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How to make a ROM

Hey XDA
This might be a dumb question, but i dont know where else to ask
I would like to try and make my own ROM for my magic, but i have no idea about where to start, so i was wondering if someone knew of a guide, or some other form of "getting startet" thingy?
And what about apps, how do you make them?
Does it require a Linux machine, or can it be done in windows?
Per

I'm interested in this as well , guys nobody wants to share with us your knowledge??

I too would like to know.

bump
I would like to know also. A quick guide or write-up would be supper nice.

Not to burst anyone's bubble but I seriously doubt a quick write-up would explain the steps on to creating your own ROM or how to write apps. If you really want to learn, I would suggest you take some programing classes at your local community college.

cptandroid said:
Not to burst anyone's bubble but I seriously doubt a quick write-up would explain the steps on to creating your own ROM or how to write apps. If you really want to learn, I would suggest you take some programing classes at your local community college.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A quick write up doesn't explain it, but equally going to college isn't applicable to rom cooking either.
All the information you need is on the Internet, have a look in this link where the basics are explained, and use google to fill in the blanks ...
http://www.johandekoning.nl/index.php/2009/06/07/building-android-15-build-environment/
The documentation in ASOP recommends Ubuntu for your dev machine (http://source.android.com/download) so familiarity with Linux is essential, also knowing how to use git will save you some time.
Also use the resources in the Dream section in this site. It's been around much longer than the Magic and most dev topics are already covered in a lot more detail than in Sapphire rom development. Above all I think you need a lot of time on your hands and understanding wifes/girlfriends etc as a lot of reading is necessary!

You basically need a Linux distro to be able to do the most modding. Here are the port tools:
http://www.4shared.com/file/122118622/fd190fe1/PortTools.html
Here's a nice quide that you can use as reference:
1. Download the original Nandroid backup of the Rogers-Wiped from Skittleguy (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=4029461&postcount=4).
2. Unzip Rogers-Wiped.zip and move boot.img to a directory called "Org".
3. Download nk02ion_r4_LITE-signed.zip and upzip it to a directory called "nk02".
4. Move boot.img out of the nk02ion_r4_LITE-signed directory into a directory called "temp".
5. Open your Terminal window and navigate to your "temp" directory.
6. Unpack the boot image inside the "temp" directory :
Execute : $unpack-H.pl boot.img
This should give you 2 new files : boot.img-kernel and boot-img-ramdisk.gz
7. Remove boot.img and boot.img-kernel from the "temp" directory by doing :
Execute : $rm boot.img
Execute : $rm boot.img-kernel
You should now have only one file called boot.img-ramdisk.gz in your temp directory.
8. Navigate to the "org" directory.
9. Unpack the boot image inside the "org" folder :
Execute : $unpack-H.pl boot.img
This should give you 2 new files : boot.img-kernel and boot-img-ramdisk.gz
10. Move the boot.img-kernel file from the "org" directory to the "temp" directory.
Execute : $mv boot.img-kernel ../temp/
11. Remove the "org" directory
12. Navigate to the "temp" direcory
You should now have 2 files inside the "temp" directory, boot.img-kernel and boot.img-ramdisk.gz
13. Create a directory called boot.img-ramdisk inside the "temp" directory :
Execute : $mkdir boot.img-ramdisk
14. Move inside the newly created boot.img-ramdisk directory :
Execute : $cd boot.img-ramdisk
14. Unzip the boot.img-ramdisk.gz file :
Execute : $gunzip -c ../boot.img-ramdisk.gz | cpio -i
15. Check that the ramdisk is unpacked :
Execute : $ls -l
You should now see a bunch of files
16. Remove the boot.img-ramdisk.gz file inside the boot.img-ramdisk directory :
Execute : $rm boot.img-ramdisk.gz
17. Navigate to the temp folder and also delete the boot.img-ramdisk.gz file :
Execute : $rm boot.img-ramdisk.gz
You should now have 1 file called boot.img-kernel and 1 directory called boot.img-ramdisk inside the "temp" folder
18. Repack the kernel and ramdisk to a boot.img file :
Execute : $repack-H.pl boot.img-kernel boot.img-ramdisk boot.img
You should now have a new boot.img inside the "temp" directory.
19. Move the boot.img file to the nk02 directory :
Execute : $mv boot.img ../nk02/
20. Remove the "temp" folder.
21. Navigate to the nk02 folder and check that you have 1 boot.img file and 2 directories (META-INF and system)
22. Zip the boot.img and the 2 directories into an nk02.zip file
Execute : $zip -r nk02.zip *
23. Sign the nk02.zip file :
Execute : $java -jar signapk.jar testkey.x509.pem testkey.pk8 nk02.zip update.zip
24. Push update.zip to your SDcard :
Execute : adb push update.zip /sdcard/update.zip
25. Boot the device in fastboot mode.
27. $fastboot boot recovery-RAv1.0H.img
28. Select "Wipe data/factory reset"
29. Select "Apply sdcard:update.zip"
30. Select "Reboot system now"
31. Enjoy nk02ion_r4_LITE on your HTC branded Magic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The above guide shows you how to modify the boot.img and how to sign the updates. That's a good start...

