Related
Hi all,
I popped back after some time away to find that you'd now been working on linux for the BA.
Course, eager as ever I dived in and tried to understand what I thought said instructions.
So I downloaded all the required files, and placed them into the folders specified, ran Heret.exe and I get our iccle penguine with a thermometer rising but when it reaches the top thats all it does?
Am I missing something ere?
Gav
I've got it to get to the Portmap, but i'm unable to login via USB.
Has ANYONE managed to deal with this yet?
Gav
it works exactly as advertised on WIKI.
after temp. goes thru the roof and penguin eyes crack, you should see kernel messages scrolling by.
since u don't see that, i'm guessing the kernel cannot be found because u didn't set up the SD card correctly.
post ur SD card partitions (fdisk -l) and also output of ls -lR
before u can login remotely, usb net modules must be loaded (see wiki)
I had realised I had downloaded the initrd-3.6.12-hh2.gz and mapped the startup.txt to that file,
so I downloaded the 2.6 version and changed the startup and I got the kernal message.
It goes through the kernel and I get a usb disconnection notification on xp and activesync disconnects.
As for partitions, how the f**k do I do this, because theres nothing in wm2003se that allows you to partition sd cards, and I don't get any command prompt on the linux kernel.
Also I do get an error that etc/modules directory could not be found but the kernal continues to load.
Regards
Gav
I'm just waiting till their is a complete Linux ROM with a portalable WINE port built in so you can run TomTom. Then I'll be happy. :wink:
man, you need to follow the wiki EXACTLY. u will not get anywhere by skipping steps.
windoze cannot create required fat and ext3 partitions. the fastest way 2 do this is download a linux live cd
judging by ur level of experience, i say leave this alone, until linux for blueangel matures enough for foolproof installation.
and how do I mount this ext3 partition?
(I can only connect to the initrd-filesystem with ssh)
I've spent some (much) time this week with trying to get ubuntu running on the optimus 2x. I have succeeded to boot and get the wifi, X11 and the touch screen sort-of working.
The ramdisk is completely replaced with a busybox executable, some symlinks to it and a shell script that mounts the necessary stuff (/dev/block/mmcblk1p2 as ext3), changes root directory and calls /sbin/init.
USING THE FOLLOWING WILL VOID ANY WARRANTY YOU MIGHT HAVE LEFT AND MIGHT ALSO BRICK YOUR PHONE!
Seriously, don't do this if you don't wish to risk the data on your phone.
I will be providing some demo images for people who don't have a build environment up and running. These images will not work particularly well, don't get your hopes up .
If you want to have a big linux installation (more than 3 GB) you can flash the images to the second partition on your external sd (obviously you have to create this yourself first). You can use the following boot image (which assumes that linux is on /dev/block/mmcblk1p2 with ext3:
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/boot-20110813.img
I have also targzipped the modifications to the file system that were required to get stuff going here:
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/o2x-20110813.tar.gz
This should be extracted directly to the root file system.
The kernel source code is up at https://github.com/ergoen/LG-Optimus-2x-linux-kernel
Things that have been done to get this to "work":
1. Boot partition
Apart from grabbing the busybox stuff from some nexus one boot image (I'm sorry whoever fixed it, I don't remember where I got it from ) the boot command line had to be modified a bit, changing stuff from the default usually ends up in a phone that won't boot, but I discovered that it's possible to append new arguments to the default ones. So the following have been appended:
console=tty0 root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 init=/sbin/init
The console=tty0 makes sure that you see stuff on the screen while ubuntu get's running. The last two are not necessary to boot, but ubuntu seem to like (need?) them (or at least the init=/sbin/init), since otherwise you never get to the login prompt on the screen.
2. The Ubuntu installation
To make it possible to communicate with the phone at all adbd was put into the /sbin/ folder and a symlink was created /system/ -> /. Also the "/sbin/adbd recovery &" command was added to rc.local to make it autostart.
2.1. Modules and wifi
We need the /lib/modules/2.6.32.9 directory. Most files inside that were generated using the "depmod" command, the exception is wireless.ko which was taken from android, the firmware and nvram files needed for the wifi chip to work were placed in the /lib/firmware/wl/ folder. To make the wifi module autoload with the proper firmware "wireless" was added to /etc/modules and the file /etc/modprobe.d/wireless.conf was created with the contents describing the location of the firmware and nvram.
