Launch Linux without vnc - General Topics

I'm new to the forum so please pardon me if my english or explainations are not perfect.
I post here to explain a way to launch linux from android without vnc.
We need to stop android services to do that, but as already explain in other topics, the framebuffer access seems to be blocked on android 4.4 (or above).
I found that the framebuffer can still be accessed but just at the beginning of the boot process.
A way to launch linux is thus to modify the file "/system/etc/install-revovery.sh" (sometimes it is under "/system/bin") wich is started just at the same moment with other android services.
You can for instance add in that file:
busybox mount /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /mnt/asec
# were mmcblk1p1 is your sdcard
if [ -e /mnt/asec/start.sh ] ; then
setprop ctl.stop zygote
setprop.ctl.stop bootanim
setprop ctl.stop surfaceflinger
setprop ctl.stop servicemanager
# (you should stop all services showed in /init.rc that restart other services)
# (you can repeat the setprop ctl.stop two or three times to be sure they are stopped)
exec busybox chroot /mnt/asec /start.sh
fi
In your sdcard, you should install a linux-arm system (for instance debian, can be done with linuxdeploy app), and place a file "start.sh" like this one:
export PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
mount -t tmpfs none /dev
mount -t proc none /proc
mount -t sysfs none /sys
sleep 1
busybox mdev -s
# (busybox should be installed in the linux-arm system)
mkdir /dev/pts
mount -t devpts none /dev/pts
sleep 1
sudo startx -- vt1
If you reboot your device within your sdcard insert, linux should start. If something goes wrong, just reboot the device without the sdcard (long-press power), and android should restart.
If your kernel doesn't have tty support, it can also work. Just add in the "install-recovery.sh" file:
( while [ 1 ]
do
echo 0>/sys/class/graphics/fb0/rotate
busybox sleep 0.01
done ) &
And in your start.sh you should replace the last line with:
ln -s /dev/null /dev/tty1
sudo startx -- vt1 -sharevts
(I learn this trick by examin the source code of linuxdeploy, wich use it too).
If you're lucky, touchscreen will work (with default evdev driver that comes with linux).
If not, you can try tslib driver (search for "tslib" and "xf86-input-tslib" on olimex website or other places on the web).
For this be aware they are some patchs to apply (can be found on olimex website) and you should compile.
However when sucessfull it seems to work on a good number of devices (you can also try some "tslib-multitouch" patchs that make the driver work on some other devices).
For the keyboard you can use matchbox-keyboard program for instance, wich use the touchscreen to emulate the keyboard.
I've tested this method on two tablets (an allwinner and a rockchip) and on a Wiko phone (MediaTek processor). It has worked for each of three.
Be carefull nevertheless when modifying "install-recovery.sh" (wrong manipulations can brick your device, you are warned, I shall not be responsable for any damage).
Thanks.

Thank you kind sir. This is what I have searching for.

honestly it's kind of funny to know that I've scoured the internet looking for this and it's been right here the whole time I just didn't do a search on this site for whatever stupid reason. you are a gentleman and a scholar, thank you for your time.

Related

[LINUX] Gentoo on your Desire (tutorial)

