Looking for some help new here. - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

This is what i have going on. I have quite a few android phones i use to mine different cryptocurrency. most are older snap dragon ARM phones.
I am looking for something already created or if it is possible to create.
Is it possible to load a custom to the phone getting ridding of all unnecessary apps and programs. All i need to mine is wifi and my mining software which is run through Userland/Ubuntu. i currently have everything disabled and background process limited to try and help.
I looked into open source OS, but i learned it isn't one size fits all and a lot of my phones aren't even compatible with what developers have available for use.
I figured if there is something like this out there someone here would know. sorry if my description isn't that great and i hope this is in the right section.
any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.

What are the phones' brand & model?
Sidenote:
Anyone who has the impression that mining is child's play is mistaken. Millions of computers around the world are competing for the best computing power. This cannot be done with normal Android devices alone. You need either special mining hardware and/or a really good graphics card.

i have all sorts of models. samsung S series, Notes, LG, Motorola. no particular brand or model. thats where part of problem lies. Alot of them dont even have an open source offering. I understand why, but i don't. need an entire operating system ideally just loading a few functions would be best for my set up.
i agree mining is a pretty serious hobby/endeavor, but you are spreading misinformation, it can be done on cell phones and i've been doing it for 2 years. some people smarter than me made it possible with software and it is quite more profitable if done right than using gpu and cpu, especially on the network i mine.

Well, don't even start Zygote then if you can do everything in Linux world.

Renate said:
Well, don't even start Zygote then if you can do everything in Linux world.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's what i am trying to figure out. I can avoid booting android all together and just run linux.. im very new to this and been searching for a solution for a few weeks now and i can't find what i'm looking for. part of problems is i don't know what to search. is it possible to remove the android OS and boot a cellphone from linux. is that what you are saying i should be looking into? thanks to everyone taking time to respond as well

Just edit init.rc wherever that may be or its tributaries init.zygote1234.rc
There's the services zygote or zygote32 or zygote64.
Just comment them out or delete the tributary files.

Renate said:
Just edit init.rc wherever that may be or its tributaries init.zygote1234.rc
There's the services zygote or zygote32 or zygote64.
Just comment them out or delete the tributary files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok i need to put that in google translate. spanish isn't my strong suit
what would the process be called of loading linux and running it like the O.S. i'm trying to figure out what to google so i can try and find instruction of some sort just wrap my mind around it. if there is a name. thanks
gotta feel like talking to a toddler right now appreaciate the help

PBL ➡ xbl ➡ abl ➡ boot.img (kernel) ➡ init ➡ zygote ➡ Android services & apps

Renate said:
PBL ➡ xbl ➡ abl ➡ boot.img (kernel) ➡ init ➡ zygote ➡ Android services & apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you're saying there is a way to boot Linux on an Android phone? I thought that needed a special build designed for that device.

Renate said:
PBL ➡ xbl ➡ abl ➡ boot.img (kernel) ➡ init ➡ zygote ➡ Android services & apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok and will wifi still function after i do this do you know

ethical_haquer said:
So you're saying there is a way to boot Linux on an Android phone? I thought that needed a special build designed for that device.
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Click to collapse
on youtube i saw some people booting android, cant finding anyone disabling the zygote functions though, most cases people still want phones to work lol

mknick89 said:
ok and will wifi still function after i do this do you know
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That all should work fine.
You can just use the shell command stop which will stop all things Android-ish.
You can try out whatever you're doing without permanently disabling Android.
The only gotcha is to make sure that ADB is started inside init/init.rc and not by Android.
setprop persist.sys.usb.config adb should do that.

Renate said:
That all should work fine.
You can just use the shell command stop which will stop all things Android-ish.
You can try out whatever you're doing without permanently disabling Android.
The only gotcha is to make sure that ADB is started inside init/init.rc and not by Android.
setprop persist.sys.usb.config adb should do that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you please explain it a little more? So you delete some files in a specific directory, and that's it? You have to use ADB for the commands I guess? And is it really just the Linux kernel, or modified? Sorry for the childish questions.

Renate said:
That all should work fine.
You can just use the shell command stop which will stop all things Android-ish.
You can try out whatever you're doing without permanently disabling Android.
The only gotcha is to make sure that ADB is started inside init/init.rc and not by Android.
setprop persist.sys.usb.config adb should do that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have one more question to. should upload ubuntu to a certain directory or boot file or anything so the phone knows how to boot. or how does that work. this information is gold and i would like thank you for your time again

ethical_haquer said:
Can you please explain it a little more?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I write bunches of command line (shell) applications for Android and they are mostly identical to main line Linux.
Ok, some of the paths are different and a few other details are different.
You can write shell utilities that interact with Android over Binder, but those won't work if Android isn't running.
Just get the Android NDK which has the cross compilers and headers.
A "hello world" program should take you five minutes.
Just type uname -a and you can see what Linux kernel version you have.
You don't need to delete anything, just run your program.
If you want, you can stop Android temporarily by stop
To prevent it from ever running you need to patch some .rc file so that zygote (32 and/or 64) doesn't ever start.
To write to the screen (without Android's surface flinger running) you'll have to play with the framebuffer yourself.
You have an OS already on your device, it's Linux.
If you want to run Ubuntu on your device, that's an entirely different project.

i launch the files for mining software from inside ubuntu. Currently accessing ubuntu through the userland app. here is a 2 minute video of someone on cpu launching a similar version of my program made for linux. same steps i go through pretty much would this look like it could be done from the linux command on a phone. or do you think it is compatible really?

only first minute matters of video

There's no audio and I'm not at all interested in mining.
If it's not a GUI app, just recompile it using the Android NDK.

Renate said:
There's no audio and I'm not at all interested in minin
If it's not a GUI app, just recompile it using the Android NDK.f it would lau
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
oh i understand. i actually found the info. i was more wondering if it would launch, thanks for looking though. I going to study those commands you gave me and give it a try. Im very new to this took me 12 hours to load 4 lines of code the other day successfully lol thanks again

Related

[Q] Native applications development

Hi,
I wonder how can one develop/compile native apps like ls, rm dir and etc.
Please a normal example would be appreciated.
1 - system config
2 - important files/headers
3 - compiler / settings
Thanks!
hi!
the apps you mentioned are there ...
just get "Terminal Emulator" from market and try...
It opens a shell with text entry, there you can type commands like
ls (which is the linux equivalent to "dir")
cat (print out the content of a textfile)
pwd (show actual working directory)
touch (create empty file)
rm (remove)
and so on
Bax
Baxxx said:
hi!
the apps you mentioned are there ...
just get "Terminal Emulator" from market and try...
It opens a shell with text entry, there you can type commands like
ls (which is the linux equivalent to "dir")
cat (print out the content of a textfile)
pwd (show actual working directory)
touch (create empty file)
rm (remove)
and so on
Bax
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He means compiling native apps for the phone, like ls, rm etc
OP:
There might be a cross-compiler in the android sdk but I can't remember seeing it. In the likely chance it's not there you need to set up your own toolchain, if you're on Linux it's a fairly straight-forward affair. Too long to post in a reply but just google "arm toolchain" or browse around android wikis and you should find good guides.
If you're on windows it's easiest to run Linux in a VM and do it from there. With Mac it's technically possible to set it up natively but requires using disk images and other hacks so you're probably better off going the VM route there too.
If you want to write native code, I think this is what you're looking for:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html
beno1 said:
If you want to write native code, I think this is what you're looking for:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed this one fits my needs.
Thanks!
beno1 said:
If you want to write native code, I think this is what you're looking for:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just beware that the NDK doesn't let you write completely native binaries, you still need to use the java VM on the phone. So I'm pretty sure you won't be able to build the standard *nix apps with it.
ddewbofh said:
Just beware that the NDK doesn't let you write completely native binaries, you still need to use the java VM on the phone. So I'm pretty sure you won't be able to build the standard *nix apps with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure you can. I've rewritten and recompiled adbd.
The android ndk I believe comes with a precompiled arm-eabi toolchain which you can use. Getting the makefile correct is a pain though, otherwise you'll have to compile statically rather than dynamically. AFAIK the only way for a dynamic compile is if you rebuild android entirely from source.
zephyrix said:
Sure you can. I've rewritten and recompiled adbd.
The android ndk I believe comes with a precompiled arm-eabi toolchain which you can use. Getting the makefile correct is a pain though, otherwise you'll have to compile statically rather than dynamically. AFAIK the only way for a dynamic compile is if you rebuild android entirely from source.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Neato, does autotools & co work with it as well? I've only looked very briefly at it and saw the "You need Dalvik" bit in the docs.
ddewbofh said:
Neato, does autotools & co work with it as well? I've only looked very briefly at it and saw the "You need Dalvik" bit in the docs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Autotools, I haven't actually tried them for myself but I don't see any reason they shouldn't. In the end it's just a cross-compile.
Google only officially says you need Dalvik because that's the "only" way to interface with applications, and there's no actual way to "install" native binaries officially (though really an adb push would suffice). Take a look at Barnacle Wifi Tether. It's actually just a GUI frontend to a native application. If you look in /data/data/net.szym.barnacle/files, you'll notice some binaries. You can actually run them through adb shell (as long as you're rooted.)
At any rate, these should help a bit:
http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=Compiling_for_Android
http://android-tricks.blogspot.com/2009/02/hello-world-c-program-on-using-android.html
zephyrix said:
Autotools, I haven't actually tried them for myself but I don't see any reason they shouldn't. In the end it's just a cross-compile.
Google only officially says you need Dalvik because that's the "only" way to interface with applications, and there's no actual way to "install" native binaries officially (though really an adb push would suffice). Take a look at Barnacle Wifi Tether. It's actually just a GUI frontend to a native application. If you look in /data/data/net.szym.barnacle/files, you'll notice some binaries. You can actually run them through adb shell (as long as you're rooted.)
At any rate, these should help a bit:
http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=Compiling_for_Android
http://android-tricks.blogspot.com/2009/02/hello-world-c-program-on-using-android.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is nice tut for the native app hunters.
http://jackytw.blogspot.com/2009/11/howto-run-native-linux-application-on.html