To make the wifi autoconnect on boot the /etc/network/interfaces file was modified with the following contents:
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
(To make the wifi autoconnect to your wireless you need to run the command "wpa_passphrase networkname networkpassword > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf using adb or chroot)
2.2. X11
Getting X up by running xinit produces a simple black screen on the phone. At first I thought the problem was that the refresh rate was set to 106 Hz, indeed changing it with xrandr and pushing a new mode got me a visible xterm on Kubuntu 11.04:
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/xterm.jpg.
On Ubuntu 10.10 it even gave me a nice colored gdm screen:
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/gdm.jpg
But the image I got there was static and wasn't being updated. Turns out the reason the screen was black earlier with the 106 Hz rate and the reason why the screen is now just showing an image is that the framebuffer device doesn't update the screen like it should..
By modifying the kernel source to redraw the screen every 50 ms (~20 Hz) it's possible to get a scren that works. This is an ugly hack in the tegra-fb driver though, so I'm open for suggestions on how to solve it in a better way!
2.3. Touchscreen
By default the only thing the touchscreen does is force the mouse up in the left corner, I think this is due to some multitouch thing. Some more kernel hacking (basically half-disabling multitouch) makes the touchscreen work.
Pictures:
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/SAM_0671.jpg
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/SAM_0672.jpg
Video:
http://vimeo.com/27662093
Thans to RaYmAn and lilstevie on #tegralinux for all their help this far!
3. Misc
(K)Ubuntu 11.04 uses a new version of libc which crashes with the current nvidia kernel (2.6.32.9) on this hardware (http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/errata-657451-tls-bit-20-cp15-c13-3), so I'm going back to Ubuntu 10.10 until someone ports a newer kernel to the Optimus 2x or this problem can be solved in another way.
edit 1: Ubuntu 10.10 with much more working X11 noted in section 2.2.1.
edit 2: X11 working even more, touchscreen works aswell!
edit 3: Landscape mode works with both X11 and the touchscreen now, getting ready for alpha 1!
Current status:
Working:
- adb (best way of controlling device currently)
- X11 (only framebuffer with hardcoded refresh rate of ~20Hz)
- landscape mode fixed! =D
- touchscreen (probably only single touch)
- wifi (only when running things from console, ubuntus network manager does not recognize it)
Not working:
- Basically everything else
Alpha 1:
EDIT: Seems that multiupload has screwed up and this link was going to some crap, anyway this is not relevant anymore
Username 'ubuntu', password 'ubuntuxda'. Don't use this if you don't know how to restore the boot partition! (Or else you won't be able to boot back into android!)
Experiments:
Tried disabling the CONFIG_TEGRA_ERRATA_657451 switch in the kernel to make newer linux versions boot. This might be a bad idea in the long run, but this far things are working better than with the switch enabled..
I tried Ubuntu via chroot method posted in other thread, but I'm a noob.. Can you please explain what is different about your ubuntu?? Does it boot without Android and doesn't need VNC stuff?
Yes, it boots instead of android when turning on the phone, but it doesn't work completely, so I mostly put it up here so that people could help test and fix/hack things.
You rock! Unfortunately I'm no dev, so can't help but hopefully others will, so we'll get a fully working linux on our phone, and maybe later even meego. Is there btw drivers for the gpu? Because hdmi, with usb host ofc, would be really useful!
Anyway, good job, really!
This looks great ergoen! I'm no dev either but I can't wait until it's available to everyone, I would love to have Ubuntu running on my O2x.
Best of luck!
gpu drivers are closed source, and the ones released by nvidia require a newer kernel (2.6.38), so thats not really possible yet.
Newer kernel will be necessary anyway though, since the crashes I'm getting seems to be due to a bug in tegra which gets worked around in 2.6.36. I'm not skilled enough to perform that port though. I will of course give it a try, but most likely I'll go for some older version of ubuntu and/or perhaps meego instead.
Håller med tidigare poster. Would be awesome with native Ubuntu and Meego on the phone... keep up the good work, can't wait to follow this development.