Gentoo on HTC Desire
Prerequisites:
Rooted Desire
Any flavour of Linux (Live or installed)
Code:
A decent sized MicroSD card (>2Gb recommended)
MicroSD USB adapter (or SD card reader and adapter)
Some knowledge of Linux command line and Gentoo is recommended
Patience...
Things you should know first:
This is NOT a fully independent Linux - it runs parallel to Android inside a chroot environment
Some applications can be very slow until they are compiled properly for the Desire hardware
Compilation with a 1GHz single core CPU is slow
You can run just about any Linux program; X programs and desktop environments can be used via VNC
Many custom ROMs and kernels do not include swap support for performance reasons, and so if you require swap you may need to compile your own kernel (I will upload my custom kernel at a later date)
Due to Android security settings, only root can use the network. This causes some problems as anything that requires network access must run as root (again, if anyone has any insight for a way around this, please contact me)
Some ROMs underclock the CPU when the screen is off - this will lead to VERY long compilation times if you leave your phone like that
Step one - Prepare MicroSD
To install Gentoo you will need an ext2, 3, or 4 filesystem on your MicroSD card. This can be done two ways: partitioning your card (recommended), or by creating a file and creating the filesystem within that (not covered here).
Start up GParted (or something similar) on your computer and insert your MicroSD card; if your card is fully allocated, you will need to shrink the existing partition(s) first (back up your data! This can go wrong...) and leave a space at the end of the card for your new partition. The absolute minimum I would recommend to dedicate to Gentoo would be 1GB, but that doesn’t give you much wiggle room and you will have a very hard time compiling anything big (like GCC); I would recommend making the partition >2GB. Make sure you create the Gentoo partition at the end of the card.
Note:
APP2SD+ requires its own partition - if you have it enabled, you must have at least three partitions, with the second partition on the card dedicated to it and the third for Gentoo.
Due to the large number of files in the Portage tree, small partitions can sometimes run out of inodes. You can get around this by decreasing the size of the inodes and blocks, and therefore creating more:
Code:
~ $ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/(partition) -i 2048 -b 2048
Step two - install base system:
Download the latest stage 3 tarball for armv7a-unknown-linux-gnueabi from the Gentoo mirror closest to you (Google "Gentoo Mirrors", I can't post links yet..), mount the Gentoo partition and extract the contents of the tarball to it.
Example:
Code:
~ $ wget (your selected mirror)/linux/gentoo/releases/arm/autobuilds/current-stage3/armv7a-unknown-linux-gnueabi/stage3-armv7a-20100917.tar.bz2
~ $ sudo mkdir /mnt/sd
~ $ sudo mount /dev/(partition) /mnt/sd
~ $ sudo tar xjvfp stage3-armv7a-20100917.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/sd/
Download the latest portage snapshot (from the Gentoo mirror) and extract:
Code:
~ $ wget (your selected mirror)/linux/gentoo/snapshots/portage-latest.tar.bz2
~ $ sudo tar xjvf portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/sd/usr/
Now modify the make.conf file using your favourite text editor:
Code:
~ $ sudo nano /mnt/sd/etc/make.conf
Sample make.conf:
Code:
CFLAGS="-march=armv7-a -mtune=cortex-a8 -mfpu=vfpv3 -O2" # if anyone has any suggestions to improving these, please let me know
CXXFLAGS=${CFLAGS}
CHOST="armv7a-unknown-linux-gnueabi"
USE="unicode X -gnome -kde -firefox wifi syslog -udev -mdev -wifi -gpm threads nptl networking wxwidgets -ipv6 sqlite jpeg png dbus" # Have a look at the Gentoo USE flag description page on the web for others you may want/don't want
VIDEO_CARDS="none"
ALSA_CARDS="none"
INPUT_DEVICES="none"
SYNC="rsync://(your selected mirror)"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="(your selected mirror)"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
MAKEOPTS="-j1"
PORTAGE_NICENESS="19"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
FEATURES="noman nodoc noinfo -userfetch" # Getting rid of the man, doc and info pages saves a lot of space. Userfetch is disabled due to the issue described above
PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS="--exclude ChangeLog" # Again, this saves some space
Edit locale.gen with the locale values you require, e.g.:
Code:
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
Unmount your MicroSD card and insert it back into your phone.
Step three - configuring the base system
Using ConnectBot, another terminal emulator app, or adb, connect to the local console and setup the mounts, then enter Gentoo (using busybox as your shell (type "busybox sh") is recommended as the tab completion (trackball + i in connectbot) helps a lot):
Code:
# mkdir /data/gentoo
# mount -t ext3 (or whatever fs you set it to) /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 (change the 3 to whatever partition you need) /data/gentoo
# mount -t proc none /data/gentoo/proc
# mount -o bind /dev /data/gentoo/dev
# mount -t devpts none /dev/pts
# chroot /data/gentoo /bin/bash
# source /etc/profile
Congratulations! You are now inside your own Gentoo environment. If you don't need your phone for a while you can now recompile and update the system (this will take quite a long time and will use a lot of data). This doesn't have to be done now, or at all, but it is highly recommended to do so at some point:
Code:
# emerge -DuNav world
Once that's done (or you don't want to do it), install some base programs:
Code:
# emerge -av screen sudo
If you want VNC, tightvnc is recommended:
Code:
# emege -av tightvnc
Web server:
Code:
#emerge -av nginx
Set a root password:
Code:
# passwd
For some reason running SSHD with IPv6 enabled causes the phone to restart. To fix this, make the following changes to /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
Change:
Code:
#AddressFamily any
To:
Code:
AddressFamily inet
To start SSHD:
Code:
# ssh-keygen -t rsa (save to /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key with no passkey)
# ssh-keygen -t dsa (save to /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key with no passkey)
# /usr/sbin/sshd
If your kernel supports swap, it is recommended to create and enable it:
Code:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap bs=10M count=20 (change this to alter the size of the swap file)
# mkswap /swap
# swapon /swap (you will need to run this command with the other mount commands each time you boot)
Boot script:
Start your phone in recovery mode and mount /system using the partitions menu in your recovery ROM, then create a file on your computer with the following contents:
Code:
#!/system/bin/sh
#
# Linux startup script for rooted Android systems
# © Deathisfatal @ forum.xda-developers.com
#
# TODO:
# - Error handling
#
# Edit the following variables as required
HOSTNAME="Android"
LINUX="/data/gentoo/"
BB="/system/xbin/busybox"
CHROOT="${BB} chroot ${LINUX}"
ROOT="/dev/block/mmcblk0p3"
SWAP="/swap"
${BB} mount -o noatime -t ext3 ${ROOT} ${LINUX} # Edit -t as required by your filesystem
${BB} mount -o bind /dev ${LINUX}dev
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /dev/shm
${CHROOT} /bin/mount -t tmpfs -o size=32m none /dev/shm
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /dev/fd
${BB} /bin/mount -o bind /proc/self/fd /dev/fd
${CHROOT} /bin/mount -t devpts none /dev/pts
${BB} mount -t proc none ${LINUX}proc
${CHROOT} /sbin/swapon ${SWAP}
${CHROOT} /bin/mount -t tmpfs -o size=32m none /tmp
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /tmp/run
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /tmp/run/portage
${CHROOT} /bin/touch /tmp/run/utmp
${CHROOT} /bin/chmod 777 -R /tmp
${BB} mount -o bind /data ${LINUX}mnt/data
${BB} mount -o bind /sdcard ${LINUX}mnt/sd
${CHROOT} /bin/hostname ${HOSTNAME}
# Uncomment the following line to enable sshd on boot
#${CHROOT} /usr/sbin/sshd
Connect your phone and computer with the USB cable, then use the following command on your computer:
Code:
~ $ adb push (File you created earlier) /system/etc/init.d/05linux
~ $ adb shell chmod 755 /system/etc/init.d/05linux
Now reboot your phone and your Gentoo partition should automatically mount.
Notes:
If you restart your phone, you will need to issue the necessary mount commands as you did earlier until I (or someone else) get around to making a proper script that runs at boot time
For information on how to set up programs and servers on Gentoo visit the Gentoo wiki
Please contact me or post here with any questions you may have regarding this
Changelog:
Updated CFLAGS and bootscript
Thanks to sfjuocekr for his/her contributions.
Thanks for this tutorial, Gentoo is my favourite Linux distro and it's great to know someone's got it running on the Desire
I don't think I've got the patience to try it on my phone though, all the compiling must take ages. I wonder whether it's possible to cross-compile...
F****ING AWESOME DUDE!
go to try in today =)
gentoo rulez!
koider said:
Thanks for this tutorial, Gentoo is my favourite Linux distro and it's great to know someone's got it running on the Desire
I don't think I've got the patience to try it on my phone though, all the compiling must take ages. I wonder whether it's possible to cross-compile...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DistCC
http://distcc.samba.org/
I have the same issue with openssh-server crashing my Nexus One (running Ubuntu 10.04 on CM6) too. I would love to figure out how to fix it.
Restored OP to state before server crashes - changed CFLAGS and added a boot script.
EDIT: I have solved the mystery of the SSHD crash!! It's to do with IPv6 - OP updated.
Deathisfatal said:
Restored OP to state before server crashes - changed CFLAGS and added a boot script.
EDIT: I have solved the mystery of the SSHD crash!! It's to do with IPv6 - OP updated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sweet. That solved my problem with sshd on chrooted Ubuntu on CM6 on my Nexus One! Thanks!
You should do a emerge -e world to recompile the whole tree after first boot.
This will make sure all your packages are compiled with correct CFLAGS etc.
Please delete me!
Solution found myself.
Code:
CFLAGS="-march=armv7-a -mtune=cortex-a8 -mfpu=vfpv3 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
CHOST="armv7a-unknown-linux-gnueabi"
USE="minimal unicode -X -gnome -kde -firefox -wifi syslog -udev -mdev threads nptl -ipv6 sqlite jpeg png dbus -gpm ssh"
VIDEO_CARDS="none"
ALSA_CARDS="none"
INPUT_DEVICES="none"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
MAKEOPTS="-j1"
FEATURES="noman nodoc noinfo -userfetch"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS="--exclude ChangeLog"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
LINGUAS="en"
PORTAGE_NICENESS="19"
I use this make.conf for Gentoo on my Desire.
Firstly NEVER globally allow keywords, this is bad. Do this for the specific programs you need, you can use /etc/portage and mask/unmask packages you actually need unmasked.
Set MAKEOPTS to -j1 instead of 2, helps keeping the system usable while emerging together with PORTAGE_NICENESS at 19.
I have left X etc all out of the global USE flags to save space, again use /etc/portage to set specific USE flags for packages that need them. This will save alot of space, because there are lots of packages with X support you will never need usualy.
