Hypervisor for OS selection? - Other Operating Systems and Languages

I have a tablet and would like to use both Linux on ARM & AOSP. Rather than having a dual boot and two operating systems installed to the tablet with a static partition for both, can I boot into a hypervisor with a VM for Linux and a VM for AOSP? I've looked at some wind river and xen embedded hypervisors - but it's somewhat obscure and seems hard to get the answers I'm looking for.
On a slightly different subject - with dual booting on android, is the recovery partition used to hold the second OS? If so has anything been done to regain access to TWRP / CWM?

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android apps on linux?

as many of you know, android and Linux kernels started re-merging at version 3.3. People said that a short way down the road, android apps would be able to run natively in linux. the kernel is now version 3.6 and I've heard nothing more about running android apps in linux. people on these and other forums put a lot of great work into getting linux running on android devices. now with windows 8 coming out, the market will be full of both ARM and x86 based touch devices of all sizes and shapes. I for one would love to be able to boot up ubuntu on one of these devices, and use either traditional linux apps or android touch apps as my mood and situation dictate. so- any new word on when we will be able to run android apps in linux?
we are exploring this possibility, and did some work, but nothing to release yet.
I assume you already know that for now, you can run Android as a virtual machine on Linux host.
cool to hear the work is progressing, good luck!
I heard about using a VM but was never able to find where to get it.
nothing substantial yet, we wanted to run android apps directly on desktops, Linux or Windows. Using a virtual machine is really an over kill.
You can download a prebuilt vm from ours:
http://www.vmlite.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=158&func=view&catid=9&id=8838
it has been downloaded millions of times. You can search "Android vm" on google to find instructions.
interesed
I am also hoping to see a solution to this question also. I understand that Debian, fedora and Arch Linux all have different packaging systems i always thought is was a smiler difference with android with more Java worked into the core of things. So i would think that adding the proper Java support to any Linux distro to support the apk package it should work but i am not a programmer.

[Q] Is it possible to turn an Android installation into a Linux distribution? How?

Hello everyone,
In brief I was wondering if I could somehow turn an Android installation into a GNU/Linux distribution, given that Android uses the Linux kernel. Maybe I can install the GNU libraries and the rest of a distribution on top of the kernel, then deactivate the Android libraries that get on its way? I'm thinking of doing this because the Linux kernel already has all the required drivers for my device so perhaps the only thing that I should do is to tweak some files.
Here is my story:
At work I was given an old and unsupported industrial touchscreen module from a largely unknown company. The screen itself is connected to a computer module in the back, which has connectors for several peripherals, an embedded ARMv7 processor, and runs Android 2.2 (rooted) as its operating system.
I was given the task of finding out in a short time if I can install another operating system in the computer (say, Debian) to use it as a PC.
So I looked for information about this device, but I could only find the document attached.
So far, I have been able to turn it on, to connect it to the internet, to get it to read an SD card, and to connect USB peripherals such as a mouse and a keyboard.
But as for installing a different operating system, I haven't had any luck. I've tried different things. For example, I tried to boot into recovery mode by pushing several combinations of keys, but with no success so far. I've looked at the circuit board, but I haven't seen anything illuminating.
Also, I think that installing a Linux distribution from scratch would be painful, even impossible, because this device is not supported in any form and it doesn't come with a user guide or a software package, so it would be impractical to get the drivers for the device, as they are most likely non-standard.
I mean, is it even possible to accomplish this? Is it practical? How should I proceed? I think it is technically possible, but I'm not a Linux expert, not an Android expert, and not an embedded systems expert so I may be wrong.
I have also looked into other options. For example, the "Complete Linux Installer" Android app. I don't think this would work. The device only has ~100MB of free space in the internal flash memory.
There is also a way to install a GNU/Linux distribution that runs on chroot simultaneously with Android and communicates with it via VNC, called "Linux Deploy", but this sounds like it is not optimal. I don't think it would be a good option because of the limited resources of the device.
Any help will be appreciated.

Convert an Android system.img to run in a virtual machine?

This question is very specifically about virtualising the operating system from a system.img file (designed to be flashed to a device) in software like VMWare or VirtualBox. It is not about running Android in a virtual machine in a generic sense.
Google doesn't give me anything for this topic, so before I type out what doesn't work I'm going to leave the thread open and see what advice we can assemble. I do have a specific ROM in mind, but this would be vastly more useful for the world as a whole if the solution was generic. Even if it's very complicated. I imagine it is complicated because there's no installer and no driver pack for VMWare or VirtualBox. I would prefer a solution that uses one of these, even if performance isn't wonderful.
Notes: We're talking about virtualisation, so the ROM is of course for an x86 device, but I do not have the device yet to flash this ROM to. So solutions can't involve flashing to the real device in order to get the filesystem.

