount folder as. In my case, my mount folder is /archlinux/ and the fake image file (used to spoof the LoA app as detailed in OP's post) is /archlinux/archlinux.img, so this meant simply replacing $mnt and $ubuntu with $archlinux. There are a few instances of $ubuntu that I didn't mess with--in the comments, David has mentioned that they refer to the "usermounts feature" and that he left these alone because he didn't understand it. Are these the usermounts that are defined in the LoA app? I don't know and I haven't tried defining a mount yet (such as partition 1 on the SD card). In short, bootscript.sh will need to be edited to account for a non-Ubuntu installation.
(If you're using Archlinux, LoA hosts a modified bootscript.sh that contains a Archlinux-specific change to mounting /dev/pts, whatever that is. I used this as a base script to work with, then added and deleted the areas that David has edited in his bootscript.sh.)
Accounting for the differences, Archlinux works at the terminal on the device. However, if you try to connect to the automatically configured VNC server, things start to get weird for a Linux noob (which I am). For starters, there isn't a desktop environment defined so when you first connect, you're gonna see a blank gray screen and a cursor. Right-clicking brings up a menu. Almost none of the apps on the menu work, because they aren't installed. I think what you're looking at is the openbox window environment. What you need is a terminal to install something that works better but here's the catch: the terminal isn't installed/working, either (in VNC, not at the device). What I did here might have been a mistake compounding an error: I used the terminal on the device (which is logged in as root) to install a desktop environment using Archlinux's package manager, pacman. Then, I edited the (hidden by default) /home/$yourinstallhere/.vnc/xstartup.sh to boot the installed desktop environment; add a line with the command appropriate to your chosen DE: e.g. gnome-session; startxfce4; startlxde. You can comment out most anything else as those lines are loading the openbox environment and a terminal session. Alternatively, leave those in place as a backup environment and place your DE load command after those, so if your DE doesn't load, you still have the nearly useless gray screen to look at.
Okay, so that got a DE going (after the xstartup script was executed again and possibly the Linux install rebooted). Now what? Well, as mentioned before, terminal still doesn't work. It will open but there isn't a prompt and no keyboard input is shown. Without terminal, Linux is crippled, DE or no DE. This is where I am currently. I can still manage the Archlinux installation from the device's terminal as root but access from VNC is effectively unusable. I don't know why: is it because the DE packages (including a terminal emulator) were installed by root and therefore the VNC user doesn't have the permissions to access them?
In any event, I would like to thank David for posting this thread. The LoA project has little to no documentation or discussion so this has been very helpful to me. Please let me know if you have any ideas regarding VNC access of the installation.
Edit: Additional installation-specific information:
My Epic 4G is running the Cyanogenmod 10.1 stable release. The init.d mount script for the second partition will not automatically run at boot, despite CM supporting init.d and having installed the Universal init.d app. However, the script can be manually executed from within the Universal app and that will mount the partition. I tried adding a 50-second sleep to the script to see if it was just bogging down but that had no effect so I gave that idea up. The test script that the Universal app uses to test if the device has init.d support also doesn't work, which indicates that the Epic 4G CM port may be at fault here.
Using Archlinux's systemctl to manage services from the root terminal on the device is not working as expected. For instance, if I try to restart the vncserver service (systemctl restart vncserver) the terminal returns, "Running in chroot, ignoring request."
Edit #2:
Installed xterm from the device terminal and now I can access xterm from VNC /facepalm (why does the xstartup script call something that isn't installed by default?).
When my device's screen powers off, the VNC session drops because the server apparently kills itself. I have Android set to keep wifi on during sleep. How do I keep VNC active while the device's screen is off?