I'm not entirely sure about leaving wifi and mdev away, but wifi is handled by Android itself and mdev should be too.
Then in the startup-script there was a minor mistake bind mounting /dev/fd, this is the modified script:
Code:
#!/system/bin/sh
#
# Linux startup script for rooted Android systems
# © Deathisfatal @ forum.xda-developers.com
#
# TODO:
# - Error handling
#
# Edit the following variables as required
HOSTNAME="UGH-GSM"
LINUX="/data/gentoo/"
BB="/system/xbin/busybox"
CHROOT="${BB} chroot ${LINUX}"
ROOT="/dev/block/mmcblk0p2"
#SWAP="/swap"
${BB} mount -o noatime -t ext3 ${ROOT} ${LINUX}
${BB} mount -o bind /dev ${LINUX}dev
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /dev/shm
${CHROOT} /bin/mount -t tmpfs -o size=32m none /dev/shm
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /dev/fd
${BB} mount -o bind /proc/self/fd /dev/fd
${CHROOT} /bin/mount -t devpts none /dev/pts
${BB} mount -t proc none ${LINUX}proc
#${CHROOT} /sbin/swapon ${SWAP}
${CHROOT} /bin/mount -t tmpfs -o size=32m none /tmp
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /tmp/run
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /tmp/run/portage
${CHROOT} /bin/touch /tmp/run/utmp
${CHROOT} /bin/chmod 777 -R /tmp
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /mnt/data
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /mnt/sdcard
${BB} mount -o bind /data ${LINUX}mnt/data
${BB} mount -o bind /sdcard ${LINUX}mnt/sdcard
${CHROOT} /bin/hostname ${HOSTNAME}
# Uncomment the following line to enable sshd on boot
#${CHROOT} /usr/sbin/sshd
And yea some error handling should be added to check if a directory exists yes or no, but not really important.
If I make more changes, I'll make notice here in the forums. If you have other general Gentoo questions, please ask I have been working with Gentoo since 2001 But it is a really trial and error distribution, you HAVE to be self capable to fix problems that will arise ... they WILL arise
And again, leave
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~arm ~*" # Many useful packages are masked for arm with ~*
out of your makefile. Do it in /etc/portage when needed.
Don't use -O3 and -Os together, this actually GROWS ... same with using mcpu with march doesn't work just use march and mtune. -O2 is recommended.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-optimization.xml
Also make sure you emerge linux-headers first so it ends up in world.
Usualy emerging a kernel makes sure headers are in place, but in this chrooted enviroment it isn't and might be cleaned with depclean or revdep-rebuild. Not sure why tho, because it should be in system already :s
This is a very interesting development! Thanks to everyone who made it possible.
Has anyone so far been able to run an Xserver / WM / DE yet?
Would love to see some screenshots of this in action..
sfjuocekr said:
Code:
CFLAGS="-march=armv7-a -mtune=cortex-a8 -mfpu=vfpv3 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
CHOST="armv7a-unknown-linux-gnueabi"
USE="minimal unicode -X -gnome -kde -firefox -wifi syslog -udev -mdev threads nptl -ipv6 sqlite jpeg png dbus -gpm ssh"
VIDEO_CARDS="none"
ALSA_CARDS="none"
INPUT_DEVICES="none"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
MAKEOPTS="-j1"
FEATURES="noman nodoc noinfo -userfetch"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS="--exclude ChangeLog"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
LINGUAS="en"
PORTAGE_NICENESS="19"
I use this make.conf for Gentoo on my Desire.
Firstly NEVER globally allow keywords, this is bad. Do this for the specific programs you need, you can use /etc/portage and mask/unmask packages you actually need unmasked.
Set MAKEOPTS to -j1 instead of 2, helps keeping the system usable while emerging together with PORTAGE_NICENESS at 19.
I have left X etc all out of the global USE flags to save space, again use /etc/portage to set specific USE flags for packages that need them. This will save alot of space, because there are lots of packages with X support you will never need usualy.
I'm not entirely sure about leaving wifi and mdev away, but wifi is handled by Android itself and mdev should be too.
Then in the startup-script there was a minor mistake bind mounting /dev/fd, this is the modified script:
Code:
#!/system/bin/sh
#
# Linux startup script for rooted Android systems
# © Deathisfatal @ forum.xda-developers.com
#
# TODO:
# - Error handling
#
# Edit the following variables as required
HOSTNAME="UGH-GSM"
LINUX="/data/gentoo/"
BB="/system/xbin/busybox"
CHROOT="${BB} chroot ${LINUX}"
ROOT="/dev/block/mmcblk0p2"
#SWAP="/swap"
${BB} mount -o noatime -t ext3 ${ROOT} ${LINUX}
${BB} mount -o bind /dev ${LINUX}dev
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /dev/shm
${CHROOT} /bin/mount -t tmpfs -o size=32m none /dev/shm
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /dev/fd
${BB} mount -o bind /proc/self/fd /dev/fd
${CHROOT} /bin/mount -t devpts none /dev/pts
${BB} mount -t proc none ${LINUX}proc
#${CHROOT} /sbin/swapon ${SWAP}
${CHROOT} /bin/mount -t tmpfs -o size=32m none /tmp
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /tmp/run
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /tmp/run/portage
${CHROOT} /bin/touch /tmp/run/utmp
${CHROOT} /bin/chmod 777 -R /tmp
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /mnt/data
${CHROOT} /bin/mkdir /mnt/sdcard
${BB} mount -o bind /data ${LINUX}mnt/data
${BB} mount -o bind /sdcard ${LINUX}mnt/sdcard
${CHROOT} /bin/hostname ${HOSTNAME}
# Uncomment the following line to enable sshd on boot
#${CHROOT} /usr/sbin/sshd
And yea some error handling should be added to check if a directory exists yes or no, but not really important.
If I make more changes, I'll make notice here in the forums. If you have other general Gentoo questions, please ask I have been working with Gentoo since 2001 But it is a really trial and error distribution, you HAVE to be self capable to fix problems that will arise ... they WILL arise
And again, leave
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~arm ~*" # Many useful packages are masked for arm with ~*
out of your makefile. Do it in /etc/portage when needed.
Don't use -O3 and -Os together, this actually GROWS ... same with using mcpu with march doesn't work just use march and mtune. -O2 is recommended.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-optimization.xml
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks very much for your insight! I'll change the tutorial with your suggestions when I'm at a computer later on.
I originally just had -Os for optimization but someone suggested using it with -O3, but their post got lost with the server crash. I've only been using Gentoo for a year now so I'll bow to your wisdom!
I have tightvnc setup along with openbox, so I'll post a couple of screenshots later on too.
EDIT: Is there any benefit to having -mfpu=neon? Or is vfpv3 superior?
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
I'm currently working on getting Gentoo running natively with the S-OFF hack. At the moment I have it booting up, connecting to wifi and starting sshd, but X is a hassle. If anyone wants to collaborate on the project send me a message or post here; any help would be greatly appreciated!
Respect!
Deathisfatal said:
I'm currently working on getting Gentoo running natively with the S-OFF hack. At the moment I have it booting up, connecting to wifi and starting sshd, but X is a hassle. If anyone wants to collaborate on the project send me a message or post here; any help would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Massive project! I'm impressed.
I wish I had any skill to be able to support you.
Deathisfatal said:
Thanks very much for your insight! I'll change the tutorial with your suggestions when I'm at a computer later on.
I originally just had -Os for optimization but someone suggested using it with -O3, but their post got lost with the server crash. I've only been using Gentoo for a year now so I'll bow to your wisdom!
I have tightvnc setup along with openbox, so I'll post a couple of screenshots later on too.
EDIT: Is there any benefit to having -mfpu=neon? Or is vfpv3 superior?
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't know for sure. I could try compile against neon to see if there is a speed increase. But to my knowledge neon instructions are already used or might only be use with vfpf3-d32.
Once I get my own box up and running again, I'll try it out. Compiling GCC without DISTCC is a horror!
Sorry about the lack of updates to the thread - I've been pretty busy at uni lately. I'm currently having a lot of issues with X11 segfaulting randomly so I'll post pictures once I have that back up and running. When X decides to work, the whole interface works nicely - touch support via tslib is great, and fbdev seems adequate for 2D graphics.
Has anyone had any success with the tutorial I posted?
If anyone's interested, to get Gentoo running natively you need to compile your own kernel with a few changes:
Disable ramdisk support
Enable swap (optional)
Create a boot script that mounts FS's, proc, etc
Disable Android paranoid networking so users other than root can access the net
Then start your phone in fastboot, push your modified kernel to your phone with fastboot with "root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 (or mmcblk0p2) init=(your boot script) rootfs=ext3 rootwait" as the kernel command line.
When I have time I will create a full guide for getting Linux and X running.
Massive project! I'm impressed.
I wish I had any skill to be able to support you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks!
sfjuocekr said:
Once I get my own box up and running again, I'll try it out. Compiling GCC without DISTCC is a horror!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed! I left GCC 4.5 compiling for 6 hours, only for it to run out of space and fail...
ANd on v6 CPU?
Thanks for the tutorial, Deathisfatal. I thought this was a great idea, so decided to try it on my HTC Hero (as opposed to Desire).
On the first try, the
chroot /data/gentoo /bin/bash
command failed with an "illegal instruction" error. I figured my processor must be an earlier one in the ARM family than the one for which the bash in the stage 3 tarball had been compiled (v7-a). Sure enough, when I looked in /proc/cpuinfo, the processor turned out to be a v6 - the first line of cpuinfo says
ARMv6-compatible processor rev2 (v6l)
So, I tried again using stage3-armv6j-20101112.tar.bz2 instead of stage3-armv7a-20101114.tar.bz2. This improved things a bit. I could then run the bash shell in the chrooted environment, and cd and ls around the chrooted filesystem.
Unfortunately, attempting to run emerge still failed with an "illegal instruction" error (so did attempting to run tar or wget). At this point, I'm stuck. I guess I still have a stage 3 for the wrong processor variant (and that at some point I'll also have to fiddle with the -march and -mtune options in CFLAGS), but have no idea how to select the right stage 3.
Advice welcome, thanks.
That's quite strange! Perhaps try the armv5tel stage3 tarball. It could be that the armv6 stage3 is compiled for a different FPU than what the Hero has. What does the features line say in /proc/cpuinfo?
Deathisfatal said:
That's quite strange! Perhaps try the armv5tel stage3 tarball. It could be that the armv6 stage3 is compiled for a different FPU than what the Hero has. What does the features line say in /proc/cpuinfo?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I'll give v5tel a go.
The features line says
swp half thumb fastmult edsp java