[Q] Pure UEFI Boot & Alternative Bootloaders?

So, from what i've read so far, direct UEFI booting is actually not yet possible right?
I've seen a guide with Grub, one with EasyBCD and one with the native windows boot manager, except the latter one which i obviously use, i dont prefer using the other bootloaders.
Are alternative bootloaders "somehow" supported, i use CloverEFI to load OS X, wondering if that could be a possible tool?
PS, why create a USB Android that wont give you the option to install the damn system???
Okay... I don't that it's the right place to ask this..... But i wnt to know if i dual boot remix os with Windows 8.1....and after this want to remove remix os from my pc...then what will be the procedure?
definitely not the right place...
ps, I am trying CloverEFI shortly, it seems Custom entries are possible and a few people have managed to get Androidx86 to run...we'll see if there could be a guide out of it, many people dont feel comfortable messing with the EFI partition...
any changes in this region?
anyone mind sharing the boot flags used in grub to load RemixOS?
My uefi setup
Using clover in uefi dual boot OS X and uefi grub2 Linux
Then install remix to root of Linux there are guides for this
Update grub2 entries
any attempts booting it with clover (ofc without grub)?
PlutoDelic said:
any attempts booting it with clover (ofc without grub)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kernel (renamed as kernel.efi) will run as an efi stub; it's just the cmdline that you need to check how to set via clover.
HypoTurtle said:
Kernel (renamed as kernel.efi) will run as an efi stub; it's just the cmdline that you need to check how to set via clover.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mate, thanks a lot, totally forgot to come back here and respond.
I see it is a matter of translating boot arguments between different bootloaders, but since the boot arguments are linux, i guess i'll just have to copy the ones from grub to clover.
is this the correct feature you are mentioning?
PlutoDelic said:
mate, thanks a lot, totally forgot to come back here and respond.
I see it is a matter of translating boot arguments between different bootloaders, but since the boot arguments are linux, i guess i'll just have to copy the ones from grub to clover.
is this the correct feature you are mentioning?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, pretty much. The efibootmgr bit seems most relevent. I haven't tried this (not running linux) but it seems via efibootmgr, you need to set location to initrd.img; root= to partition of RemixOS; SRC= to RemixOS location and androidboot.hardware=remix_x86(_64)
Lovely, triple boot on GPT EFI disks is so enjoyable . El Capitan, Windows 10, and now a more relaxed form of Linux, all independent to each other
Thanks a lot, i will digg well on this and will report back .
i made it quite far, but had to use the INSTALL=1 feature rather then use windows tools to install it on the disk. Very odd installation, the system installed on a folder in the root, not on the root itself...i reckon those i easily changed and fixed.
anyway, i have a very weird uefi implementation in my Latitude e6410, and many times it seems to ignore EFI partitions, but using the inbuilt disk partitioning tool (cgdisk i think) i managed to manually create a better sized EFI partition, and the main difference was the fact that it reserved a lower payload between the beginning of the disk and the EFI partition (OS X Disk Utility uses a higher one, something like 7kb). It was a pain to troubleshoot this but now i finally know why randomly UEFI detects bootloaders compared to the windows one.
However, RemixOS hangs on boot, and i think the reason is "DATA= USB_DATA_PARTITION=1"...
In general, can anyone let me know how to:
Have all the files in root (/*) and not in /Android-2016-03-01/*
Have proper locations rather then IMG's (direct to disk), as in i dont want DATA.IMG but a proper location, if i have to, i'll add another partition.
EFI Partition usage, what exactly should i put there and how do i represent EFI partition in boot arguments.
@HypoTurtle , i will be a PITA until i get this running up ...
If this goes well, i'll be happy to make a thorough guide, both directly booting to UEFI or using CloverEFI .
PlutoDelic said:
i made it quite far, but had to use the INSTALL=1 feature rather then use windows tools to install it on the disk. Very odd installation, the system installed on a folder in the root, not on the root itself...i reckon those i easily changed and fixed.
anyway, i have a very weird uefi implementation in my Latitude e6410, and many times it seems to ignore EFI partitions, but using the inbuilt disk partitioning tool (cgdisk i think) i managed to manually create a better sized EFI partition, and the main difference was the fact that it reserved a lower payload between the beginning of the disk and the EFI partition (OS X Disk Utility uses a higher one, something like 7kb). It was a pain to troubleshoot this but now i finally know why randomly UEFI detects bootloaders compared to the windows one.
However, RemixOS hangs on boot, and i think the reason is "DATA= USB_DATA_PARTITION=1"...