[Q] Transmission Daemon on Prime

Hi I want to get transmission-daemon running on prime, and I think am getting closer, but I'm completely green to linux so I could be way of :/
I build and installed Arm Ubuntu chroot'ed on my prime and used it to compile the transmission-daemon source, I had to do some fiddling to get the libevent to compile, but I did get the executable up and running in Ubuntu.
If it is running on the arm platform in Ubuntu, it should be possible to get it to run on android right?
Then i transferred the files to android, added the shared libs, moved the files to system/bin/transmission and chmoded to x.
But when i try to run ./transmission-daemon for that dir it tells me that the file dose not exist :/ .. i can see em there, and the file names get suggested to me, but no :/
I have posted the files, if some one wants to have a go at it
transmission-bins.rar
Perhaps you mistyped some of the commands...
Did you run ldconfig again to 'register' the shared library? Are you sure the shared library is in the LD_PATH?
protocol113 said:
Perhaps you mistyped some of the commands...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I certainly did misspell commands along the way, cause as everybody can see English is not my first language.. But I don't see the need to be rude..
leppie said:
Did you run ldconfig again to 'register' the shared library? Are you sure the shared library is in the LD_PATH?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks you, you seam to be right, looks like it uses more libs then i thought, will try to make the build more static.
But in theory, a statically linked executable compiled on the tablet, in ubuntu should be able to run right?
Statically linked should work and does work, I've done it (hint: it helps if you statically link the runtime library too; Android doesn't use glibc or libstdc++).
Dynamically linked should work if you have all the libs and make sure the linker can find them. I haven't played much with that.
The differences between Android and chroot on Android, are the runtime environment (which the rutime libraries are apart of unless you _especially_ tell gcc to be static about them).`
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
entropin said:
I certainly did misspell commands along the way, cause as everybody can see English is not my first language.. But I don't see the need to be rude..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i dont think he/she was trying to be rude....