[Q] spending lots of time with segmentation fault error (chroot)

spending lots of time with segmentation fault error (chroot)
I success to open up ubuntu GUI on my android
with following site
(first googled site with "cyanogenmod ubuntu")
but fail with other imgs(such as img in nexusonehack)
for now, I am trying to bootup ubuntu 10.10 on my gw620(smart phone whose cpu is ARMv6 Qualcomm MSM7200)
by my self.
with selfmade rootstock img and busybox and chroot
I made img my self withroot stock with following option
rootstock -f kty1104-Notebook -l kty1104 -p 1 --imagesize 2047M --notarball --seed linux-image-omap,lxde,build-essential,openssh-server,tightvncserver,x11-xserver-utils
and change name to ubuntu.img and place to /sdcard/
and apply to bootubuntu.sh
bootubuntu.sh contents is this
===============================================
#!/system/bin/sh
# Original script by Paolo Sammicheli xdatap1
#
# Based on Saurik's remount.sh modified version by Mark Walker of
# URL is here but I can't write url b/c of my account privilege
# Modified version for Cyanogenmod by potoc samdroid
mkdir /mnt/ubuntu
#remount system as read/write
remount rw
export mnt=/mnt/ubuntu
export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:$PATH
export TERM=linux
export HOME=/root
export kit=/sdcard
export loopdev=/dev/block/loop4
losetup $loopdev $kit/ubuntu.img
mount -t ext2 $loopdev $mnt
mount -t devpts devpts $mnt/dev/pts
mount -t proc proc $mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs sysfs $mnt/sys
cat $mnt/root/logo.txt
echo " "
echo "Type EXIT to end session"
echo "Make sure you do a proper EXIT for a clean umount!"
echo " "
echo "Please reboot your device when you finished your work."
chroot $mnt /bin/bash
busybox umount -f /mnt/ubuntu/dev/pts /mnt/ubuntu/proc /mnt/ubuntu/sys /mnt/ubuntu
===============================================
do I need more option for rootstock?
or do I need special sh file for it?
I can mount ubuntu.img with
# mknod -m640 /dev/loop0 b 7 8
losetup /dev/loop0 /sdcard/ubuntu.img
mount -t ext2 /dev/loop0 /mnt/ubuntu
but when it comes to chroot, it sprit [1] segmentation fault chroot ${mnt} /b...#
if there are missing information please let me know, I will write it down
Regards.
Taeyun
I know I musn't revive old threads... but the question and the problem is already set up here.
I'm having the same problem with my HTC Magic 32A. Anybody knows what's up with the segfault?
Thanks!
I've spent a lot of time on this issue too, and as far as I can tell it's because Ubuntu versions over 9.04 (jerking jackalope or whatever idiot name they use) no longer support ARMv6. This means I can't run BT5, which is based on 10.x, but I believe Debian still supports v6.