I seem to have succeeded with having my Epic 4G run an XMPP server (Prosody) within Archlinux on Android. I don't want to take this thread too far off-topic but there were some aspects to my project that would be useful to know for someone installing LoA.
http://sourceforge.net/p/linuxonand...do-users-and-groups-work-under-linuxonandroid
https://android.googlesource.com/pl...r/include/private/android_filesystem_config.h
This is pretty key knowledge to know if you're going to install anything that's going to need to gain control over the Android hardware (e.g., opening sockets). Root at the terminal is probably in all of these groups but the default user (ubuntu or whatever you named your installation) might not be; if your software installs its own user, it definitely won't have these group memberships so you'll have to add them. In my case, Prosody creates its own user and group and refuses to run as root, so I had to give the Prosody user membership in the 3003 group so it could open listening ports (I also had to modify all of the files that should have belonged to Prosody with chown because root took ownership by default). I figured this was something to keep in mind, if you're a fellow Linux noob.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1585009&page=24
Speaking of the "everything as root" problem, I came across this that purports to make the default ubuntu user more typical of what you'd encounter in a Linux distro. I haven't tried it yet but I may need to in the future, if I expand the services offered by my Epic 4G. I still haven't figured out why the VNC server drops when the screen is turned off, though; I probably need to switch servers. The default is xVNC and I have been using Win7 x64 TightVNC Viewer to access it.
Hello there! Thanks for your posts! After encountering problems while trying to get LAMP to run on Ubuntu 12.04 and 13.10, I had given up LoA, until today. I've been using Linux Deploy instead for the past few months. Everything works fine on it. Have you tried it?
Anyway, I've decided to install LoA Debian as image from now. I think dedicating a 4 GB partition to a Linux installation is costly when you have just 14.7 GB of available storage.
Hello David,
I gave up on Linux on Android because I couldn't get it to stay connected to wifi with the screen off. I went back to using an XMPP server on my OpenWRT router instead.
Thank you for the suggestion regarding Linux Deploy. If I have some time, I will try it.
Does your LAMP stack manage to stay constantly connected with the screen off?
hammmy said:
Hello David,
I gave up on Linux on Android because I couldn't get it to stay connected to wifi with the screen off. I went back to using an XMPP server on my OpenWRT router instead.
Thank you for the suggestion regarding Linux Deploy. If I have some time, I will try it.
Does your LAMP stack manage to stay constantly connected with the screen off?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Linux Deploy has options to keep screen on and to keep wifi on while the app is running. I'm not sure if this will help with accessing LAMP when the screen is off. BTW, I found other problems with LoA Debian. So I'm back to Linux Deploy Debian. I'll test LAMP with screen off and let you know how it goes.
Instead of running the web servers through a linux installation, I suggest you try the various web server apps available for Android, if you haven't already, that is. I use Palapa Web Server which is free and has a nice interface.
Unfortunately I was unable to get Apache to work. Anyways, like I said, the Android web server apps might best serve your needs.
davidheis said:
Instead of running the web servers through a linux installation, I suggest you try the various web server apps available for Android, if you haven't already, that is. I use Palapa Web Server which is free and has a nice interface.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a good suggestion but unfortunately the XMPP server apps that I've tried didn't work out. I don't recall exactly why as it's been awhile since I tested them. They are bare-bones and lack configuration options.
hammmy said:
This is a good suggestion but unfortunately the XMPP server apps that I've tried didn't work out. I don't recall exactly why as it's been awhile since I tested them. They are bare-bones and lack configuration options.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, okay. I highly recommend Linux Deploy as the distros are downloaded directly from the official sources. Installing to a second partition is very easy too. And it also allows running of custom scripts during startup of your distro. So if you manage to have XMPP working, you won't have to open a terminal to start the service (which is necessary for apache - have to run "service apache2 start").
Let me know if you have any success with Linux Deploy. I may be working with XMPP in the near future, so having a 'take anywhere' server might prove very useful.
Hello David can you make a brief guide on how to install Kali on sdcards second partition. I'm stuck I don't know how to install the linux.IMG on the ext2 partition, I partitioned my SD card using minitool the problem is when I hit install on Linux deploy the IMG will be installed on the SD card but on the fat32 partition not the ext2, which is the path to ext2 ? I can't find it using file explorer maybe you can help me
EDIT: i need to mount the new ext2 partition right? which is the easiest way to do it?
hi... can you provide me a method to access the filesystem (eg. var, etc....) because in the old ubuntu version is no longer supported. i got 404 not found when try to get update(apt-get update). only one solution is modify etc/resource.list file....but ubuntu cant access the filesystem via termimal
Cifs mount on start? I've added it to fstab and mount -a works fine, but it seems that fstab is not being run on start-up? I tried adding the same line I used in fstab to the custom mount points but it does not like it "skip"' it's probably simple syntax, the mount cmd seems to change dep. on where you run it, anyone know the right way to get a cifs mount on start in ld? thanks..
this is what works in fstab/mount -a
//192.168.1.65/media/Cifs /Public/Video cifs username=user,password=pw,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,noperm 0 0
Well hello everyone.