ok this is a dumb question i imagine but how to i sign a zip file? i have already made my rom but it wont work because it says its not signed

thejesster said:
ok this is a dumb question i imagine but how to i sign a zip file? i have already made my rom but it wont work because it says its not signed
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is the thread where signing is explained.
I am no expert, but I managed to use this to modify other ROM's (Adding wallpaper, ringtones and removing apps etc.)
Signing made easy thread

[DEV-GUIDE] Flytouch 3 Superpad 2 - Custom ROM building tutorial

Dear All,
I have been building some custom Android ROMS for the past few years, and my latest toy is a Flytouch 3 I wanted to share some of my findings and methods here, perhaps other newbies like me will find it useful.
1. FT3 ROM contents:
FT3 ROMs will be in RAR or ZIP format and have 2 or 3 files in them as explained below. Just unzip or unrar the package to use them:
firmware2 - flash tool which burns the firmware ( I guess...lol)
bootloader-discovery - 7zip file which contains the bootloader
IMPORTANT! Do not flash a wrong bootloader to your device or it will be bricked! Actually this is the only way you can brick the thing, it's pretty sturdy in that sense. If you are not sure, do not copy bootloader-recovery to your sdcard when flashing, it will boot with your existing bootloader anyway.
firmware-discovery - 7zip file which contains the firmware and it's the main file you want to edit.
2. firmware-discovery contents:
This is the easy part! Modifying this file will let you modify system and data partitions. You can also use different ramdisks and kernels compatible with your device. It's a 7zip file and you can unpack and repack easily with the 7-zip file manager (http://www.7-zip.org/).
I use 7-zip on Windows although I use Ubuntu Linux as my main OS. There is something wrong with my 7-zip installation most probably, but I was too lazy to check it If you are on Windows anyway, you are good, just download and use 7-zip from the URL above. I advise that you do all your firmware-discovery editing within 7-zip file manager. That way, you won't have to worry about re-packing with the correct 7-zip settings. At least, that's how I do it and had no problems.
firmware-discovery will have these files in the 7zip package:
uImage - kernel
Very important Your kernel will make the difference between having and not having certain functionality, even if your hardware supports it.
uImage_recovery - recovery file - I beleive this is what runs when you push menu+power.
ramdisk.img - ramdisk
This is one of the interesting files you might want to play with. Ramdisk is a simple file system with some crucial files, mainly init.rc that lets you control the boot process. You can also stick a initlogo.rle image here to display a splash image in initial boot. More details below at title 4.
data.tar - /data partition - tar archive
All user data is stored here, including apps and user definable settings. This is what gets wiped when you do a recovery by pushing menu+power.
system.tar - /system partition - tar archive
System data, drivers and apps, including Android OS itself (except kernel). Certainly the most interesting part for the average modder
3. Editing system.tar and data.tar:
This might be the bulk of your modding, and most probably what will be most visible to the end user.
I very strongly suggest that you use a Linux system to edit these files. If you use Windows, file permissions will not be saved! If Windows is your main OS, simply install a VM host such as VirtualBox and install your fav Linux distro inside it. Most of them will have an Archive Manager with a GUI and will certainly support TAR. Even without a GUI, you can use "tar" and "untar" commands from a terminal to unpack and repack these files. When you are on Linux, TAR files will preserve file ownership and file permissions. This can be very crucial in your modding.
For modders who are new to Linux, I can recommend Ubuntu. It's very user friendly and easy to use in my opinion.
When you are done editing system.tar and data.tar copy them to your Windows box and drop and them to firmware-recovery file within 7-zip file manager.
4. Unpack, Edit and Repack ramdisk.img:
Now we are on to more serious stuff ramdisk.img consists of a 64 byte U-Boot header, followed by a gzip compressed ramdisk cpio image. So we need to strip the first 64 bytes, and use gunzip to extract it to a folder. After making the changes in the folder, we need apply cpio+gzip compression to the folder and add the 64 byte u-boot header again. You will need to use Linux and install the mkimage tool for these operations.
Here's the command to install mkimage tool in Ubuntu:
Code:
sudo apt-get install uboot-mkimage
It sounds complicated, but no worries, I have some shell scripts that can do all that for you! Thanks to leeh33 from Techknow for the scripts below:
unpack_ramdisk.sh
Code:
mkdir ramdisk
cd ramdisk
dd if=../ramdisk.img bs=64 skip=1 of=ramdisk.gz
gzip -dc ramdisk.gz | cpio -idmv
rm ramdisk.gz
repack_ramdisk.sh
Code:
cd ramdisk
find . | cpio -o -H newc -C 512 | gzip -n > ../ramdisk.cpio.gz
cd ..
mkimage -A ARM -O Linux -T ramdisk -C none -a 0x41000000 -e 0x41000000 -n hRamdisk -d ramdisk.cpio.gz ramdisk.img
rm ramdisk.cpio.gz
Create the scripts above using a text editor or download the attachment to this post and put the scripts together with your ramdisk.img file in a new folder. Executing unpack_ramdisk.sh will create a folder named ramdisk and extract the ramdisk contents here. You can edit e.g. init.rc in this folder, or add a static bootlogo. To add a custom bootlogo create a initlogo.rle image file by following this guide: http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/android-tablet-hacking/438-how-setup-static-bootlogo-before-animated-boot-animation.html Then place the resulting initlogo.rle file directly in the ramdisk directory.
After you are done editing the ramdisk folder, simply run repack_ramdisk.sh and your new ramdisk.img will be created, replacing the old one. Copy the ramdisk.img file to your Windows box again and drop it to firmware-recovery file within 7-zip file manager.
That's it, you have a custom ROM now! Please feel free to ask questions or correct me if you think I have any errors in the info above.
Happy Modding!!!
Tolga