A Real Linux Android System

Before reading.
This article requires that your phone is Rooted and has Busybox installed.
HTC owners, S-off your phone as well.
Android is a great operating system for SmartPhones. Only problem with it (From a more technical users point of view) is the small useless bad excuse of a linux system running behind the UI. Some of the smaller issues can be fixed by installing Busybox that provides a better basic set of tools to work with, but it's not enough. What I would like is to be able to use almost any real linux cli application, daemon, library etc. Also some compilers would be great. I'm using an HTC desire which has more than enough power to do things like compiling (I know, I have done it.), and so has a lot of other SmartPhones. Why would one need this when there is cross compilers you can use on regular and faster machines? Well, because It's fun, why else. I did not spend all that money on a SmartPhones just to make a few phone calls and write a few text messages. My old Sony Ericsson did that quite well. I spend that money to get a phone with many possibilities that I could play with.
I tried to search the web for some helping instructions on how to port a real linux system to this phone. What I mostly got, was people who ported linux systems that would run as an extra OS on the phone, some even with an Xserver accessible via VNC. Sounds fun, but not what I was after. I did not want an extra OS using CPU and unnecessary RAM. I just wanted some extra tools, libs etc to work with and the regular linux user management. I managed to find an old article from someone using Debians armel version on an old G1 phone. I thought that if it worked on that phone, it would be possible to do so on mine. So I started playing around with that.
The way this works is by installing a bare minimum debian on an second partition. This will not boot anything up since it will just work as extra tools and lib using the already booted android linux system.. You will still only have one OS but more tools (Including the nice APT package system) to work with.
Now there is two ways of using debian on android.
The first way is to setup the Debian in an chroot environment. This has some flaws like I have not yet been able to make the chroot start second jobs, which means that you will be able to start applications and daemons running in the current shell session. But you will not be able to make them run in the background. But as an development environment it will still work great, as you will be able to use the Debian libs and compilers.
The second way (The way I was after) is to setup Debian using the UAFS kernel module. This is used to merge directories into one with different rules for each. For an example you would be able to merge /debian_root/etc and /system/etc into a shared /etc with RW on Debians etc and RO on Androids forcing any changes to be made in /debian_root/etc. Using this option you will use Debian to extend the Android Linux part. Android UI with Debian Shell.
This article is split into 3 parts. The first part is the setup of Debian. Must be done whether you want chroot or a merged system. In the second part we will cover the setup of the chroot environment.
The third part is the setup of the merged system. This will require one thing in order to work.
You will need a kernel with the uafs module which is not default in most android kernels. You will need to compile your own kernel. People using the Thalamus kernel, can download a kernel with this module kernel-2.6.37.2_AUFS.zip. A big thanks to Thalamus for providing this. Note that this kernel was a special request from me that he was kind enough to provide. It comes with absolutely no guaranties. Do not email spam him about errors you might encounter using it as this is not an official release.
Note that once you mount the Debian system, you will not be able to mount the SD Card when connecting it to your PC. You can download the App “Multi Mount SD-Card” from Market which will be able to mount your SD Card on your PC while mounted on your phone. This app should also speed up transfers on 2.6.37 kernels, or so I have heard.
Part 1: Building Debian
We are going to run debian from a file containing a ext2 filesystem. If your SD Card is big enough you might be able to create an extra partition and force it to mount as something else other than ext-sd, but in this article we are going to use a partitioned file.
Also, this will require that you have the tool “debootstrap” on your PC. This is found in Ubuntu and Debian, dont know about other Linux distro's or Operating systems. If you don't use Linux or an distro with debootstrap you can download a Ubuntu Live CD from the Ubuntu website. This can be run on CD, DVD and USB disks without installing it. For this article I have used Ubuntu 10.10.
Open a terminal on your Ubuntu/Debian/LiveCD PC and cd to the folder where you want to temp. store your debian. I will call this path “debian_dir”
The first thing we will do is to create the partitioned file.
I'm creating a file with 1.5GB of space. You can create the size you want.
Don't use 0 in the size, dd don't like that.
Code:
cd debian_dir
dd if=/dev/zero of=debian.img seek=1499999999 bs=1 count=1
mke2fs -F debian.img
mkdir debian
mount -o loop debian.img debian/
Now that we have created the file and mounted it, we should download and place debian inside of it. First we will install debootstrap.
Code:
apt-get install debootstrap
debootstrap --arch armel --foreign squeeze debian http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian
umount debian/
Debian Squeeze is Debian 6.0 which replaces the old Lenny.
Copy the debian.img file to your SD Card on your phone. I placed mine in the root of the SD Card.
Now open a terminal on your phone. You can download one from market. There are some free once, but the paid “Better Terminal” is the best to work with in my opinion.
Note: All shell work is done on the phone from now on.
First we need some temp. exports.
Type the fallowing:
Code:
export PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH
export HOME=/root
export TERM=linux
export DM=/data/local/debian
export DI=/sdcard/debian.img
Now we will create the Debian dir and then create a loop device which we will use to mount the Debian image to the Debian dir.
Code:
mkdir -d $DM
mknod /dev/loop0 b 7 0
mount -o loop,noatime $DI $DM
Now that we have debian mounted in our debian folder, we need to finalize the installation. Not all files as been installed yet. Don't forget to activate Mobile Network or Wifi.
chroot $DM /debootstrap/debootstrap –second-stage
We also need to insert the debian repository and a DNS (I use OpenDNS).
You can use whatever you want for the DNS, you routers IP for an example. It should have some default Ips configured.
Code:
echo “deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free” > $DM/etc/apt/sources.list
echo “208.67.222.222” > $DM/etc/resolv.conf
Now change the root to the debian dir and set a root password and make sure that certain folders already exists.
Code:
chroot $DM /bin/bash
passwd root
mkdir root
exit
Now we need to make sure that certain variables exists and that the values is as they should be. So we will alter the /system/bin/sh that android uses as login shell.
Code:
cd /system/bin
mv sh sh0
Create a new /system/bin/sh file with the fallowing content.
This will ensure that these variables is created and/or changed every time you enter a new shell session. You can call another shell like bash or ash instead /system/xbin/sh, just make sure to use ash or sh at the top, since bash does not seam to understand [email protected]
Warning: It is very important that the /system/bin/sh file is made correct. Android will not boot if anything is wrong with this file. It should be exactly like the one I posted, and you cannot make it on your PC and push it to the phone. Don't know why, it works fine with other shell scripts, but not that one.
Enter an adb shell from your PC and use vi or nano (You can download nano here here) to copy and paste the content directly into the ADB Shell.
Note: ADB from the recovery will always work. It does not use /system/bin/sh
Code:
#!/system/xbin/sh
/system/xbin/sh --login [email protected]
Make sure that it has execute rights. Then type sh in the terminal to make sure that it works before you close your ADB Shell session.
Code:
chmod a+x /system/bin/sh
sh
sh0 will not be used, it's up to you wether you want to save it or not. Just make sure that /system/xbin/sh exists, otherwise
copy /system/bin/sh0 to /system/xbin/sh.
Now we need the profile file that is needed by this method. This file will make sure that we have all our variables and the data that they should contain.
Android does not keep very good track of these things. Place this data in the file /system/etc/profile
Code:
export TERM=linux
export TERMINFO=/etc/terminfo
export PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/vendor/bin:/system/bin:/system/xbin
if [ "$EUID" == "0" ]; then
if [ -z "$HOME" ] || [ -z "$USER" ] || [ -z "$GROUPS" ]; then
export HOME=/root
export USER=root
export GROUPS=0
fi
else
# Make sure that this user id variable exists.
if [ -z $EUID ]; then
export EUID=$(echo $(id | cut -d "(" -f 1) | cut -d "=" -f 2)
fi
# If we have an /etc/passwd file available,
# we should also make sure to get name, group and home info from that file and
# store in the default linux variables.
if [ -f /etc/passwd ]; then
# Create the user info variables based on user id and /etc/passwd
export USER=$(grep "x:${EUID}:" /etc/passwd | cut -d : -f 1)
export GROUPS=$(grep "x:${EUID}:" /etc/passwd | cut -d : -f 4)
export HOME=$(grep "x:${EUID}:" /etc/passwd | cut -d : -f 6)
fi
fi
export ADID=$EUID
if [ "$PS1" ]; then
if [ "$BASH" ]; then
# The file bash.bashrc already sets the default PS1.
if [ ! -z $HOME ] && [ -f $HOME/.bashrc ]; then
. $HOME/.bashrc
elif [ -f /etc/bash.bashrc ]; then
. /etc/bash.bashrc
else
export PS1='\h:\W\$ '
fi
else
if [ "$EUID" == "0" ]; then
PS1='\w # '
else
PS1='\w $ '
fi
fi
else
PS1='\h:\W\$ '
fi
if [ -d /etc/profile.d ]; then
for i in /etc/profile.d/*.sh; do
if [ -r $i ]; then
. $i
fi
done
unset i
fi
We will also need an /etc/bash.bashrc which is needed because /etc/profile not always gets executed.
Code:
if [ "$ADID" != "$EUID" ]; then
# Some times /etc/profile is not executed (For an example when using Androids su command).
# /etc/bash.bashrc however it used instead. So we just execute it manually in these cases.
# If you create a local bashrc ($HOME/.bashrc), remember to include this check.
# /etc/bash.bachrc is not used when a local file exists.
if [ -f /etc/profile ]; then
. /etc/profile
# Since /etc/profile links back to this file,
# we will make sure not to start an unending loop.
# the profile file should update this, but it's better to be on the safe side.
if [ "$ADID" != "$EUID" ]; then
export ADID=$EUID
fi
fi
fi
PS1='\h:\W\$ '
And last we have some user and group configurations in order to make Debian better work with Android. Open your Android terminal emulator and make sure it opens as user and not root. Now type "/system/xbin/id".
What we need here is the uid, gid and the ids of each accosiated groups along with the names of it all. In my terminal I have "uid=10048(app_48) gid=10048(app_48) groups=1015(sdcard_rw),3003(inet)".
What we will do it create this user along with the groups in our Debian inveroment. However, I use the uid name and gid name "bterm" instead of app_48, but still with the original IDs. The inet and sdcard_rw groups will be created as system groups. Do the same for your app user and group if you don't want any login possibilities with this user. I however have assigned home and password to this user.
This needs to be doen in chroot
Code:
chroot $DM /bin/bash
groupadd --system --gid 1015 sdcard_rw
groupadd --system --gid 3003 inet
groupadd --gid 10048 bterm
adduser --home /home/bterm --gid 10048 --uid 10048 bterm
gpasswd -a bterm sdcard_rw
gpasswd -a bterm inet
exit
Now your ready for the next step. Remember that the user you have created, is the user used by your terminal emulator when you are not logged on as root. This ID is only assigned to that specific app, if you install another terminal, it will get another ID.
Part 2 – Setting up a chroot environment
The best way of doing this is to make two small scripts and place them in /system/bin or /system/xbin. One script for doing the mount after phone boot. And one script for entering the chroot when open a new shell session.
Here is the mounting script that I call mkdebian.
This needs to be executed once every time the phone has rebooted. If your ROM supports init scripts, you can add it there for auto-mount on boot.
Code:
#!/system/bin/sh
export DM=/data/local/debian
export DI=/sdcard/debian.img
# Create the loop device and mount the debian image
mknod /dev/loop0 b 7 0
mount -o loop,noatime $DI $DM
# Let's make sure that we can access our sd card from within the chroot
if [ ! -d "$DM/mnt/sdcard" ]; then
mkdir $DM/mnt/sdcard
fi
mount --bind /mnt/sdcard $DM/mnt/sdcard
# Now we make sure that the chroot has access to all the device maps
if [ ! -d "$DM/dev" ]; then
mkdir $DM/dev
fi
mount --bind /dev $DM/dev
# We also need to make proc, sys etc available from within the chroot
chroot $DM mount -t proc proc /proc
chroot $DM mount -t sysfs sysfs /sys
# And last fix the mtab
chroot $DM rm -f /etc/mtab
chroot $DM ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab
echo “Debian was mounted in $DM/”
Now for the script that I called “debian”.
This script will make you enter the chroot environment using one single command. Every time you exist the debian chroot, you can enter back using the command “debian”.
Code:
#!/system/bin/sh
chroot /data/local/debian/ /bin/bash
And that is it. Open a terminal, type debian and start using your debian environment. It might be a good idea to run aptitude update or apt-get update before you start using the package manager.
Part 3 – Settings up a merged Android/Debian environment
This is the fun part to play with. A merged Android/Debian environment without the usage of chroot. This only requires a script to be executed at boot, or after boot.
Remember that this will not work unless your kernel has the aufs module.
Code:
#!/system/xbin/sh
export DM=/data/local/debian
export DI=/mnt/sdcard/debian.img
# Now we mount the debian image to our debian folder.
mknod /dev/loop0 b 7 0
mount -o loop,noatime $DI $DM
# These two directories exists in both android and debian,
# so these are going to be merged together.
mount -t aufs -o dirs=$DM/etc=rw:/system/etc=ro aufs /system/etc
# For some reason, mounting /sbin with aufs does not work.
# So we make a little cheat with symbolic links instead.
mount -o remount,rw /