SU for Android on ChromeOS

This is a cross-post from a reddit thread I started, but this is probably a more appropriate location for it.
I have been trying to modify files in the system folder for the Android container on the Asus Flip so I can install SuperSu, but have run into some problems.
The system folder is contained in a squashfs image on the chromebook at /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img. Mounted squashfs images appear to not support read-write access. I have been able to unsquash the image, add the SuperSU apk to the /system/priv-app folder and su to the /system/xbin folder, and remake the image. This boots, but SuperSU force closes as soon as it starts.
To make tinkering easier, I've tried building a writable image using dd and mkfs. I placed it in a location that has rw access and modified the /etc/init/android-ureadahead.conf script which mounts it to enable rw access. Unfortunately though it won't boot. The boot logs for the android container show a litany of SELinux errors for different things that it could not set context, operation not permitted. I can post the exact log if necessary. Some googling led me to find that the SELinux security context attributes weren't being replicated in my image, so I tried mounting with context and fscontext options equal to the contexts from the original image, but I get the same problem.
If anyone has any ideas I'd be especially grateful.
lionclaw said:
This is a cross-post from a reddit thread I started, but this is probably a more appropriate location for it.
I have been trying to modify files in the system folder for the Android container on the Asus Flip so I can install SuperSu, but have run into some problems.
The system folder is contained in a squashfs image on the chromebook at /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img. Mounted squashfs images appear to not support read-write access. I have been able to unsquash the image, add the SuperSU apk to the /system/priv-app folder and su to the /system/xbin folder, and remake the image. This boots, but SuperSU force closes as soon as it starts.
To make tinkering easier, I've tried building a writable image using dd and mkfs. I placed it in a location that has rw access and modified the /etc/init/android-ureadahead.conf script which mounts it to enable rw access. Unfortunately though it won't boot. The boot logs for the android container show a litany of SELinux errors for different things that it could not set context, operation not permitted. I can post the exact log if necessary. Some googling led me to find that the SELinux security context attributes weren't being replicated in my image, so I tried mounting with context and fscontext options equal to the contexts from the original image, but I get the same problem.
If anyone has any ideas I'd be especially grateful.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wayyyy out of my area of expertise, but here's my (completely novice) best guess.
>All Chromebooks are write-protected with a screw on the motherboard
>Putting a Chromebook in developer mode allows for some tinkering ie things like chroots, and on the asus flip, the ability to install apks from unknown sources.
>Unscrewing the write-protect screw allows for the ability to completely install a new operating system or dual boot setup.
>Maybe you need to do that before you're able to accomplish root access?
My other idea would be to try and figure out a way of doing a systemless root?
Also, total aside but since this is the only thread I've found on XDA about this device, I think chroots are theoretically possible now without the need to be in developer mode via Android apps (even without root on Android). Download the GIMP port from the Play Store to see what I'm talking about. Playing around with that for a few minutes really made me wish that it didn't use emulated mouse/keyboard in it's implementation. Also, it appears that apt-get is broken, but regardless it might interest someone out there looking for a project.
back from the dead, any progress on this?
I have been able to successfully root the Android image on my Asus Flip.
I built a blank image with dd in /usr/local, formatted it with mkfs, mounted it to a folder, mounted the original system.raw.img to a folder, copied the files across, placed *all* the SuperSU files listed as 'required' in the SuperSU update-binary in the relevant places in /system in my new image, set permissions & contexts for those files, edited arc-system-mount.conf and arc-ureadahead.conf to point to the new image and, finally, patched /etc/selinux/arc/policy/policy.30 with the SuperSU sepolicy patching tool in order to boot my rooted Android instance with selinux set to enforcing.
I have created a couple of scripts which more-or-less fully automate this procedure, which can be downloaded from nolirium.blogspot.com. Please feel free to download, open the scripts in a text editor to check them out, and try them out if you like. Only tested on Asus Flip, though.
I seem to be unable to post attachments at the moment so I will just add the descriptions here, I could probably post the entire scripts here too if anyone wants. Feel free to let me know what you think.
DESCRIPTIONS:
1-3.sh
Combines the first three scripts listed below.
01Makecontainer.sh
Creates an 900MB filesystem image in /usr/local/Android_Images, formats it, then copies Android system files therein.
02Editconf.sh
Modifies two system files: arc-system-mount.conf - changing the mount-as-read-only flag and replacing the Android system image location with a new location; and arc-ureadahead.conf - again replacing the Android system image location. Originals are renamed .old - copies of which are also placed in /usr/local/Backup.
03Androidroot.sh
Mounts the previously created Android filesystem image to a folder, and copies SuperSU files to the mounted image as specified in the SuperSU update-binary.
04SEpatch.sh
Copies an SELinux policy file found at /etc/selinux/arc/policy/policy.30 to the Downloads folder, opens an Android root shell for the SuperSU policy patching command to be entered, then copies the patched policy back to the original location. A copy of the original policy.30 is saved at /etc/selinux/arc/policy/policy.30.old and /usr/local/Backup/policy.30.old
Uninstall.sh
Removes the folder /usr/local/Android_Images and attempts to restore the modified system files arc-system-mount.conf and arc-ureadahead.conf.
ok so two questions, one do you think this would work on the Acer r13 convertable? and 2 where can I find the actual instructions/scripts
keithkaaos said:
ok so two questions, one do you think this would work on the Acer r13 convertable? and 2 where can I find the actual instructions/scripts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The R13 has a 64-bit Mediatek processor, right?
I have added a version for ARM64, but I haven't tested it.
You can find the instructions and scripts at nolirium.blogspot.com
ya, its a mediatek. and thanks ill go see if i can find it
---------- Post added at 03:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:58 AM ----------
wow, ok. i can do this but im not sure i want to.. after reading the possible problems i may run into. Im going to be getting the G. Home in a couple weeks and i gotta keep things running smooth. This seems like going a tad too far then i need to. The other day i had action launcher going and it looked pretty damn good but i really want to try and get the action3.apk that i have put into the pri-app folder or whatever the chromebook uses i found the syst folder but cant access it. Im wondering if i make the machine writable it would work but im afraid of losing my updates, as long as i could do them manualy, i guess that would be cool. Also since im already going on... has anyone found a way to disable the dev boot screen without tinkering with the physical chromebook yet?
SuperSU on Chromebook
Hey there I love this post but unfortunately im on the mediatek (well not unfortunately cause i love it) but i do really want super su .. But i found this other post that i tried out but i am having a problem executing the scripts. When i go to run the first one, it says can not open "name of script" but the dev takes a pretty cool approach. Im still new to Chrome OS but thanks for the post and if you have any advice on executing scripts id love to hear it!! http://nolirium.blogspot.com/
I'm guessing the above post was moved from another thread...
Anyway, it turns out that zipping/unzipping the files in Chrome OS's file manager sets all the permissions to read-only. Apologies! sudo chmod+x *scriptname* should fix it...
Regarding OS updates, I actually haven't had a problem receiving auto-updates with software write-protect switched off; the main possible potential issue I could imagine arising from the procedure I outlined would involve restoring the original conf files if both sets of backups get deleted/overwritten. This seems unlikely, but in that case either manually editing the files to insert the original string (/opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img), or doing a powerwash with forced update might be necessary in order to get the original Android container booting again.
I don't think anyone's found a way to shorten/disable the dev boot screen without removing the hardware write-protect screw - from what I've read, the flags are set in a part of the firmware which is essentially read-only unless the screw is removed. Perhaps at some point the Chrome OS devs will get fed up of reading reports from users whose relatives accidentally reset the device by pressing spacebar, and change the setup. Here's hoping.
Hey just jumpig in the thread right quick to see if these instructions are old or what-- got a chromebook pro and the notion of having to update a squashed filesystem every timeto install su seems like a pain..
Is there any kind of authoritative documentation/breakdown regarding what Chromeos is mounting where before I start breaking things? Also anyone happen to know if there's a write-protect screw anywhere in the chromebook plus/pro?
Other questions:
* adbd is running, but is not accessible from adb in the (linux) shell, which shows no devices. Do I need to access adb from another device (i'm short a usb c cable right now) or can I use adb (which is there!) on the chrome side to access adbd on the android side?
* Anyone know if adb via tcp/ip is available? Don't see it in the android settings.
Hey,
There's no real documentation AFAIK, the thing is that ARC++ is a bit of a moving target, as it's so actively being developed/reworked. For instance, with the method described earlier in the thread - it started off being possible to just swap out a file location in arc-ureadahead.conf, then they changed it to arc-setup-conf, and now, since a few CrOS versions ago, the rootfs squashfs image is mounted in a loop fashion via the /usr/sbin/arc-setup binary instead, making an overview of the setup somewhat opaque to the casual observer.