In general, can anyone let me know how to:
Have all the files in root (/*) and not in /Android-2016-03-01/*
Have proper locations rather then IMG's (direct to disk), as in i dont want DATA.IMG but a proper location, if i have to, i'll add another partition.
EFI Partition usage, what exactly should i put there and how do i represent EFI partition in boot arguments.
@HypoTurtle , i will be a PITA until i get this running up ...
If this goes well, i'll be happy to make a thorough guide, both directly booting to UEFI or using CloverEFI .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Should be easily set via grub.cfg / cmdline
2. Should be just point to partition (SYSTEM= / DATA= ); might need to label the partitions - will need to check initrd.img again
3. I think for efistub just kernel and initrd.img need to go there
you can already install Remix 0S or Android-x86 UEFI with grub2 bootloader.
HINT somebody has done it already. hmmm...definitely not the first.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/rem...l-remix-os-t3332653/post66663542#post66663542
My setup is UEFI i don't use UEFI sdcard anymore but can be adapted for ssd
Clover EFI in UEFI mode boots macOS, chainloads Grub2 in UEFi boots Fedora 23 or Remix OS.
Maromi said:
you can already install Remix 0S or Android-x86 UEFI with grub2 bootloader.
HINT somebody has done it already. hmmm...definitely not the first.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/rem...l-remix-os-t3332653/post66663542#post66663542
My setup is UEFI i don't use UEFI sdcard anymore but can be adapted for ssd
Clover EFI in UEFI mode boots macOS, chainloads Grub2 in UEFi boots Fedora 23 or Remix OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
actually i am trying to get rid of grub. The only good it did so far was format the EFI and install grub there, very useful for manual uefi entries.
EFISTUB seems very promising, but if it fails then the plan is to have Clover boot RemixOS straight away, not through grub.
ps, thanks for the guide, must've skipped my eyes somehow
PlutoDelic said:
actually i am trying to get rid of grub. The only good it did so far was format the EFI and install grub there, very useful for manual uefi entries.
EFISTUB seems very promising, but if it fails then the plan is to have Clover boot RemixOS straight away, not through grub.
ps, thanks for the guide, must've skipped my eyes somehow
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm booting RemixOs with EFISTUB.
read my thread at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-x86/phdb4n0yt4w
I used something like below with Efibootmgr,
efibootmgr -c -g -L "Remix (EFIStub)" -l '\EFI\remix\kernel' -u "root=UUID=0FF2F86F64F5912F ro quiet root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=remix_x86_64 androidboot.selinux=permissive SRC=RemixOs CREATE_DATA_IMG=1 rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap initrd=\\EFI\\remix\\initrd.img"
You have to copy kernel and initrd into EFI partition,i made a folder named remix there. And set UUID and SRC as relevant.
Thisu said:
I'm booting RemixOs with EFISTUB.
read my thread at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-x86/phdb4n0yt4w
I used something like below with Efibootmgr,
efibootmgr -c -g -L "Remix (EFIStub)" -l '\EFI\remix\kernel' -u "root=UUID=0FF2F86F64F5912F ro quiet root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=remix_x86_64 androidboot.selinux=permissive SRC=RemixOs CREATE_DATA_IMG=1 rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap initrd=\\EFI\\remix\\initrd.img"
You have to copy kernel and initrd into EFI partition,i made a folder named remix there. And set UUID and SRC as relevant.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nice, your link was actually the only resource i could find online.
right now, my UEFI is having problems detecting the EFI partition, but the fault is at DELL and their windows efi standards adaptation. i am going with gparted this time, cgdisk doesn seem to do it anymore.
Ok let me get this straight, im trying to make sense of this thread....
You are trying to install remix os directly as if it were the main OS of the PC?
and what are you using Windows or OSX what machines i mean windows or mac?
reason I ask is I have a Nextbook Flexx 11 windows it has a brother PC the ares 11 its the same in every way hardware wise the only difference is it has Android for the OS. long story short, remix has a rom image for the ares to flash and not the Flexx. I have not been able to get sound for the past year that I have been installing remix and A x86 on it.
My best guess though would be to try to find a bios that suits your hardware and android and flash it then you should get an android stock system running first then add remix to it after
Got to love GParted, it should be the main disk manager in any OS out there. Writing from RemixOS right now...cant wait to EFI STUB the sh!t out of this.
adambomb_13 said:
Ok let me get this straight, im trying to make sense of this thread....
You are trying to install remix os directly as if it were the main OS of the PC?
and what are you using Windows or OSX what machines i mean windows or mac?