I am going to try this now cause Linux deploy failed for me and it also messed up my external sd card (cause my xperia e3 doesn't have that Much internal).
Then i tried complete linux installer normal installation method but that also didn't worked so now i am going to try this.
I know this thread is very old but that's my only chance left for installing Ubuntu in phone
If anyone can provide any advice or any guidance i will be grateful to him
Thanks In Advance
This works fine on my phone. If it doesn't work on yours, standard disclaimer applies about bricking, phone exploding, etc... that's all on you.
The problem has been that regardless of patches and regardless of methods to make the stock 8.1 data partition readable from TWRP, my phone won't do it. So as follows is how I've backup up and restored as an alternative. I don't know if this works well on Windows (Probably not) or MacOS (More likely it will), so its only tested on Linux.
Install adb on the computer
On the running phone, enable usb debugging.
Connect to the phone, allow the computer to access it.
Get a shell
Code:
adb shell
Enter as follows to find the block device where data is mounted
Code:
mount | grep /data | grep block
My output was this
Code:
/dev/block/mmcblk0p24 on /data type ext4 (rw,seclabel,nosuid,nodev,noatime,discard,journal_checksum,journal_async_commit,noauto_da_alloc,errors=panic,data=ordered
The first part, "/dev/block/mmcblk0p24" is what I was interested in. You can see it's mounted at /data
You're in fact looking for this specifically at the beginning "/dev/block/mmcblk0p24 on /data"
If you're confused or you have multiple mount-points or what not, or you don't understand, Stop Now, you're about to screw things up.
Copy the first part of what you have here, in my case "/dev/block/mmcblk0p24" (don't use quotes though)
Reboot into TWRP.
Make sure /data is not mounted in the TWRP menu. If it is, then no need to do this as you can back it up directly from TWRP anyway, and you don't nee this.
Backup will make an image of the entire partition, so it will be big. As follows to backup, change the /dev/block/xxxxxxx to what yours is, if it is differant. Replace xxxxxxx with what your output was, mine was mmcblk0p24 (this needs to be input correctly for backup and restore, this here is where you can screw your phone up)
Code:
adb shell 'dd if=/dev/block/xxxxxxx' > DataBackupName.img
(Above, you DO use the single quotes)
DataBackupName.img can be named whatever you want to call it.
This takes a long time, my phone writes 12 gigs or so.
The above command should exit telling you how much data was written. You don't want to have an incomplete backup because the usb cable wasn't great or the process spit the dummy for some reason.
To restore, cross your fingers (works fine on my PC)
Also from TWRP and also making sure data is not mounted:
Code:
adb push DataBackupName.img /dev/block/xxxxxxx
You need to have the correct text to replace the xxxxxx. Screwing this up is very high risk of bricking your phone.
Okay all that said, my assumption is that the initial dump won't work on Windows as it needs to direct the output to a file and I have a hunch that the syntax above for directing the output might be done differently. If someone knows how to do the backup on Windows, or can clarify if it works or not as is (after testing) I imagine that would be helpful for Windows users. Feedback in general is good for others, solutions to problems are great.
Additionally, when I was looking for this solution, the answers were a bit old and had to be mildly adapted, but there was a complaint back then that adb couldn't handle the restore. That hasn't been the case for me. A more recent adb binary might fix this if you happen to have this sort of problem.
A benefit of this method, is that if your system can mount an ext4 volume, you can also mount the image, so if you only want one file from a previous backup, or you want to remove a file from the image, or add one, that's all possible... with Linux (Linux geeks know who they are). Note that the image also contains the contents of what gets mounted at /storage/emulated/0
You can compress the image file when its done to reduce the size.