I was kind of hoping to implement a kind of hybrid systemless root style setup myself, but unfortunately I haven't really managed to find the time to sit down and fully figure out a few parts of the puzzle, in particular relating to minijail and working with namespaces. So, I'm still using the method mentioned in posts above for my rooting needs at the moment, the only significant changes being that at the moment I'm replacing /opt/google/containers.android.system.raw.img with a symlink to my writeable rooted rootfs img, and also that in recent CrOS versions the mount-as-read only and debuggable flags can be found in /etc/init/arc-setup-env ("Environment variables for /usr/sbin/arc-setup").
In general though, one can kind of get an idea of what's going on in the default setup by reading through the various /etc/init/arc-* Chrome OS upstart jobs (and their logs in /var/log). Though, like I say, things keep changing around somewhat with every CrOS update, as the implementation 'improves'. As time goes by, and the subsystem matures, it'll certainly be interesting to see what other approaches are possible relating to customizing Android on Chrome OS.
There should definitely be a write protect screw somewhere on the motherboard for the Samsungs, but so far I haven't come across any pics showing exactly which screw it is. So far, no-one seems to have been brave/foolhardy enough to fully tear down their own machine and locate the screw!
Regarding adb, on my device I found the following in arc-setup-env:
# The IPV4 address of the container.
export ARC_CONTAINER_IPV4_ADDRESS=100.115.92.2/30
adb 100.115.92.2 (in Chrome OS's shell) works fine for me, the authorisation checkbox pops up and then good to go. su works fine through adb as expected. There's also a useful little nsenter script in Chrome OS to get into the android shell; /usr/sbin/android-sh, which I've been using in my script to help patch SE linux.
I actually just updated my rooting scripts recently to support 7.1.1, though I've only tested on my own Armv7 device (Flip C100).
I'll attach them to this post in case anyone wants to take a look. There's a readme in the zip, some more details can also be found here and below
EDIT: Fixed the SE Linux issue occurring with the previous version I uploaded (it was launching daemonsu from u:r:init:s0 instead of u:r:supersu:s0).
Anyone considering giving them a spin should bear in mind that the method does involve creating a fairly large file on the device as a rooted copy of the android rootfs. (1GB for arm, 1.4GB for Intel). There's a readme in the zip but the other couple of important points are that:
a) The SuperSU 2.82 SR1 zip also needs to be downloaded and extracted to ~/Downloads on the Chromebook.
b) Rootfs verification needs to be off. The command to force this is:
Code:
sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh --remove_rootfs_verification --force --partitions $(( $(rootdev -s | sed -r 's/.*(.)$/\1/') - 1))
or the regular command to do it is:
Code:
sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh --remove_rootfs_verification
c) If, subsequent to running the scripts, there's a problem loading Android apps (e.g. after a powerwash or failed install), the command to restore the original rootfs image is:
Code:
sudo mv /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img.bk /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img
Hey this is a great response.. thanks!
Nolirum said:
Hey,
There's no real documentation AFAIK, the thing is that ARC++ is a bit of a moving target, as it's so actively being developed/reworked. For instance, with the method described earlier in the thread - it started off being possible to just swap out a file location in arc-ureadahead.conf, then they changed it to arc-setup-conf, and now, since a few CrOS versions ago, the rootfs squashfs image is mounted in a loop fashion via the /usr/sbin/arc-setup binary instead, making an overview of the setup somewhat opaque to the casual observer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
verity
Yeah playing with it now, I'm looking at these /etc/init/arc-*-conf files... I see that the /dev/loop# files are being set up... (more below)
Nolirum said:
I was kind of hoping to implement a kind of hybrid systemless root style setup myself, but unfortunately I haven't really managed to find the time to sit down and fully figure out a few parts of the puzzle, in particular relating to minijail and working with namespaces. So, I'm still using the method mentioned in posts above for my rooting needs at the moment, the only significant changes being that at the moment I'm replacing /opt/google/containers.android.system.raw.img with a symlink to my writeable rooted rootfs img, and also that in recent CrOS versions the mount-as-read only and debuggable flags can be found in /etc/init/arc-setup-env ("Environment variables for /usr/sbin/arc-setup").
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry not sure what you mean by "hybrid systemless root style setup"? I take it you're modifying the startup script and replaced the squashfs file in /opt... my concern about doing it was whether they were implementing some kind of dm-verity equivalent to the squashfs file to make sure it hasn't been tampered with (say, by adding /sbin/su or whatever) or whether it's safe to replace that file.. Sounds like you're saying it is? (update: I guess that's what rootfs verification does, and we can turn it off....)
Also you mean arc-setup.conf:
env ANDROID_DEBUGGABLE = 0
right?
Nolirum said:
In general though, one can kind of get an idea of what's going on in the default setup by reading through the various /etc/init/arc-* Chrome OS upstart jobs (and their logs in /var/log). Though, like I say, things keep changing around somewhat with every CrOS update, as the implementation 'improves'. As time goes by, and the subsystem matures, it'll certainly be interesting to see what other approaches are possible relating to customizing Android on Chrome OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hadn't realized the boot was still in flux-- I'd have figured they'd worked that out by now...
Nolirum said:
There should definitely be a write protect screw somewhere on the motherboard for the Samsungs, but so far I haven't come across any pics showing exactly which screw it is. So far, no-one seems to have been brave/foolhardy enough to fully tear down their own machine and locate the screw!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Heh.. not gonna be me..
Nolirum said:
Regarding adb, on my device I found the following in arc-setup-env:
# The IPV4 address of the container.
export ARC_CONTAINER_IPV4_ADDRESS=100.115.92.2/30
adb 100.115.92.2 (in Chrome OS's shell) works fine for me, the authorisation checkbox pops up and then good to go. su works fine through adb as expected. There's also a useful little nsenter script in Chrome OS to get into the android shell; /usr/sbin/android-sh, which I've been using in my script to help patch SE linux.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool-- adb connect 100.115.92.2 does indeed work I was gonna use netcat to open port 5555 in chromeos and pipe it through, but looks like nc isn't here and I'm not yet ready to start changing the FS..though probably will be soon... btw any idea which partitions get overwritten when chrome it does it's updates? Will /root and /etc get overwritten, for example... would a "powerwash" overwrite it or can you get easily get into an unbootable state on these things?
It's also kind of strange that adb is listening to port 30 at that (internal?) bridge address by default witho no UI to turn it off.. and it's inaccessible from outside.. i wonder if there's an easy way to change the bridge to share the same IP as the actual interface...
Final thought-- I'd love to build that system image myself soup-to-nuts, but I can't find any "caroline" device tree set up... do you or anyone else happen to know if there's a standalone AOSP device tree for the chromebooks? It would be cool to have a mashup AOSP/lineageos if such a think could be possible-- I'm guessing chromiumos is just taking the android tree, building it and then adding it into their build... I Haven't build chromiumos for many years now so I can't even begin to imagine how this android build integrates with the whole emerge thing they had going.. but I bet it takes a while
Nolirum said:
I actually just updated my rooting scripts recently to support 7.1.1, though I've only tested on my own Armv7 device (Flip C100).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool I'll take a look at these scripts.
So I haven't yet run the scripts-- just looking through them-- I noticed the section starting:
if [ -e /etc/init/arc-setup-env ]; then
echo "Copying /etc/init/arc-setup-env to /usr/local/Backup"
This doesn't exist on the x86 CB Pro. There's an arc-setup.conf that sets up the environment variables though. It sets WRITABLE_MOUNT to 0, but then so does arc-system-mount.conf
Not sure if these are different between x86 and ARM or if it's just in the latest update.. but figured I'd let you know. Wanna throw thse scripts up on github somewhere? (Or I can do it) and we can maybe look at keeping them up to date and/or standardizing them? It wouldn't be hard to determine if it's running on ARM or x86_64 (uname -i for example)..
fattire said:
So I haven't yet run the scripts-- just looking through them-- I noticed the section starting:
if [ -e /etc/init/arc-setup-env ]; then
echo "Copying /etc/init/arc-setup-env to /usr/local/Backup"
This doesn't exist on the x86 CB Pro. There's an arc-setup.conf that sets up the environment variables though. It sets WRITABLE_MOUNT to 0, but then so does arc-system-mount.conf
Not sure if these are different between x86 and ARM or if it's just in the latest update.. but figured I'd let you know. Wanna throw thse scripts up on github somewhere? (Or I can do it) and we can maybe look at keeping them up to date and/or standardizing them? It wouldn't be hard to determine if it's running on ARM or x86_64 (uname -i for example)..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, the arc-setup-env thing is intentional. There does appear to be another issue with the x86 version though. I've written up a detailed response to your previous post; it's in a text file at the moment so I'll copy it over and format it for posting here with quotes etc now - should only take a few minutes. Yeah, sticking them on github might be a good idea; I've been meaning to create an account over there anyway.
Yeah, so... Regarding the scripts, since I've put them up here for people to download - I should mention that the first person to test them (aside from me) has reported that something's not working right (I'm waiting for confirmation but I think he tried out the x86 version). It's likely either an error on my part when copying across from my Arm version, or perhaps something not working right with conditionals, meant to deal with the various OS versions ('if; then' statements, I mean). Once I find out more, I'll edit my earlier post...
fattire said:
Sorry not sure what you mean by "hybrid systemless root style setup"? I take it you're modifying the startup script and replaced the squashfs file in /opt... my concern about doing it was whether they were implementing some kind of dm-verity equivalent to the squashfs file to make sure it hasn't been tampered with (say, by adding /sbin/su or whatever) or whether it's safe to replace that file.. Sounds like you're saying it is?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, sorry for being a bit vague - I just mean perhaps implementing a kind of systemless root à la Magisk/SuperSU (from what I understand of how these work) - avoiding the need to actually replace files in /system. Since I'm mainly just using su for the privileges rather than actually wanting to write to /system, I had the idea that perhaps a sort of overlay on e.g. xbin and a few other locations, rather than actually rebuilding the whole of /system, might be an interesting approach....
Yep, I've been replacing /opt/google/containers/android/system.raw.img with a symlink to my modified image lately. Works fine... I think they've been focused on just getting the apps working properly, maybe something like dm-verity is still to come.
Although, one of the cool things with Chromebooks IMO is that once the Developer Mode (virtual) switch has been flipped, the system's pretty open to being hacked around with. I think a large part of the much-trumpeted "security" of the system is thanks to the regular mode/Dev mode feature, once in Dev Mode with verified boot disabled on the rootfs, we can pretty much do what we want (I like the message that comes up in the shell when entering the first command I posted under the spoiler - it literally says "YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN!").
So yeah, with Dev Mode switched off, verified boot switched on, we can't even get into the shell (just the walled-off 'crosh' prompt), making the system indeed rather secure (but, for some of us, rather limited).
fattire said:
Also you mean arc-setup.conf:
env ANDROID_DEBUGGABLE = 0
right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I mean by a moving target, lol. On my device the Canary channel is at Chrome OS version 61; I think they started to move out some ARC++ (the acronym stands for Android Runtime on Chrome, version 2, if anyone's wondering, btw) environment variables to a separate file in version 60, or maybe 61. Problems with being on the more 'bleeding edge' channels include:
#Sometimes stuff gets broken as they commit experimental changes.
#Any updates sometimes overwrite rootfs customizations; the higher the channel - the more frequent the updates occur.
#Some of the stuff that gets updated, may later get reverted.
And so on...
fattire said:
I hadn't realized the boot was still in flux-- I'd have figured they'd worked that out by now...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah you'd think so. Honestly, the more I use CrOS the more it seems like a (very polished) work-in-progress to me. Though, I guess most modern OSs are also works-in-progress though. (I don't mean the former statement in a critical way; I'm very happy that new features keep getting added to the OS - Android app support being a perfect case in point, that was a lovely surprise, greatly extending the functionality of my Chromebook).
fattire said:
Cool-- adb connect 100.115.92.2 does indeed work I was gonna use netcat to open port 5555 in chromeos and pipe it through, but looks like nc isn't here and I'm not yet ready to start changing the FS..though probably will be soon...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Netcat's not there but socat, which I haven't any experience with but have seen described as a "more advanced version of netcat", is listed in /etc/portage/make.profile/package.installable, meaning that adding it to CrOS is supported, and as simple as:
Code:
sudo su -
dev_install #(sets up portage in /usr/local)
emerge socat
I tried socat out and it seems to work, might be interesting to play around with.
fattire said:
btw any idea which partitions get overwritten when chrome it does it's updates? Will /root and /etc get overwritten, for example...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Theres a question. I forget some of the exact details now (gleaned from browsing the developer mailing lists and the documentation on chromium.org), but from what I do remember and my experiences tinkering, I can say:
The auto-update model uses kernel/rootfs pairs, e.g. at the moment my device is booting from partition 2 (KERN-A) with the rootfs being partition 3 (ROOTFS-B). My understanding is that with the next OS update pushed to my device, CrOS will download the deltas of the files to be changed, and apply the changes to partitions 4 and 5 (KERN-B and ROOTS-B), setting new kernel GPT flags (priority=, tries=, successful=), which will, post-reboot, let the BIOS know that 4 and 5 will form the new working kernel/rootfs pair. Then the following update will do the same, but with partitions 2 and 3, and so on and so forth, alternating pairs each time. It's a pretty nifty system, and I think something similar might be happening with new Android devices from version O onward (?).
So partitions 2,3,4,5 are fair game for being overwritten (from the perspective of the CrOS updater program). Partition 1, the 'stateful partition') is a bit special, in addition to a big old encrypted file containing all of the userdata (/home/chronos/ dir?), it also has some extra dirs which get overlaid on the rootfs at boot. If you have a look in /mnt/stateful/, there should also be a dir called 'dev_image', which (on a device in Dev mode) gets mounted up over /usr/local/ at boot. As I mentioned above, if you do
Code:
sudo su -
dev_install
you can then emerge anything listed in /etc/portage/make.profile/package.installable (not a great deal of stuff admittedly, compared to Gentoo), which gets installed to subdirs in /usr/local/. So I think stuff in partition 1; /mnt/stateful/, should be safe from being overwritten with an OS update. I think crouton chroots get put there by default.
Most of the other partitions don't really get used, and shouldn't get touched by the updater, here's a design doc on the disk format, and here's a Reddit post (from a Google/Chromium employee) mentioning dual booting from partitions 6 and 7.
fattire said:
would a "powerwash" overwrite it or can you get easily get into an unbootable state on these things?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not too hard to mess up the system and get it into an unbootable state, lol. The "powerwash" just seems to remove user data, mainly. If you change up (the contents of) some files in /etc, or /opt, for example, then powerwash, normally they won't get restored to their original state (unless you also change release channel).
But, as long as the write-protect screw's not been removed and the original BIOS overwritten, it's always possible to make a recovery USB in Chrome's Recovery Utility on another device, and then restore the entire disk image fresh (this does overwrite all partitions). Another thing that I did was make a usb to boot into Kali; I was experimenting with the cgpt flags on my internal drive and got it into an unbootable state, but was still able to boot into Kali with Ctrl+U, and restore the flags manually from there. (To successfully boot from USB, it was essential to have previously run the enable_dev_usb_boot or crossystem dev_boot_usb=1 command in CrOS). I understand also that the BIOS type varies with device release date and CPU architecture, and that Intel devices may have some extra potential BIOS options ('legacy boot').
fattire said:
It's also kind of strange that adb is listening to port 30 at that (internal?) bridge address by default with no UI to turn it off.. and it's inaccessible from outside.. i wonder if there's an easy way to change the bridge to share the same IP as the actual interface...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think I saw something related to this on the bug tracker. If I come across any info, I'll let you know...
fattire said:
Final thought-- I'd love to build that system image myself soup-to-nuts, but I can't find any "caroline" device tree set up... do you or anyone else happen to know if there's a standalone AOSP device tree for the chromebooks? It would be cool to have a mashup AOSP/lineageos if such a think could be possible-- I'm guessing chromiumos is just taking the android tree, building it and then adding it into their build... I Haven't build chromiumos for many years now so I can't even begin to imagine how this android build integrates with the whole emerge thing they had going.. but I bet it takes a while
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I haven't built Chromium OS or anything, but apparently, there's an option to create a 'private' overlay for the build, which doesn't get synced with the public stuff.
I think that the higher-ups at Google might be still umming and ahing as to whether or not to make source code available for the Android container, it's certainly not been made public yet. Actually, I remember seeing a Reddit post from a Google/Chromium employee mentioning this.
"That article is a little misleading in terms of open source. While the wayland-server and services that communicate with the ARC++ container are open source, the actual ARC++ container is not."
Perhaps they're waiting to see how similar implementations of Android within a larger Linux setup (e.g. Anbox) fare.
There doesn't seem to be too much that differs from AOSP in the ARC++ container - a few binaries and bits and pieces linking the hardware to the container (e.g. the camera etc), maybe some stuff related to running in a container with the graphics being piped out to Wayland?, and so on.
Oh, I was searching the bug tracker for something else, and just saw this (quoted below). Looks like it might be possible to run AOSP based images on CrOS soon!
arc: Implement android settings link for AOSP image
Reported by [email protected], Today (72 minutes ago)
Status: Started
Pri: 1
Type: Bug
M-60
When ARC started without the Play Store support there is no way for user to activate Android settings. We need implement corresponded section that has
Title: Android settings:
Link: Manage android preferences:
Inner bug: b/62945384
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great response! I read it once and I'll read it again in more detail then will probably have questions For whatever it may be worth, my only experience with chromiumos was building the whole thing maybe 4 years ago for my original 2011 Samsung "snow" Chromebook-- and making a bootable USB (or was it an SDcard?) to run it on (with a modified firmware that did... something I can't remember.. i think it was basically a stripped down uboot and I remember adding a simple menu or something-- I think I was trying to bypass that white startupscreen or something..). However, after doing this a few times to play with it, I realized that Chromiumos without the Chrome goodies kinda sucks and I promptly forgot everything and went back to stock.
I did have it re-partitioned to run linux as a dual boot from the SD slot or something-- I remember using that cgpt thing to select the different boot modes and vaguely recall the way it would A/B the updates (which "O" is now doing)... but anyhoo I was using the armhf ubuntu releases with the native kernel and ran into all kinds of sound issues and framebuffer only was a little crappy so...