mv /sbin /sbin0
ln -s $DM/sbin /
rm -rf /sbin/adbd
rm -rf /sbin/ueventd
ln -s /sbin0/adbd /sbin/
ln -s /sbin0/ueventd /sbin/
# Let's get all the debian root directories out to the real root dir.
rm -rf /root
for x in tmp root lib bin boot home media opt selinux srv usr var
do
ln -s $DM/$x /
done
if [ -f /system/xbin/bash ]; then
mount --bind /bin/bash /system/xbin/bash
mount --bin /system/xbin/bash /system/xbin/sh
else
mount --bind /bin/bash /system/xbin/sh
fi
echo "Debian has been merged with Android..."
Run this at startup and start using all of debians possibilities (Don't run it yet).
The / dir is left with RW permissions. If this is set to RO then apt-get will not work. It writes tmp log files to this dir when running. It does not matter since all changes to this dir is restored to default on every boot.
Also dont forget to run apt-get update or aptitude update to update the package list.
You are now able to install and run almost anything (CLI Only) that runs on debian systems and other linux dists. Personally I'm currently running OpenSSH Server and Lighttpd with PHP. A perfect small transportable web server.
You can use either /etc/init.d/[your service] start
or
service [your service] start
to start daemons you have installed.
Now you can use the "mkdebian" command to merge your new Debian with Android.
Note: The command “su” from debian works differently than the android “su” command.
The debian command uses the regular linux management to provide access which means that it will ask for your root password that you created in the first part. The android command will just provide you with su rights without a password. Both commands provides su rights to both android and debian, so it is possible to remove the android command and create a new Android/Java based SU app for the Android UI that will require root password.
Note: There is a small problem with the Android "su" command. It does not recheck the /etc/profile.
That means that if you log on using the regular user, and then uses the "su" command, user variables does not get updated with su paths.
Using the Debian "su" command will work fine, just note that this command will promp for password. Also logging in using the root account
directly works fine.
Good luck
[Edit: 2011-03-09 11:06]
- Changed the /etc/profile script in Part 1
- Added /etc/bash.bashrc script in Part 1
- Changed User and Group setup and moved it from Part 3 to Part 1
- Fixed error in /system/bin/sh
All of this will fix some permission problems with Debian
[Edit: 2011-03-08 11:21]
- Fixed problems with user management by adding an /etc/profile and changing /system/bin/sh and the debian merge script. Using the "login" command is no longer needed.
[Edit: 2011-03-07 08:49]
- Fixed bug in Part 1 sh script.
[Edit: 2011-03-07 00:20]
- Added a new /system/bin/sh script to Part 1
- Added the way we create missing users and groups in Part 3
[Edit: 2011-03-06 19:36]
- Inserted a warning text in part 1 about avoiding problems when creating a new /system/bin/sh.
Applying Host name
If you want to set a custom hostname for your phone, you can create an init script (If your ROM supports it).
Code:
#!/system/bin/sh
# Get the hostname if it exists, or set it to localhost
if [ -f /system/etc/hostname ]; then
_HOSTNAME=$(cat /system/etc/hostname)
if [ -z $_HOSTNAME ]; then
_HOSTNAME=localhost
fi
else
_HOSTNAME=localhost
fi
# Update the Hostname
echo "$_HOSTNAME" > /proc/sys/kernel/hostname
# Update the hosts file
echo "127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost" > /etc/hosts
# If the hostname is not localhost, we add one more line to the hosts file
if [ "$_HOSTNAME" != "localhost" ]; then
echo "127.0.0.1 $_HOSTNAME" >> /etc/hosts
fi
This will look in /system/etc/ for the regular linux hostname file. If it exists, it will take the hostname from that file and set as the global hostname.
If it does not exist, "localhost" is used instead. Also it creates the /system/etc/hosts file.
Add or Edit your hostname like this.
Code:
echo "myhostname" > /system/etc/hostname
Note: Remember to delete the hosts and hostname files in your debian /etc/ dir when using merged environment. Otherwise they will overwrite the once in /system/etc/ as debian has first priority.
Manipulating the Android Permissions
Androids permissions works by providing a User ID for each application. This user (Application) can then get a range of different permissions by being added to groups with the permissions required by the app. For an example an app that needs to write to the SD Card, should be a member of Androids sdcard_rw group which translates into 1015 in a Linux group id. Using the numeric values of the Android groups, we can assign these permissions to shell users, daemons etc.
An example:
I had problems with my Http Server because I wanted my www folder on my sdcard. But, the www-data user and group could not be allowed to write to the SD Card, which I needed it to do, because Android controls what permissions the SD Card should have, not even root can change that.
What I did was creating a system group that I named sdcard_rw (Same name as the android, just to better keep track of the groups) with the same Id as the Android sdcard_rw (1015). I then assigned that group to my www-data user (gpasswd -a www-data sdcard_rw) and now my lighttpd had Read/Write access to my sdcard.
You can use the same example for creating a regular SSH User by using the Android shell group or for any other type of user that needs some Android permissions to work properly.
[Edit: 2011-03-08 21:13]
- Added an permission example
Great...
I was just looking into this myself for the last few days.
strange how there isn't more of this being talked about.
at least I have been unable to find anything.
Omg this sounds awesome,
Will try this when u get home and will report back
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
I'm still trying to work out some problems with User Rights on SD Card. Can't get lighttpd to be allowed to create files in my SD Card www dir (Does not matter what user and group I set it to use). I can't even get the root account to be allowed to change permissions on SD Card files and folders. It's not the biggest problem, but will report back when I figure it out.
Nice! I've been constantly disappointed for the past year at how un-Linuxy Android is under the hood and unimpressed with the old chroot tricks. This looks much better and I'll try it soon.
I have added a new /system/bin/sh script that can be found in Part 1. This script will automatically look for bash and, if that exists, try to find bash.bashrc, .profile or .bashrc in /etc or the users home dir. If bash does not exist, it looks for sh instead. If you have both one of the Android specific compiled bash, then Debians bash is used when available as this is made to work in a real linux environment. Android bash does not seam to work that way. Also debians packages gets updates via APT.
Also I changed the way groups and users is created in Part 3. Manually inserting them to /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/group did not seam to be enough. The users and groups where only half registered. For an example the command "login" gave me a lot of errors, and i had problems with user rights. By using adduser and addgroup in a chroot before the first merge, the user management seams to work as it should now.
I was playing with Debian on my phone just a few days ago too. I've found that same G1 article you mentioned, and installed Lenny in a chroot environment. Background daemons work fine for me, I've installed OpenSSH and I'm using ConnectBot connecting to 127.0.0.1 to get a terminal, so I don't have to chroot every time. I even have X with tightvnc server + android-vnc-viewer. Running the desktop Firefox on my phone is fun Although not very useful. I'm still thinking about what awesome things we could do with this that we couldn't otherwise.
Anyway, great howto.
Do you have any details on the Thalamus kernel? What phone is it for? Overclocked, audio hack, etc? Or is it just a vanilla kernel with the extra module?
What applications can we dream up?
The first thing that springs to mind is could this be used to create a low power server running bittorrent and the like?
Would a cheap device like the Vodafone 845 be under-powered for this?
Can you connect to a usb hub to allow multiple devices to be connected to it? I'm thinking usb network adapters, external storage, etc.
How much additional effort on top of this guide would be needed?
Just curious...
will not... - -!
Well I learned one thing. Don't make Shell scripts when you are tired. I started a shell loop on phone bootup with my /system/bin/sh fix (Which had been changed). When using the merged environment, you need (for now) to enter /bin/login when you open a new shell and login as user with the password you created in Part 3. This will make Debian take over the user management which among other things will make sure that the right variables etc. exists. I have tried to locate where android controls new shell sessions, but I cant seam to find it.
When you make Debian take over, you can use your Linux shell as any other. .bashrc, .profile, /etc/bash.bashrc, /etc/profile files, change default shell (bash, sh, ash) in /etc/passwd and so on.
#9 Well the kernel is the same that is found in the Oxygen 2.0.1, so it's an gingerbread rom (2.3.3). If it works only in Oxygen, I don't know but I don't think so.
#10 He he, Could not say. For now I'm just trying to make it work as I want it to work. After that I might start playing around with different things.
The "login" command is no longer needed. I finally found a way to successfully control user variables and management, making Android and Debian work together as one when merging the two.
This is amazing. Totally going to do this later tonight when I get home.
If you merge using AUFS instead of making a chroot, you should perhaps use the system user (Id: 1000, Group: 1000) as the regular user.
There are only two static users in Android, 0 and 1000.
Android just isn't made to work as an multi-user system. This is how the Java UI is made, and we really need to Linux part to be compatible with that part of the OS. Instead of multi-users, android uses it's apps as users. Each app works as one user with different id. So the 10048 I used as regular user is just the ID of mine "Better Terminal". Switching to another terminal app changed the EUID.
Use the root and only root to work with in the shell. And then delete Debians "su" command and stick with the one from android. Debians need all users that execute "su" to be written to the /etc/passwd.
All GNU tool and library, that's Great. thanks a lot.
I have added an example of how to apply Android rules to shell users, daemons etc. Some daemons will need this in order to function.
I have added this in Thread 2 below the hostname example.
I also changed the main Thread. Found a fix for the rest of the permission problems, including the Android "su" command issue.
I have tested this Android/Debian merge using several methods (ADB, SSH, different local terminals) and it worked on most. I had one problem with one local terminal app that did not execute /etc/profile and some Debian users in /etc/passwd that didn't either.
To fix this I changed /system/bin/sh from using "/system/xbin/sh --login [email protected]" to instead use "/system/xbin/sh --rcfile /system/etc/profile [email protected]". I then moved the Debians /bin/bash to /usr/bin/bash and made a similar script file in /bin/bash > "/usr/bin/bash --rcfile /etc/profile [email protected]". You can make the same for /bin/sh if you don't like using bash for your /etc/passwd users.
Remember to change the bash bind mount in the mkdebian script from /bin/bash to /usr/bin/bash
Use whatever method works on your phone.
This looks like a ton of fun, and could be very useful. I'd like to try this on my NookColor (N2Acard, CM7.1), probably using The Guardian Project's lilDebi image as a base. They go the chroot route with their installer, and I'm going to have to do some hacking on their scripts to make them work with the NookColor. I figure if I'm going to have to hack on it, I might as well put my efforts toward a more ideal solution.
Question: It doesn't look like the CM7.1 kernel supports aufs. That is,
Code:
cat /proc/filesystems
doesn't return aufs as one of the supported filesystems.
Aside from a lack of elegance, is there any reason we can't apply your /sbin workaround to "merging" the whole filesystem? [I recognize there's a certain amount of ignorance behind the question; I figure there's only one way to cure that: Ask.]
OR, how difficult might it be to take a complete CM7.1 kernel and add aufs support to it?
'preciate any help I can get!
mailman1175 said:
This looks like a ton of fun, and could be very useful. I'd like to try this on my NookColor (N2Acard, CM7.1), probably using The Guardian Project's lilDebi image as a base. They go the chroot route with their installer, and I'm going to have to do some hacking on their scripts to make them work with the NookColor. I figure if I'm going to have to hack on it, I might as well put my efforts toward a more ideal solution.
Question: It doesn't look like the CM7.1 kernel supports aufs. That is,
Code:
cat /proc/filesystems
doesn't return aufs as one of the supported filesystems.
Aside from a lack of elegance, is there any reason we can't apply your /sbin workaround to "merging" the whole filesystem? [I recognize there's a certain amount of ignorance behind the question; I figure there's only one way to cure that: Ask.]
OR, how difficult might it be to take a complete CM7.1 kernel and add aufs support to it?
'preciate any help I can get!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
here's where you get aufs patches.
you'll have to build the kernel yourself to make it work.
to the OP:
using the aufs mount method instead of a chroot...
I have a small problem, I don't know if it shows up with your .img filesystem method, but with an sd-ext partition used intead of the .img file, apt-get fouls massively when trying to update/upgrade libc6.
it complains about the libc6*.so existing in two places at once, and requests the existing one be removed. If it's removed, then nothing in the Linux install works, because just about everything is compiled against libc. I can use busybox to manipulate files with the libc6 removed or hidden away, but can't seem to get past the error since dpkg and apt don't work without some version of libc installed.
Any hints/suggestions? I like your scripts a lot better than the chroot ones I cobbled together from everyone else's work last year for similar purposes before I got aufs working in a kernel.