Big problem about my device...
Thank you for this useful post!
I have seen a good knowledge about these devices(flytouch 3) and decided to post my question here:
I have a big problem! I used IUW Burning tool to flash my device. my device is:
SuperPad III (As box says)
Model: ANDR P1001
I decided to try tim's custom rom. It doesn't work. After restarting the device, screen become black (There was no connection
with screen, it was not turned on). The device had vibration when I pressed power button. It continued vibrating periodically(like it was restarting).
After that I flashed my device using IUW with most likely firmware, but during the process I FORGOT TO CHOOSE userdata.img FILE!
Now the device can't even communicate with pc.
OTG method is not working. The device no more vibrates at start up! At motherboard led is lighting when pressing power button.So IS MY DEVICE DEAD? Or is there any solution in this situation(Alternative communication, or whatever...)

[Tutorial] NOOB-Friendly Instructions on Packing and Repacking system.new.dat file

I am a Windows user, and I was having quite the trouble unpacking and repacking system.new.dat files. I tried all sorts of Windows Chinese tools for the job, but no matter what I did, when I put the system.new.dat file and system.transfer.list file back into the flashable zip (even if I made no changes to the system.new.dat file... just unpacked and repacked), I would get an error flashing the file.
I finally got around this by installing Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus on VirtualBox. You can find a lot of tutorials online about how to do that. I am basing my instructions off of xpirt's tutorial on unpacking and repacking with the tools he provides. But it took me about 2 days to figure it out because I kept running into problems since some of the instructions made assumptions that the user knows how to use Linux. I am very new to Linux. I am not completely sure how to do *everything* from the command line, so if someone wants to add to my instructions to make it easier, please do so. But these are the things I did to figure it out.
So here are the noob-friendly Linux Ubuntu instructions on how to unpack and repack:
Section 1: Getting everything Ready
1. Download your flashable .zip rom. In my case, I downloaded cm-12.1-20150619-UNOFFICIAL-afyonltetmo.zip to my Ubuntu Desktop. You can download it to your Home Directory as well. Doesn't matter.
2. Download sdat2img. I downloaded mine to my Home Directory.
3. Download img2sdat. I also downloaded this to my Home Directory.
4. Extract all 3 zips, by right clicking on them and choosing 'Extract Here.' It will extract them into their own directories. The main directories that you need to pay attention to are /sdat2img-master/ and /img2sdat-master/
5. Download ext4fs either right into the sdat2img-master folder, or anywhere you want and then drag and drop it into the sdat2img-master folder.
6. Open Terminal, and install Python 2.7, if it's not already installed. Put
Code:
sudo apt-get install python-2.7 python-pip
Section 2: Beginning the Unpacking Process
*Note, you can copy and paste the codes; however, you can't use keyboard shortcuts in terminal. You have to right click and choose your option.
*Another note: Where you see "user" in the terminal commands, substitute it with your Linux username.
1. In your extracted folder from your flashable zip, right click on system.new.dat and system.transfer.list and choose 'cut.' Then paste them in the sdat2img-master folder.
2. Back in Terminal put
Code:
cd sdat2img-master
. That will get you into the right directory.
3. Now put
Code:
./sdat2img.py system.transfer.list system.new.dat system.img
. That will create your raw ext4 .img file.
4. You want to create an output directory for all the files that are in system.img. Put
Code:
mkdir output
5. Now you can mount system.img, and it will mount it into that output folder. Put
Code:
sudo mount -t ext4 -o loop system.img output/
6. You might have the problem that you don't have ownership of all the files (they have little "locks" on them). To gain ownership, put
Code:
sudo chown -R user:user /home/user/sdat2img-master/output
. If you still can't get read and write access, just try rebooting your Ubuntu virtual computer. That was the only thing that finally worked for me. You can start modifying stuff as you wish.
Section 3: Compress files back to a raw ext4 image
1. You are now going to need your file_contexts file from your original extract rom zip. COPY (not cut) and paste it into the sdat2img-master folder.