I'm gonna re-read in more detail soon and I'm sure I'll have questions-- one of which will be-- assuming that most stuff is the same on x86 vs arm, why are there two scripts? How do they differ?
ol. On my device the Canary channel is at Chrome OS version 61; I think they started to move out some ARC++ (the acronym stands for Android Runtime on Chrome, version 2, if anyone's wondering, btw) environment variables to a separate file in version 60, or maybe 61.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the -env file I'm missing, I presume?
I think that the higher-ups at Google might be still umming and ahing as to whether or not to make source code available for the Android container, it's certainly not been made public yet. Actually, I remember seeing a Reddit post from a Google/Chromium employee mentioning this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It looks from the response that the gapps portion might be what's in question-- just like ChromiumOS vs Chrome has all the proprietary bits taken out?
Here's what I'd ideally like to see:
* Rooted Android, with a toggle switch to hide su in settings a la lineage (requires a kernel patch something like this one) + settings changes from lineageos
* adb access from outside the device-- critical for quickly testing apks from android studio w/o a cable. Basically put the chromebook in a "device mode" where adb is passed through... I'm going to see if I can pipe adb through with socat as you suggest...
* what else... I dunno watch this space.
An update from a couple of guys that have tested out the scripts on Intel: It seems to be that while they are able to launch daemonsu manually (with daemonsu --auto-daemon), it apparently does not seem to be getting launched at boot.
I am waiting for some more information on this. Previously, for Marshmallow, the script was setting up the app_process hijack method in order to to launch daemonsu at boot; to support Nougat I changed it to instead create an .rc file with a service for daemonsu, and add a line to init.rc importing it. This works for me, and from what I can gather, it copied/created all files successfully on the testers devices, too, so I'm not sure at this point what the issue is there.
Edit: Fixed the issue. I updated my previous post with further details.
fattire said:
I realized that Chromiumos without the Chrome goodies kinda sucks and I promptly forgot everything and went back to stock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol yeah. True, that.
fattire said:
...assuming that most stuff is the same on x86 vs arm, why are there two scripts? How do they differ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's literally just two things that differ: the few lines where we copy the su binary over e.g.
/x86/su.pie → /system/xbin/su, daemonsu, sugote
vs
/armv7/su → /system/xbin/su, daemonsu, sugote
...and also the size of the created container. The x86 container is about 30 percent larger than the Arm one.
I had a little look at how to determine the CPU architecture programmatically on Chrome OS a while back, but couldn't seem to find a reliable way of doing this, at least not without maybe getting a bunch of people with different CrOS devices to run something like, as you mentioned, uname -i (which returns 'Rockchip' on my device, uname -m (which returns 'armv7'), or such similar, and collating the results. It was just easier to do separate versions for x86/arm, rather than introduce more conditionals (with potential for errors). I'm certainly not averse to adding a check for $ARCH, and thus standardizing the script, as long as it's reliable.
fattire said:
This is the -env file I'm missing, I presume?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep! It's just the same few envs as in the .confs, moved into a new file. I'm fairly confident that the script's conditionals deals with them OK.
fattire said:
It looks from the response that the gapps portion might be what's in question-- just like ChromiumOS vs Chrome has all the proprietary bits taken out?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, although the respondant there perhaps doesn't seem to realise that he's talking to a Google/Chromium dev, the way he responds. Not that that makes anything he says in his post is necessarily less valid, though.
fattire said:
Here's what I'd ideally like to see:
* Rooted Android, with a toggle switch to hide su in settings a la lineage (requires a kernel patch something like this one) + settings changes from lineageos
* adb access from outside the device-- critical for quickly testing apks from android studio w/o a cable. Basically put the chromebook in a "device mode" where adb is passed through... I'm going to see if I can pipe adb through with socat as you suggest...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting... I agree, those would both be useful additions to the functionality of ARC++...
Quick question-- has Samsung provided the source for the GPL components (including the kernel, obviously)? I looked here but didn't see anything...? Previously the kernel was included along with the chromium source and there was like a kernel and kernel-next repository.. but this was like five years ago. I think the codename for the samsung chromebook pro is called caroline... let me quickly see if I can find a defconfig in the chromium source...
Back.. nothing here in the chromeos-4.4 branch. Nothing here either in the master branch. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong branches-- master is probably mainline kernel. Also the directories.. it took me five minutes to realize it wasn't going to be in arch/arm - force of habit I guess. I'll keep looking unless anyone knows. This "chromium-container-vm-x86" one seems to have dm_verity as an unused option. Ah, this is looking promising.
...and... here!
So it would seem that this would be built as part of the chromiumos build system, which seemed to be half gentoo five years ago building out of a chroot and was kind of a pain to set up... still, I'm guessing that since it's got that weird script to make the defconfig, what you could do is use google's chromiumos build script to make the kernel image (with whatever changes you want), then, assuming that it doesn't care if you replace the kernel, just throw it over the right Kernel A/B partition and see if it boots and starts up chromeos... it's weird cuz the kernel has to do double-duty for chromeos and android.. but I bet you can just replace it and it would work fine...
I had a cursory go at building a couple of kernel modules for my Flip C100 a while back - I didn't get too far though, lol. People do seem to have had success building their own kernels and running them with Chrome OS though, as with most things I suppose it's just how much time/effort you're willing to put in.
I think I used this and maybe this, from the crouton project to guide me.
From what I remember, I just got fed up of all the arcane errors/config choices. I remember that even though I'd imported my current device config from modprobe configs, there were then such an incredibly long string of hoops/config choices to have to go through one by one, to then be confronted with various errors (different every time ISTR) that I think I just thought "screw this". I think there were some other issue with the Ubuntu version I was using at the time as well. I know that sort of stuff's kind of par for the course with kernel compilation, but I was mainly only doing it so I could edit xpad in order to get my joypad working, in the end I found a different solution.
It shouldn't be too much hassle though, in theory I guess.... Oh, also, in order to get a freshly built kernel booting up with the CrOS rootfs, in addition to the gpt flags, I think you might have to sign it, too? (just with the devkeys & vbutil_kernel tool provided on the rootfs), some info here, and here.
From what I remember, the build system would do whatever key signing was necessary.... although I do now remember you're right there was some manual step when I was building the kernel, but I can't remember if that's because of MY changes or that was just part of the build process.
I I just dug out the old VM (Xubuntu) I was using to build and, well, let's just say I'll be doing a LOT of ubuntu updates before I can even realistically look at this. I do kinda recall setting up the environment was a huge pain so I'm going to see if I can just update the 5 year old source, target the pro and just build the kernel image and see what pops out the other end. At least I won't have to deal with the cross compiler, though I think it should hopefully take care of that itself.
Interesting to see that those crouton projects have emerged (no pun intended) so I'll check them out too while ubuntu updates itself
Thanks for the github links.. I'm going to go read that wiki.
Update: Looked at it-- funny they just stripped out the chromeos-specific parts they needed rather than emerge everything which is smart. My only question is now that Android is involved, there's that script I linked to earlier that seems to say "if you want Android support you'll need these bits too"-- wonder if the same config scripts apply, and if there are any other device tree considerations as well...
I may play a bit and see how smoothly it goes.. Unfortunately I don't have unlimited time either :/
Also, please do let me know if you put the scripts on github and I can send you pull requests if I come up with anything.
Update: Finally updated like 3 major versions of ubuntu... the "depot_tools" repo had its last commit in 2013, so I updated that. Wow, this is so much clearer than previous docs... it looks like something called gclient is used now, which I configured with:
gclient config --spec 'solutions = [
{
"url": "https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git",
"managed": False,
"name": "src",
"deps_file": ".DEPS.git",
"custom_deps": {},
},
]
'
that let me do gclient sync --nohooks --no-history ...which i think is updating the ancient source. I probably should have just started over, but anyway... we'll see what happens.
Update again: After updating with this new gclinet tool, it appears that the old repo sync method is still required as described here. That hasn't changed after all, so now I'm going to go through this old method, which will probably completely overwhelm my storage as it's downloading with history.. but anyway, in case anyone is trying this-- looks like the whole chroot/repo sync thing may still be how it's done... the /src directory described above may only be for building just the browser, not the whole OS...
...and here it is. I will have zero room to actually build anything tho, but hey.
* [new branch] release-R58-9334.B-caroline-chromeos-3.18 -> cros/release-R58-9334.B-caroline-chromeos-3.18
Note to self: use cros_sdk --enter to actually get in the chroot. Then:
~/trunk/src/scripts $ ./setup_board --board=caroline
to set up the build for caroline. Then to build:
./build_packages --board=caroline --nowithdebug
Useful links:
* Building ChromiumOS
* [URL="http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/how-tos-and-troubleshooting/portage-build-faq"]eBuild FAQ
[/URL]