[GUIDE] Native Debian on Samsung Galaxy i7500

Hello fellow phone enthusiasts,
there are some sources on the internet describing how to run Debian on the Samsung Galaxy i7500 (Samsung's first Android device). Unfortunately, none of these sources can act as a complete guide, so I thought I could try to fill this void. This guide is far from complete and will hopefully grow over time. Anyway, I hope this is helpful for some people that are trying to do the same.
Note that this post should have gone into the development section, but I'm not senior enough to post there. Also the URLs in this guide are messed up for the same reason. Each messed up URL is marked with "(FIX this url)". I will fix these things as soon as possible, if there is any interest in this guide.
Best regards,
Frank
0. WARNING
This guide is for experienced users only. You might brick your phone while following this guide. I will not take responsibilty for any harm that may happen to you, your phone or those around you when following this guide. Please read and understand the complete guide before doing the first step. You have been warned.
Make a nandroid backup (can be done in the recovery image). Really, do it. Even if you think there's no valuable data, you must do a nandroid backub, because you will need to have the boot.img to boot back into android after debian has been installed. You must also copy your nandroid backup onto your PC.
1. Credits
A few years ago, there has been quite an active development community for the Galaxy i7500. Unfortunately, these forums have now pretty much died and I was not an active member of that community, because I was using it as my primary device back then and had no interest in hacking it.
Anyway, a HUGE THANK YOU goes to the fine fellas from drakaz.com and the GAOSP. You guys are awesome!
The actual hard technical work for this guide has been done by the authors of the following guides. I'm simply trying to understand what they did and write a step-by-step guide using their expertise:
(FIX this url)https :// code . google . com/p/linux-on-android/wiki/BasicSteps
(FIX this url)https :// wiki . debian . org/ChrootOnAndroid
(FIX this url)http :// www . bananenfisch . net/?p=1056
(FIX this url)https :// sven . killig . de/android/console.html
2. Overview
The goal of this guide is to have a running Debian Squeeze (Debian 6) running natively on a Samsung Galaxy i7500. Debian will not be run in a chroot environment on top of android, but instead the phone will directly boot into debian when powering it on. Debian will be installed on a SD card, so that we could still boot into Android, should we really mess things up at some point. It will not be true dual boot though (i.e. you have to reflash the boot section from a PC to boot into Android).
2.1 Primary goals
In the end, I'd like have the following functionality:
WLAN
Bluetooth
X Window / Graphical User Interface
All this is possible with below description now.
But this means we will loose the ability to make phone calls, send text messages, use GPS, connect to the internet through 3G or anything else you would normally expect from a smartphone. It's very likely possible to also have this functionality included, but I simply don't need it for my project. If someone else is willing to investigate this, I would be interested in the results though.
2.2 Prerequisites
Things you'll need include:
good Linux knowlegde
1 rooted Samsung Galaxy i7500 (I recommend to flash GAOSP)
1 micro SD card (I'm using an 8 GiB class 4 card)
1 computer running Linux with the following software installed (I'm using Debian & Fedora, but any distribution that has debootstrap should work)
debootstrap
git
fastboot (I suggest to use the version that comes with your distro, but you can also try the one from the Android SDK)
GCC cross-compiler for ARM in order to compile the kernel (Debian and Fedora come with compiler versions, that didn't work for me, so I'm using version 7 of the Android NDK, i. e. GCC version 4.4.3)
3. Installing Debian
Note that I had already GAOSP2 beta 3 installed on the i7500. I don't know if any of these steps are possible without installing GAOSP first.
3.1 Prepare partitions on SD card
The Samsung Galaxy i7500 has an "internal SD card" which will be preserved for use with Android, the recovery image, a.s.o. The external SD card will be used for debian. ALL data on the external card will be lost after below steps.
Put the SD card into an SD card reader or boot the i7500 into recovery mode (press "vol-" and "call" buttons when switching on the phone). Note that using GAOSP directly didn't work for me, because for some reason only the first partition was shown on the PC.
Code:
cfdisk /dev/sdX
(replace X with the correct letter for your SD card, and then create the one big enough partition for your needs, I created one 4GiB primary partition leaving me 4GiB for playing around later)
Code:
sudo mke2fs /dev/sdX1
3.2 Build debian filesystem structure
Create a directory for the newly created debian partition (I assume it' s called "debian") and run the following commands
Code:
sudo mount /dev/sdX1 ./debian/
Code:
sudo debootstrap --verbose --arch armel --foreign squeeze ./debian/ (FIX this url) http :// ftp . de . debian . org/debian
Code:
sudo umount ./debian/
3.3 Finalize the debian installation
The following is based on the steps as described here (FIX this url) wiki. debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid and www . bananenfisch .net/?p=1056.
Boot phone into GAOSP
Open terminal
Code:
su
Code:
cd /data/local
Code:
mkdir debian
Code:
mount /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /data/local/debian
Finalize bootstrap:
Code:
chroot /data/local/debian /debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage
Mount special file systems and chroot into Debian:
Code:
for f in dev dev/pts proc sys ; do mount -o bind /$f /data/local/debian /$f ; done
Code:
chroot /data/local/debian /bin/bash
Finalise the installation:
Code:
echo "deb (FIX this url) http :// ftp . de . debian . org/debian/ squeeze main non-free contrib" > /etc/apt/sources.list
Code:
apt-get update
Code:
rm -f /etc/mtab
Code:
ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab
Code:
passwd root
Code:
echo i7500 > /etc/hostname
Code:
apt-get install openssh-server
Code:
apt-get clean && apt-get autoclean
The ssh-sever can be started whenever you like through
Code:
/etc/init.d/ssh start
Afterwards you can log in from your PC using "ssh [email protected]" into the chroot environment.
3.4 Configure locale
We need to set the locale for the system (otherwise there will always be warning messages, e.g. when installing new software):
Code:
apt-get install locales console-data keyboard-configuration
You might want to tweak a few more settings (especially if your locale is not en_US). You can use:
Code:
echo export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 >> /root/.bashrc
Code:
export LC_ALL="en_US.utf8"
Code:
dpkg-reconfigure locales
Code:
dpkg-reconfigure console-data
Code:
dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
3.5 Installing additional software
You can now start installing additional software that you might need (I suggest you log into your phone through ssh as described above). You'll be needing an editor to edit configuration files (I choose vim). For setting up WiFi the package "wpasupplicant" is needed.
Code:
apt-get install vim less wpasupplicant
3.6 Chroot into debian
If you at a later time want to chroot into your debian environment, I recommend to store the following commands in a shell script (I stored it in /data/local/debian.sh) which you can then run as root.
Code:
#!/bin/sh
mount /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /data/local/debian
for f in dev dev/pts proc sys ; do mount -o bind /$f /data/local/debian/$f ; done
chroot /data/local/debian /bin/bash
4. Create boot image
4.1 Build kernel
Perform the following steps on your PC:
Download the Galaxo kernel sources: git clone (FIX this url) https :// github . com/drakaz/GalaxoKernel.git
Apply the patch described on (FIX this url) https :// code . google . com/p/linux-on-android/wiki/BasicSteps (themddi_toshiba_smd.c patch doesn't work, do the change manually)
Apply patch as described here: (FIX this url) http :// sven . killig . de/android/console.html
copy attached config.txt file to .config
I will eventually create a branch on github containing the patches and default config. But for now, you'll have to do the patching yourself.
Code:
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi- oldconfig
Code:
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-
Code:
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/android/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi- modules
4.2 Install modules
The modules need to be installed on the SD card partition, so you need to boot your phone into recovery and mount the SD card. Then execute the following command.
Code:
sudo make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi- INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/path/to/sdcard modules_install
In order for the WLAN kernel module to work the following files need to be copied from the GAOSP ROM to the /etc/ folder on the phone:
rtecdc.bin
nvram.txt
4.3 Minimal boot file system
A boot file system (a.k.a. initramfs) is needed to start the debian boot process. Create a folder called minimal_initramfs with the follwoing content:
Code:
minimal_initramfs/
|-- dev/
|-- init*
|-- mnt/
| `-- root/
|-- proc/
|-- sbin/
| `-- busybox*
`-- sys/
A binary of busybox can be downloaded from the busybox website (use busybox-armv4tl). The file "init" is actually a shell script with the following content:
Code:
#!/sbin/busybox sh
# initramfs pre-boot init script
# Something (what?) needs a few cycles here
/sbin/busybox sleep 1
# Populate /dev
/sbin/busybox mknod /dev/mmcblk1p1 b 179 9
# Mount the root filesystem, second partition on micro SDcard
/sbin/busybox mount -t ext2 -o noatime,nodiratime /dev/mmcblk1p1 /mnt/root
# Transfer root to SDcard
exec /sbin/busybox switch_root /mnt/root /sbin/init
The directory structure must then be compressed. To do this run the following sequence of commands when in the minimal_initramfs directory:
Code:
find . | cpio --quiet -H newc -o | gzip > ../minimal.cpio.gz
4.4 Creating the image
For creating the image you need the tool mkbootimg which you can find in android_bootimg_tools.tar.gz. Run the following command to create the boot image from the initramfs and the kernel you created above:
Code:
./mkbootimg --kernel /path/to/Galaxo-kernel/arch/arm/boot/zImage --ramdisk /path/to/minimal.cpio.gz --cmdline "fbcon=font:VGA8x8" --pagesize 2048 --base 10000000 -o debian_boot.img
5. Configuring network
5.1 Setting up the interface
Your /etc/network/interfaces file on the phone should look like this:
Code:
# Used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8). See the interfaces(5) manpage or
# /usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples for more information.
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
5.2 Setting up wireless encryption
For network configuration we'll be using wpa_supplicant which we already installed in one of the above steps. On the phone create the file /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf with the following content. Please enter the correct values for ssid, psk and key_mgmt for your network:
Code:
network={
ssid="YourSSID"
psk="YourSecretPassword"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
priority=11
}
5.3 Loading drivers
In order for the WLAN kernel module to be loaded add the following line to /etc/modules:
Code:
bcm4325 firmware_path=/etc/rtecdc.bin nvram_path=/etc/nvram.txt
6. Flashing the boot image and booting into Debian
Now it's finally time to finally flash the previously created boot image. At this time, be sure that you only have your Galaxy connected to your PC. Otherwise you might brick any other connected phone. On the PC run
Code:
sudo fastboot flash boot debian_boot.img
Then boot the Galaxy into fastboot mode by pressing "call" when powering on the phone.
When the process is finished the phone will boot into Debian and automatically connect to your wireless network (if the set-up was correct). You can now connect to the phone through ssh and enjoy your new pocket server.
If you may ever want to boot into android again, you just need to flash the original boot.img that you created with nandroid:
Code:
sudo fastboot flash boot boot.img
7. Bluetooth
7.1 Compile brcm_patchram_plus
For getting bluetooth operational it is necessary to use Broadcom's brcm_patchram_plus software. As it is not available as a Debian Squeeze package, we need to compile it ourselves. So we need to install the following packages on the phone:
Code:
apt-get install git gcc make libbluetooth-dev
Then it's possible to download the sources:
Code:
git clone (FIX this url)https :// github . com / MarkMendelsohn / brcm_patchram.git
And compile the tool using:
Code:
make
7.2 Activating bluetooth
In order for bluetooth to work the following files need to be copied from the GAOSP ROM to the same folder on the phone that you compiled the brcm_patchram_plus in:
BCM4325D1_004.002.004.0153.0156.hcd
After that it's possible to execute the followig commands:
Code:
echo 0 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state
echo 1 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state
./brcm_patchram_plus -d --enable_hci --baudrate 3000000 --use_baudrate_for_download --patchram BCM4325D1_004.002.004.0153.0156.hcd /dev/ttyHS0
The last command will never terminate and you will get a lot of output due to the (-d) switch. After starting a new console, you will be able to scan for bluetooth devices using:
Code:
hcitool -i hci0 scan
7.3 Connecting a keyboard
I'm using a Rapoo E6100 keyboard and the following procedure worked fine for me. It should be similar with other keyboards.
Code:
apt-get install python-bluez python-gobject python-dbus bluez-compat
Code:
cd /usr/share/doc/bluez/examples
Press pairing button on keyboard then
Code:
./simple-agent hci0 6C:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
(use the bluetooth address of your keyboard, according to the scan in the previous chapter)
The script will ask for a PIN. I entered 0000 on both the keyboard and phone and the keyboard was registered.
Code:
./test-device trusted 6C:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx yes
(again use the bluetooth address of your keyboard)
Code:
hidd --connect 6C:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
Now you should be good to use your keyboard.
7.4 Automate patchram
Right now, the KB is not automatically connected on boot, because the patchram command from above needs to be executed on every boot. Hence the following commands should be added to /etc/rc.local (before the exit 0):
Code:
#Activate bluetooth
echo 0 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state
echo 1 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state
/path/to/brcm_patchram_plus --enable_hci --baudrate 3000000 --use_baudrate_for_download --patchram /path/to/BCM4325D1_004.002.004.0153.0156.hcd /dev/ttyHS0 &
8. Setting the clock
I was having trouble with my clock forgetting the day and time after each reboot. It was a flaw in my kernel config. In the current version of attached config file this is fixed. Anyway, I'm also running NTP to have the clock more accurate.
Code:
apt-get install ntpdate
NTP already come nicely pre-configured (thanks, Debian maintainers!). After that the timezone can be selected using
Code:
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
9. GUI (X.org)
X.org works almost out-of-the-box since we already pathed the kernel as described in chapter 4 above. Based on the description from (FIX this url)https :// code . google . com/p/linux-on-android/wiki/BasicSteps only two minor changes have been made:
The framebuffer device is at /dev/fb0 instead of /dev/graphcics/fb0
I use evdev instead of tslib, because it provided better results for me (thanks to pabs from #debian-mobile for pointing me there)
9.1 Install X.org
All we need to do is download the software
Code:
apt-get install xorg xserver-xorg-video-fbdev xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9.2 Configuring X.org
Now create /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Code:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Touchscreen"
Driver "evdev"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/event2"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "fbdev"
Option "fbdev" "/dev/fb0"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "false"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Touchscreen" "CorePointer"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "DefaultServerLayout" "Default"
EndSection
9.3 Testing X.org
For testing X.org I've installed icewm and created the following /root/.xsession
Code:
#!/bin/sh
xterm&
exec icewm
Then just type in startx from the console and you have X. Of course you will have to change this to whatever you need or maybe even make X start on boot.
9.4 Boot into Browser
For my target system I want the phone to directly boot into a browser. This can easily be achieved by using the nodm package:
Code:
apt-get install nodm
and midori as browser:
Code:
apt-get install midori
We'll also need a user account. I called my user "default". But naturally you can of course choose whatever you like.
Code:
adduser default
Then nodm has to be configured in /etc/default/nodm:
Code:
# nodm configuration
# Set NODM_ENABLED to something different than 'false' to enable nodm
NODM_ENABLED=true
# User to autologin for
NODM_USER=default
# xinit program
NODM_XINIT=/usr/bin/xinit
# First vt to try when looking for free VTs
NODM_FIRST_VT=7
# X session
NODM_XSESSION=/etc/X11/Xsession
# Options for the X server
NODM_X_OPTIONS='vt7 -nolisten tcp'
# If an X session will run for less than this time in seconds, nodm will wait an
# increasing bit of time before restarting the session.
NODM_MIN_SESSION_TIME=60
And we have to create ~/.xsession for our user:
Code:
#!/bin/bash
midori -e Fullscreen &
exec icewm
A few tweaks in the icewm config (~/.icewm/preferences) will make the window manager look more nicely:
Code:
WorkspaceNames=" 1 "
TaskBarShowCPUStatus=0
TaskBarDoubleHeight=0
TaskBarShowWorkspaces=0
TaskBarShowMailboxStatus=0
TaskBarShowNetStatus=0
TimeFormat="%H:%M"
TaskBarShowWindowListMenu=1
TaskBarShowShowDesktopButton=0
10. Power management
The kernel is already configured with many different frequency govenors. Also the default govenor is set to "ondemand" but for some reason the when looking at /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor it's using the "performance" govenor. This can be solved by simply installing cpufreq-utils:
Code:
apt-get install cpufrequtils
The default settings are already using "ondemand", which seems to be a good choice. Anyway, further optimisations can be done in /etc/default/cpufrequtils if needed.
The phone still gets a little too warm for my taste (I think warmer than in android). Maybe there's something that could fix this, but I'm not an expert.
11. Known shortcomings
The whole set-up is in a really, REALLY early alpha stage
If any of the hardware buttons is touched in text mode the phone crashes (does not happen when in X.org)
The screen will time-out after some time, I have no idea how to wake it up again
Did I mention this is in an alpha stage?
12. Future improvements
Switching to a newer kernel version: The latest version of GAOSP runs on kernel version 2.6.35, while this guide is using 2.6.27. I have experimented with 2.6.29, but I had trouble getting a working frame buffer.
Switching to the latest version of debian (wheezy).
History
History:
2013-12-27:
Initial version
2013-12-30:
Minimized the the init script by removing mounts for /dev, /proc, and /sys. These are not necessary and mounting /dev prevents Debian's udev from working correctly.
2014-01-19:
Added description for bluetooth.
2014-01-25:
Added description for graphical user interface (X.org).
2014-01-25:
Boot into X/Browser and power management
2014-01-26:
Updated clock settings
Video proof
Hi all,
to get a better understanding what this is all about please watch the attached video. Please excuse the poor quality and the fingerprints on the screen.
As you can see the framebuffer output has a few quirks, but hopefully this will work out as soon as X is working.
BR,
Frank
All goals achieved
Okay, I think I now have achieved all goals. I can connect to WiFi and bluetooth. And there is a graphical user interface. Now the tweaking can start (first thing that comes to mind is powersaving). I really created this guide for myself, but I'd be happy to know if anyone else has interest in this topic.
Nice, I am interested. One question!
frank47 said:
Okay, I think I now have achieved all goals. I can connect to WiFi and bluetooth. And there is a graphical user interface. Now the tweaking can start (first thing that comes to mind is powersaving). I really created this guide for myself, but I'd be happy to know if anyone else has interest in this topic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice, I am interested. One question!
I would like to use this device to get some data from the sensors. I have tested some apps in Android GAOSP to read the sensors in the i7500, but instead of using android apps, it could be very interesting to have a debian.
Have you tried to do it? Do you think it is possible? Is it too tricky to get a stable debian running an app to send sensors' data to another debian? I could help if you see it is interesting.
What is your opinion? Thank you...
Hi PabloGN,
there are a lot of entries in /proc and /sys. I think it's likely to be possible te access the sensors. For now, I have only looked at the battery status. Don't know if you'd consider that a sensor. Anyway, you would probably have to re-write your software to use those devices instead of using already existing Java libs for android. Hard to tell,*if it's worth the effort.
BR,
Frank
PabloGN said:
I would like to use this device to get some data from the sensors.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the list of input devices on my the i7500:
Code:
[email protected]:~# cat /proc/bus/input/devices
I: Bus=0000 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="I7500_headset"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input0
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event0
B: EV=3
B: KEY=4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
I: Bus=0000 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="I7500_keypad"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input1
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event1
B: EV=3
B: KEY=800180 100000 0 41000800 1c1ec0 0 0 0
I: Bus=0000 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0033
N: Name="melfas-tsi-touchscreen"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input2
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event2
B: EV=b
B: KEY=400 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=11000003
I: Bus=0000 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="compass"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input3
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event3
B: EV=9
B: ABS=20305ff
I: Bus=0000 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="proximity_i2c"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input4
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event4
B: EV=1
So, it should at least be possible to read the compass and proximity sensor data form /dev/input/event3 and /dev/input/event4. Maybe there's more and I just haven't compiled it into the kernel or it's accessed in some other way. Sorry, the sensors are not part of my use case so far.
I'm only using /dev/input/event2 (touchscreen) in my xorg.conf as an input device. Works like a charm.
Good luck with your endeavour. If you want me to test something or send you the output of some command, just ask here or by PM.