2. You are also going to need your 'make_ext4fs' file. Make sure it is in the sdat2img-master folder. You might have trouble with permissions, so just in case, put
Code:
chmod 777 /home/user/sdat2img-master/make_ext4fs
into terminal.
3. In Files (Ubuntu's "File Manager"), in the sdat2img-master folder, right click on your system.img file and go to 'Properties'. Notice the information in "Size." Ignore the GB, but look at the bytes. Mine is 2,411,724,800. Copy that number, but remove the commas. So mine is 2411724800.
4. Next is the actual compressing part. Put
Code:
./make_ext4fs -T 0 -S file_contexts -l 2411724800 -a system system_new.img output/
into terminal, but substitute '2411724800' with whatever size you got from the Properties in system.img. You will now how a new file called system_new.img.
Section 4: Converting ext4 (raw image) to img (sparse image)
1. Now you will need to install img2simg. In Terminal, put
Code:
sudo apt-get install android-tools-fsutils
2. Now you can put
Code:
img2simg system_new.img system_new_sparse.img
You will now have a file called system_new_sparse.img that is ready to be packed in a new dat file.
Section 5: Converting img (sparse image) to dat (sparse data)
1. Cut and paste your system_new_sparse.img into img2sdat-master folder that you made earlier.
2. Now you need to navigate to that folder in terminal. Put
Code:
cd /home/user/img2sdat-master
3. Now you can put
Code:
./img2sdat.py system_new_sparse.img
to create your new dat file. It will first ask you which Android version it's for. Enter the number corresponding and hit enter.
4. You're now pretty much done. As you'll see, it created 3 files: system.new.dat, system.patch.dat, and system.transfer.list. Just paste these files into your folder where your flashable zip files are, replacing any original ones in there. Make sure you also have your file_contexts file in there as well. Highlight all the files in there, right click, and zip them up. Then name your flashable zip whatever you want and try flashing!

How to set zram swappiness for budget Android device

Today I'm gonna write on how to set zram swappiness for budget Android device which have zram built in it. This method does not requires rooting but involves boot.img editing and requires flashing.
What you need is:
1. Boot.img file extracted from the ROM file package or just dumped from your rooted device.
2. ADB tools installed.
3. Bootimg.exe tool (Download from the attachment here)
4. Notepad++
5. Patience
Here's how to do it:
1. Create one empty folder and place both boot.img and bootimg.exe tool in one place and then, Ctrl+right click to open CMD/PowerShell in the folder. If you're using PowerShell, run the command cmd after launching.
2. Run the command bootimg.exe --unpack-bootimg boot.img to extract the boot.img file.
3. Go to initrd folder and open up init.rc or init.[device-chipset-name].rc with Notepad++ and find the code snippet that are usually like this below (Press Ctrl+F and key-in the keyword swap or swappiness for quick search):
on property:ro.config.zram.support=true
setprop sys.vm.swappiness 80
write /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster 0
start zram
4. After finding the code snippet inside the init.rc or equivalent file, edit the setprop sys.vm.swappiness line and edit the default value to 100 which stands for aggressive swap mode. Then save the file.
5. Next, you have to repack the boot.img file back by running the command bootimg.exe --repack-bootimg and the file boot-new.img created.
6. Flash your device with boot-new.img via fastboot with command fastboot flash boot boot-new.img and boot the device.

Boot.img init.rc write files to folder and make them executable

Need some help. I'm trying to do this thing. Repack boot.img (unpack image, unpack ram archive, modify it, add my files to image, pack ram, pack boot.img). Flash my own repacked boot.img with heimdall to device, everything was okay, i can see files on my device after reboot. But when I try to start my file /my_bin it write 'Permission denied', same thing when I try to read it with cat (for example, cat /my_bin). Rights for file are 755 (rwxr-xr-x), everybody can run it. If i understand correctly SELinux configuration restrict my access to this files. I'm trying to copy /my_bin file in init.rc to different folder, but this doesn't help. Can i modify SELinux context from init.rc or modify it when repacking boot.img (i'm think contexts are in file_contexts.bin, but i don't know yet how to modify this binary file). Or something else?

Nobody?