Who wants to help finish proprietary vendor blobs?

"Blobs" are the files specific to each device that we need in order to compile custom ROMS that work on our device. The process of finding them is tedious and slow... I have been picking away at them for months when I have time. There are over 600 files so far! But there are also references to files that are not being found. They are either missing, or they are not located where they are expected to be located. This is where I need help.
So, if you want to help, go HERE:
https://github.com/mightysween/android_vendor_motorola_payton
and look through the proprietary-files.txt file for anywhere that it says "warning".... and then search inside of the firmware (working on 8.0+ now, not 7.1 please) and try to track down the file that it says is missing [obviously, you will need a system dump, or to search on a rooted device]. If you find it, please post below like this:
LINE NUMBER OF THE WARNING (from github)
PATH TO THE MISSING FILE (relative to /system... in other words, don't inlude your own local path)
Once this file is complete, we can use it to automatically pull the correct vendor files into our build environments... having a working recovery, active kernel developement and completed vendor blobs should open us up to more development efforts.
Also, if anyone has done any testing and knows of other proproetary files that are needed, please post them here so I can include them.
My time at the computer to work on this is really limited, so I have only identified a dozen or so daemons that definitely call for proprietary libs... I am sure there are more
I would love to pitch in on this but have zero experience with anything related to development. Do you think I could still be of help? Sounds like a basic enough task that it wouldn't be too difficult. Let me check and see that I understand the process.
Went to github and looked at proprietary-files.txt. The first warning I found was in line 49: "blob file libpn553_fw.so missing or broken". Then searched for that file in my device's system folder using ES File Explorer with Root Explorer enabled.
So is this what you're looking for?
49
/system/vendor/firmware/libpn553_fw.so
---------- Post added at 14:31 ---------- Previous post was at 14:07 ----------
I'd like to contribute in some way but if this is best not left to a complete noob then I totally understand
mightysween said:
Also, if anyone has done any testing and knows of other proproetary files that are needed, please post them here so I can include them.
My time at the computer to work on this is really limited, so I have only identified a dozen or so daemons that definitely call for proprietary libs... I am sure there are more
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have a link to a system dump?
TheBassDude said:
I would love to pitch in on this but have zero experience with anything related to development. Do you think I could still be of help? Sounds like a basic enough task that it wouldn't be too difficult. Let me check and see that I understand the process.
Went to github and looked at proprietary-files.txt. The first warning I found was in line 49: "blob file libpn553_fw.so missing or broken". Then searched for that file in my device's system folder using ES File Explorer with Root Explorer enabled.
So is this what you're looking for?
49
/system/vendor/firmware/libpn553_fw.so
---------- Post added at 14:31 ---------- Previous post was at 14:07 ----------
I'd like to contribute in some way but if this is best not left to a complete noob then I totally understand
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, that is all there is to it
Just time consuming (especially after the first 500)...lol
QWZR said:
Do you have a link to a system dump?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah, too big to conveniently upload... but if you are rooted, you can use the phone to search
mightysween said:
Nah, too big to conveniently upload... but if you are rooted, you can use the phone to search
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine gets here next week
mightysween said:
Nah, too big to conveniently upload... but if you are rooted, you can use the phone to search
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have root on the system you can find the files for, you should be able to find any given filename with:
find / -name "filename" -print
And it should output any filenames that match. I don't have time at the moment to dig into this any more, but would this resolve much of it?
ebrandsberg said:
If you have root on the system you can find the files for, you should be able to find any given filename with:
find / -name "filename" -print
And it should output any filenames that match. I don't have time at the moment to dig into this any more, but would this resolve much of it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any way that works is fine by me
I am on the road a lot and just don't have enough time to sit and work on it... so it is taking months. I bet a few people helping could finish it in a matter of hours.
I am hoping to have a few hours next week to work on it. But the sooner this is done, the sooner I can shift to trying to compile Lineage OS with working hardware.
BTW, Lineage *does* compile if I comment out all the stuff causing make errors... not much works, obviously.
The next step will be compiling with these blobs, then logging all the new errors and chasing down all the additional broken symlinks... and then adapting the kernel as needed.
Then, MAYBE we can get a base Lineage tree up and open up the X4 to building for other roms. I know someone started a skeleton tree for Carbon already on Github... they are likely just waiting for the completed device tree, too.
mightysween said:
Thanks, that is all there is to it
Just time consuming (especially after the first 500)...lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ebrandsberg said:
If you have root on the system you can find the files for, you should be able to find any given filename with:
find / -name "filename" -print
And it should output any filenames that match. I don't have time at the moment to dig into this any more, but would this resolve much of it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't own this device yet, but I was thinking of getting one. I figured this might help you all out (you'll need to be running linux):
First, let's get a list of all the files on the phone, to make searching faster.
Code:
adb shell
su
find / > /sdcard/allfiles.txt
exit
exit
adb pull /sdcard/allfiles.txt
Now you should have allfiles.txt on your machine. Also grab the proprietary-files.txt, and then run this:
Code:
grep -Po '(?<=(blob file )).*(?= missing or broken)' proprietary-files.txt | xargs -I @ grep "@" allfiles.txt
That should find the paths of all the missing files (except the ones marked "wildcard")
BLuFeNiX said:
I don't own this device yet, but I was thinking of getting one. I figured this might help you all out (you'll need to be running linux):
First, let's get a list of all the files on the phone, to make searching faster.
Code:
adb shell
su
find / > /sdcard/allfiles.txt
exit
exit
adb pull /sdcard/allfiles.txt
Now you should have allfiles.txt on your machine. Also grab the proprietary-files.txt, and then run this:
Code:
grep -Po '(?<=(blob file )).*(?= missing or broken)' proprietary-files.txt | xargs -I @ grep "@" allfiles.txt
That should find the paths of all the missing files (except the ones marked "wildcard")
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I had recently completed this, but your code worked fantastic for double checking, and actually helped me find one that I had missed :good:
Now, on to identifying any more daemons that need proprietary files... and then assembling the tree itself... PROGRESS!
PHASE 1 is complete!
https://github.com/mightysween/android_vendor_motorola_payton
I am 99% sure that this is only ~75% of what will be needed to actually build LOS15. But it is a good foundation to work off of now.
My plan is to start attempting to compile LOS and take error logs to chase down the remaning missing stuff. LOTS to be done still to get to that point...hoping for some other builders/devs to materialize here and help out
Hi! Just a question: it´s mandatory to use A/B partition scheme to build a custom ROM for this device or it will be possible to use a traditional partition scheme and free up some GBs of internal storage for use?
christianrj said:
Hi! Just a question: it´s mandatory to use A/B partition scheme to build a custom ROM for this device or it will be possible to use a traditional partition scheme and free up some GBs of internal storage for use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It would seem that we will still be stuck with A/B, as the bootloader does the initial check of the active slot. Perhaps there may be some clever ways around this in the future...but nothing I will be tackling.
mightysween said:
It would seem that we will still be stuck with A/B, as the bootloader does the initial check of the active slot. Perhaps there may be some clever ways around this in the future...but nothing I will be tackling.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You would probably need a custom kernel to do it properly. The bootloader passes a kernel param (androidboot.ro.boot.slot_suffix) specifying which slot to use. In the absense of a kernel param, the value is read from the ro.boot.slot_suffix build property.
That being said, you might be able to just repartition your device to only have 1 slot, flash your ROM, and use
Code:
fastboot --set-active=_a
. If your ROM has disabled OTA updates from the OEM, you should be fine.
I'm going to get an X4 in the coming weeks. I'd like to help with this soon. I'm a seasoned developer by trade and can collab on GitHub. Hope to be able to start working with you soon. :good:
I don't know if any of you have seen this article, but it seems promising that it might not be too difficult to achieve for this device:
https://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-redmi-note-4-project-treble/
Hariiiii said:
I don't know if any of you have seen this article, but it seems promising that it might not be too difficult to achieve for this device:
https://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-redmi-note-4-project-treble/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@vache at the Moto G5 Plus forums has already managed it using the /oem partition which is otherwise unused for custom ROMs
Hariiiii said:
I don't know if any of you have seen this article, but it seems promising that it might not be too difficult to achieve for this device:
https://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-redmi-note-4-project-treble/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool... seems it may be possible. Will follow the progress on the Redmi and G5 devices
navenedrob said:
I'm going to get an X4 in the coming weeks. I'd like to help with this soon. I'm a seasoned developer by trade and can collab on GitHub. Hope to be able to start working with you soon. :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The more I am reading about enabling Treble, the more I think it is entirely possible.... and probably the best direction to focus our efforts.
Seems like we have partitions that could be used as /vendor. I am reading up on exactly how the Treble vendor partition is set up. Tricky, but not implausible.
EDIT: Actually, none of the partitions we could potentially re-purpose for /vendor are big enough. So, it may be harder on this device than on others. It may require repartitioning.