[ARMv7/Intel][Root][Busybox][init.d]Optware-ng: install pre-compiled native packages

This how-to describes how to bootstrap and configure Optware-ng. Optware-ng is my Optware firmware-independent fork. This allows to install numerous pre-compiled packages.
Lists of available packages can be found here:
ARMv7 hardfloat
Intel
ARMv7 softfloat
And the project home is currently here:
https://github.com/alllexx88/Optware-ng
Some packages may not work, since not all of them are compatible with android, but most will. There're some pre-requisites you must satisfy before you can proceed:
1. You must be rooted
2. Optware-ng relies on some standard linux commands, the easiest way to make sure you have them is to install Busybox with all the links
3. We'll create Optware-ng initialization script in /system/etc/init.d, so init.d support is needed. If you don't have it, you can either add it (google for how-tos on doing this) or edit your init.rc android startup script to include Optware-ng initialization lines (though adding init.d support is still a better idea)
The following commands should be issued from terminal as root. I suggest you use some SSH server available on the Play Store, and connect via SSH from you PC.
1. This prepares needed environment:
- Optware-ng will be installed to /data/Optware-ng with /opt symlinked to it
- Optware-ng scripts rely on /bin/sh, so we symlink it to /system/bin/sh
- Optware-ng needs /tmp temp dir: we create 64Mb RAM disk there (you may adjust the size if you like)
Code:
mkdir -p /data/Optware-ng
mount -o remount,rw /
ln -s /data/Optware-ng /opt
mkdir /bin
ln -s /system/bin/sh /bin/sh
mkdir /tmp
chmod 777 /tmp
mount -t tmpfs -o size=64M tmpfs /tmp
mount -o remount,ro /
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/bin:/opt/sbin
2. This bootstraps the feed:
2.a) for ARMv7 hardfloat (most modern android devices):
Code:
cd /tmp
wget http://optware-ng.zyxmon.org/buildroot-armeabihf/buildroot-armeabihf-bootstrap.sh
sh buildroot-armeabihf-bootstrap.sh
2.b) for Intel:
Code:
cd /tmp
wget http://optware-ng.zyxmon.org/buildroot-i686/buildroot-i686-bootstrap.sh
sh buildroot-i686-bootstrap.sh
2.c) for the unlikely case where your device is ARMv7, but lacks FPU (softfloat feed):
Code:
cd /tmp
wget http://optware-ng.zyxmon.org/buildroot-armeabi-ng/buildroot-armeabi-ng-bootstrap.sh
sh buildroot-armeabi-ng-bootstrap.sh
Unless you're using ARMv7 softfloat feed, bootstrapping process may appear to be "stuck" on this:
Configuring glibc-locale
Generating locale-archive with default locales ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't be frightened: if your device isn't too powerful, it indeed takes a lot of time, but you have to do this just once, so please be patient.
3. Make sure environment needed for Optware-ng is restored after reboots, and also run Optware-ng startup scripts on boot:
Create init.d startup script and make it executable
Code:
mount -o remount,rw /system
echo '#!/system/bin/sh
mount -o remount,rw /
ln -s /data/Optware-ng /opt
mkdir /bin
ln -s /system/bin/sh /bin/sh
mkdir /tmp
chmod 777 /tmp
mount -t tmpfs -o size=64M tmpfs /tmp
mount -o remount,ro /
sleep 2
export PATH=$PATH:/bin:/opt/bin:/opt/sbin
for script in `ls /opt/etc/init.d/S*`; do
$script start
done' > /system/etc/init.d/S99Optware-ng
chmod 755 /system/etc/init.d/S99Optware-ng
mount -o remount,ro /system
Once again, you may adjust this line
Code:
mount -t tmpfs -o size=64M tmpfs /tmp
if you want greater/lesser RAM disk on /tmp
(4.) You're basically done, but I suggest you now install Optware-ng's dropbear-android package to act as an SSH server:
Code:
ipkg update
ipkg install dropbear-android
dropbear configs are stored in /opt/etc/default/dropbear and by default are:
Code:
DROPBEAR_ENABLE=no
DROPBEAR_PORT=2222
DROPBEAR_PASSWORD=password
Run these commands to adjust configs, enable dropbear and start it:
(replace <*> strings with actual desired values)
Code:
sed -i -e '/^DROPBEAR_PORT=/s/=.*/=<YOUR_PORT>/' -e '/^DROPBEAR_PASSWORD=/s/=.*/=<YOUR_PASSWORD>/' -e '/^DROPBEAR_ENABLE=/s/=.*/=yes/' /opt/etc/default/dropbear
/opt/etc/init.d/S51dropbear start
Now you are advised to use dropbear as SSH server to play with Optware-ng: use 'root' user, '<YOUR_PASSWORD>' password and '<YOUR_PORT>' port
For better security you may use public key authorization only: set password to blank and add your public keys to /opt/etc/dropbear/authorized_keys (don't forget to `chmod 600 /opt/etc/dropbear/authorized_keys` after you create it!) and restart dropbear or just reboot.
P.S. I'm not exactly sure that this is the right place to post this, please move it if needed.

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