reason I ask is I have a Nextbook Flexx 11 windows it has a brother PC the ares 11 its the same in every way hardware wise the only difference is it has Android for the OS. long story short, remix has a rom image for the ares to flash and not the Flexx. I have not been able to get sound for the past year that I have been installing remix and A x86 on it.
My best guess though would be to try to find a bios that suits your hardware and android and flash it then you should get an android stock system running first then add remix to it after
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What i am actually trying to achieve is 100% independance from other OS's. All the threads out there either touch the Windows boot files or like the main Jide instructions to install it on a Disk. The latter one is good when you have two disks. I do, but i have 3 operating systems. I have Windows 10 installed on its own disk, and a disk shared between OS X and RemixOS.
To clarify things for you, old bioses (legacy booting) depend on MBR (master boot record), a very limited technology, usually windows is installed 99% of the time this way. However, times have changed and luckily the ancient BIOS is being silently changed with UEFI. UEFI needs a GPT (GUID Partition Table) to be able to read it, and GPT disks (all disks can be formatted to GPT) give you the freedom to have infinite partitions, and there is a special 200MB partition in the beginning, where the boot files are stored. All OS's have their own folder inside, hence why none touch each other, and UEFI can be configured to load a file, each of different operating systems.
I am trying to free RemixOS from grub and boot directly with the EFI file. As for why, not really important .
PlutoDelic said:
nice, your link was actually the only resource i could find online.
right now, my UEFI is having problems detecting the EFI partition, but the fault is at DELL and their windows efi standards adaptation. i am going with gparted this time, cgdisk doesn seem to do it anymore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me,gparted is the best in this case. gdisk will help too,if you are familiar with it.
Make the ESP,format it to fat32 and don't forget to set 'esp' and 'boot' flags to the partition. Also i had to label it as 'EF00'.
Then you are good to go.
PlutoDelic said:
Got to love GParted, it should be the main disk manager in any OS out there. Writing from RemixOS right now...cant wait to EFI STUB the sh!t out of this.
What i am actually trying to achieve is 100% independance from other OS's. All the threads out there either touch the Windows boot files or like the main Jide instructions to install it on a Disk. The latter one is good when you have two disks. I do, but i have 3 operating systems. I have Windows 10 installed on its own disk, and a disk shared between OS X and RemixOS.
To clarify things for you, old bioses (legacy booting) depend on MBR (master boot record), a very limited technology, usually windows is installed 99% of the time this way. However, times have changed and luckily the ancient BIOS is being silently changed with UEFI. UEFI needs a GPT (GUID Partition Table) to be able to read it, and GPT disks (all disks can be formatted to GPT) give you the freedom to have infinite partitions, and there is a special 200MB partition in the beginning, where the boot files are stored. All OS's have their own folder inside, hence why none touch each other, and UEFI can be configured to load a file, each of different operating systems.
I am trying to free RemixOS from grub and boot directly with the EFI file. As for why, not really important .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to clarify a bit -- UEFI doesn't need the 200MB fat32 ESP partition. It reads from a efi folder present on any partition the UEFI can read (i.e. CD/DVD/USB/HDD's). Clover afaik goes a little further and scans for any *.efi file and auto-creates a boot entry for it 'guessing' what the .efi loads.
@Maromi as such using grub is much simpler; i.e. this guide (efi.zip on #20) can be followed to easily; manually set grub2 up.

For booting from UEFI, check out "rEFInd" graphical multi-boot menu..

While experimenting with RemixOS and UEFI boot configuration, and doing some internet research, I came across a very interesting graphical UEFI multi-boot menu called "rEFInd". It's a free/open source project, and you can find it on SourceForge.
It automatically detects all the OSs installed on your system (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac), and offers bot selection options for them. It also has some limited touch screen support.
For anyone using RemixOS on a UEFI based system, I highly recommend it! I even wish the RemexOS developers would switch to using it for UEFI boot.
Sounds good @mediawiz I will check it out.
well rEFInd is nice and I use clover but systemd-boot(formerly gummiboot) is my preference.
the only tricky thing is after OTA update you have to copy the new kernel and initrd.img to the esp before you can use Remix again
http://forum.xda-developers.com/remix/remix-os/bootloader-configs-t3455660

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