[How-To] Install Windows on Android version [YB1-X90L/F]

Hello guys!
I'm starting this thread as I managed to install win10 on my X90L (Android) YogaBook
It was not easy to find a way to fix the ACPI error but it is possible!
Will update this post in a few hours with a guide on how to do it yourself.
UPDATE: link to the guide -> poz1.com/windows-on-android-lenovo-yogabook/
PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU CONTINUE YOU WILL END UP WITH A YOGABOOK WITHOUT INPUT DEVICES!!!
(EXTERNAL KEYBOARD WILL BE NEEDED) AND NO ANDROID INSTALL!!!​
So far i got almost everything working except:
- Touchscreen
- Keyboard
- Webcam in the keyboard panel (the other one works fine)
- NFC
- Backlight Control (added 25/5/2018)
I'm getting very near to have the touch and the keyboard working though
P.s. In attach you find the outputs from 3DMark - IceStorm Extreme (default settings), would be much appreciated if someone with the real Win version shared its score
Any chance of posting you work to date. Got an X90F just crying out for Windows.
Broomfundel said:
Any chance of posting you work to date. Got an X90F just crying out for Windows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have added the link to the guide! If yo have any issues let me know but keep in mind that currently no input devices (touchscreen or keyboard) work!
Thanks for posting this. I am really so impressed. Will be trashing my X90F tomorrow. Just got to dig out a powered USB hub. Ill report back, and lets see what happens.
(Hopefully not a brick)
OK,
So far so good. I get to the amending of the of aml. But keep getting.
Intel ACPI Component Architecture
ASL+ Optimizing Compiler/Disassembler version 20180508
Copyright (c) 2000 - 2018 Intel Corporation
iASL: Segmentation Fault
iASL: Terminating
To clarify the process. Decompile the DSTDroid.aml, then insert the OperationRegion (GNVS, SystemMemory, 0x7B3CF000, 0x0369)
Field (GNVS, AnyAcc, Lock, Preserve)
{ etc.. } section from the DSTDroid.dsl and use it to replace the equivalent section in the DSTWin.dsl in your files.
Then compile the DSTWin.dsl with the
iasli -ta DSDTWin.dsl
command.
This is how I am reading it, but have not managed to get it to work yet.
It decompiles with the two errors you mention, but wont recompile no matter how I try it.
I am using Notepadd++ so its not hidden characters.
Any thoughts, and thanks again for your efforts on this.
Broomfundel said:
OK,
So far so good. I get to the amending of the of aml. But keep getting.
Intel ACPI Component Architecture
ASL+ Optimizing Compiler/Disassembler version 20180508
Copyright (c) 2000 - 2018 Intel Corporation
iASL: Segmentation Fault
iASL: Terminating
To clarify the process. Decompile the DSTDroid.aml, then insert the OperationRegion (GNVS, SystemMemory, 0x7B3CF000, 0x0369)
Field (GNVS, AnyAcc, Lock, Preserve)
{ etc.. } section from the DSTDroid.dsl and use it to replace the equivalent section in the DSTWin.dsl in your files.
Then compile the DSTWin.dsl with the
iasli -ta DSDTWin.dsl
command.
This is how I am reading it, but have not managed to get it to work yet.
It decompiles with the two errors you mention, but wont recompile no matter how I try it.
I am using Notepadd++ so its not hidden characters.
Any thoughts, and thanks again for your efforts on this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello Broomfundel,
I never got that error, but it seems to be a problem of the ASL Compiler build not of your file.
I am using Mac so I have another build, if you want to post the file I can compile it for you .
Otherwise you can try an older release or to build the tool from source maybe?
Poz1 said:
Hello guys!
I'm starting this thread as I managed to install win10 on my X90L (Android) YogaBook
It was not easy to find a way to fix the ACPI error but it is possible!
Will update this post in a few hours with a guide on how to do it yourself.
UPDATE: link to the guide -> poz1.com/windows-on-android-lenovo-yogabook/
PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU CONTINUE YOU WILL END UP WITH A YOGABOOK WITHOUT INPUT DEVICES!!!
(EXTERNAL KEYBOARD WILL BE NEEDED) AND NO ANDROID INSTALL!!!​
So far i got almost everything working except:
- Touchscreen
- Keyboard
- Webcam in the keyboard panel (the other one works fine)
- NFC
I'm getting very near to have the touch and the keyboard working though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, i have the Lenovo Yoga Book Windows version, im crying to install Stock Android on it, can you PLZ write a guide about doing it, or at least if there is a way to install the kernelflinger.efi or the fastboot mode on YB windows it will be great.
to fix the whole bugs you faced, try to reinstall windows 10 using this methode https://forum.xda-developers.com/yoga-book/how-to/windows-guide-creating-windows-10-t3718823
Thanks
THE MAXIMUM POWER said:
Hi, i have the Lenovo Yoga Book Windows version, im crying to install Stock Android on it, can you PLZ write a guide about doing it, or at least if there is a way to install the kernelflinger.efi or the fastboot mode on YB windows it will be great.
to fix the whole bugs you faced, try to reinstall windows 10 using this methode https://forum.xda-developers.com/yoga-book/how-to/windows-guide-creating-windows-10-t3718823
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
KernelFlinger is opensource and come with an installer, it should be pretty simple to install it.
Right now I don't have my YogaBook as I am travelling but I can try in the next few days
OK, Older release worked, but I get a .hex file, your instructions talk about a new aml file. Do I use the .hex file or is there another option other than the -ta one that would create the aml.
BTW. I am enjoying this. So thanks again.
Broomfundel said:
OK, Older release worked, but I get a .hex file, your instructions talk about a new aml file. Do I use the .hex file or is there another option other than the -ta one that would create the aml.
BTW. I am enjoying this. So thanks again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With the -ta option I get both the .hex and the .aml file but you can try -tc if it doesn't work. Maybe due to the different build
P.s. (for other people that may incur in this) If you don't get the output files check that you have as last line of the terminal
"Compilation complete. 0 Errors"
OK, I am getting 7 errors. My current theory is that the DSTDWin.dsl will only compile with the same version number of the compiler it was decompiled with. I have attached my DSDTDroid.dsl so you can have a go. At least it will prove I got things right up to that point. Might be worth posting the original DSTDWin.aml for me to try this end.
If we are lucky it might turn out that the patched DSTDWin.aml files are consistent across the same model devices.
So... It seems both pen mode and keyboard mode of holo keyboard won't work... Am I right?
It's sad that if they won't work even we install the drivers from the lenovo website
Poz1 said:
Hi,
KernelFlinger is opensource and come with an installer, it should be pretty simple to install it.
Right now I don't have my YogaBook as I am travelling but I can try in the next few days
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
can after installing Windows booting to kernelflinger? if you can make a thread about how can you install/reinstall kernelflinger will be amazing?
Thank you
Poz1 said:
Hello guys!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried with the ISO from this forum with the Windows injected drivers? Here https://forum.xda-developers.com/yoga-book/how-to/windows-guide-creating-windows-10-t3718823
As Poz1 is obviously busy at the moment. Can anyone else get the DSTDWin.aml file for me to try and decode?
Thanks
Sorry guys I've been busy with university
Broomfundel said:
OK, I am getting 7 errors. My current theory is that the DSTDWin.dsl will only compile with the same version number of the compiler it was decompiled with. I have attached my DSDTDroid.dsl so you can have a go. At least it will prove I got things right up to that point. Might be worth posting the original DSTDWin.aml for me to try this end.
If we are lucky it might turn out that the patched DSTDWin.aml files are consistent across the same model devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There you go I'm also updating the files DSTDWin of my blog with one with some fixes Well they depend on the settings you use in your Bios (that's why Windows may not boot after install, it changes some parameters (the wait time of the bios and the default boot partition)). When you use the builtin one is the bios that "updates" it for you but for now we need to do it by hand If we are going to end with everything working we can release a patched "Win" bios and everything will be simpler
Riskypedia said:
So... It seems both pen mode and keyboard mode of holo keyboard won't work... Am I right?
It's sad that if they won't work even we install the drivers from the lenovo website
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know There something in the DSDT (the file that tells the os which and where your pc components are) that has to be fixed to make Windows see these parts correctly
THE MAXIMUM POWER said:
can after installing Windows booting to kernelflinger? if you can make a thread about how can you install/reinstall kernelflinger will be amazing?
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didn't try Will do as soon as I have some free time :fingers-crossed:
Kinyapiplele said:
Have you tried with the ISO from this forum with the Windows injected drivers? Here https://forum.xda-developers.com/yoga-book/how-to/windows-guide-creating-windows-10-t3718823
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, but the problem is in the DSDT Thanks fot the input anyway
Poz1 said:
Sorry guys I've been busy with university
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't worry, we all have real lives as well. I'm in the UK and we have a bank holiday on Monday. So this weekend, Ill get stuck in again.
Thanks for all your doing on this. You have already got further than anyone else who tried.
let me know if you have more problems
I have added a 3DMark test in the first post for those that are interested in how it performs
Poz1 said:
let me know if you have more problems
I have added a 3DMark test in the first post for those that are interested in how it performs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just another Question, you as a Advance user, do you believe that we (yoga book Windows owners) can boot Android yb STOCK ROM ( i mean not the Android x86 based distros)?
Yes, but I think you would have to do the "reverse" DSDT injection (from win to android) as the official ROM has drivers for that components.
This means that, if you're lucky you would end up with our same problems (keyboard, pen and touch). If we don't fix that before
The problem with Android is that it is meant to be flashed on rom instead of being installed and this makes things more difficult.
It should be possible to flash the rom on an USB key, add grub and use it for DSDT injection like we do and see what happens.
Another problem is that the provided kernelflinger seems to have most of the security options enabled so 99% it will refuse to boot anyway.
Since it is opensource it should be possible to fix this anyway.
So yes, but it a loooong journey

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