Sent from my Optimus 2X using XDA Premium App
ergoen said:
... I realized that it tried to run the screen at [email protected], which is hmm, wrong . So setting up a script at /etc/xprofile, which makes sure the refresh rate is 60Hz...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What would happen if you changed this to 72Hz instead? I saw that info when I was browsing System Information in some app. Im not a dev At. All. But tell me what you think it's probably a stupid question
Sent from my Optimus 2X using XDA Premium App
I can give it a try later, not that it would make any difference .
edit: 72 Hz also seems to work, cool, that's higher refresh rate than my computer screen...
ergoen said:
I've spent some (much) time this week with trying to get ubuntu running on the optimus 2x. I have succeeded to boot and get the wifi working, also X sort-of works (software fb). I have only slightly modified the kernel (built with CONFIG_SIGNALFD=y so that Meego wont complain in a related attempt to get that os booting). The ramdisk is completely replaced with a busybox executable, some symlinks to it and a shell script that mounts the necessary stuff (/dev/block/mmcblk1p2 as ext3), changes root directory and calls /sbin/init.
USING THE FOLLOWING WILL VOID ANY WARRANTY YOU MIGHT HAVE LEFT AND MIGHT ALSO BRICK YOUR PHONE!
Seriously, don't do this if you don't wish to risk the data on your phone.
I will not provide a complete root file system for two reasons:
1. It's pretty easy to make yourself, grab the omap3 kubuntu mobile image from the kubuntu site, or use rootstock from an ubuntu installation to build one yourself.
2. My upload sucks, and putting several hundred MB onto the interwebz would hurt me.
However, I have placed an image of my boot partition here (assumes you've got ubuntu on the second partition of the external memory card formatted with ext3):
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/boot.img
I have also targzipeed the modifications to the file system that were required to get stuff going here:
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/o2x.tar.gz
This should be extracted directly to the root file system you aquired earlier.
Things that have been done to get this to "work":
1. Boot partition
Apart from grabbing the busybox stuff from some nexus one boot image (I'm sorry whoever fixed it, I don't remember where I got it from ) the boot command line had to be modified a bit, changing stuff from the default usually ends up in a phone that won't boot, but I discovered that it's possible to append new arguments to the default ones. So the following have been appended:
console=tty0 root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 init=/sbin/init
The console=tty0 makes sure that you see stuff on the screen while ubuntu get's running. The last two are not necessary to boot, but ubuntu seem to like (need?) them (or at least the init=/sbin/init), since otherwise you never get to the login prompt on the screen.
2. The Ubuntu installation
To make it possible to communicate with the phone at all adbd was put into the /sbin/ folder and a symlink was created /system/ -> /. Also the "/sbin/adbdb recovery &" command was added to rc.local to make it autostart.
2.1. Modules and wifi
We need the /lib/modules/2.6.32.9 directory. Most files inside that were generated using the "depmod" command, the exception is wireless.ko which was taken from android, the firmware and nvram files needed for the wifi chip to work were placed in the /lib/firmware/wl/ folder. To make the wifi module autoload with the proper firmware "wireless" was added to /etc/modules and the file /etc/modprobe.d/wireless.conf was created with the contents describing the location of the firmware and nvram.
To make the wifi autoconnect on boot the /etc/network/interfaces file was modified with the following contents:
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
(To make the wifi autoconnect to your wireless you need to run the command "wpa_passphrase networkname networkpassword > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf using adb or chroot)
2.2. X11
Getting X up by running xinit produces a simple black screen on the phone. After some troubleshooting and voodoo magic I realized that it tried to run the screen at [email protected], which is hmm, wrong . So setting up a script at /etc/xprofile, which makes sure the refresh rate is 60Hz, and running it after xinit gets you a xterm!!!
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/xterm.jpg
Telling /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to run it makes sure that it gets set up properly by the startx script, unfortunately startx doesn't go through for me on kubuntu because of some weird error caused by a hardware problem in tegra: (http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/errata-657451-tls-bit-20-cp15-c13-3).
Unfortunately this (probably) means that either we'll have to stay with old versions of libc or get a newer kernel (2.6.36 contains fix). Old libc seems backwards, but porting a new kernel requires a bit more skill than I possess.
2.2.1. Ubuntu 10.10
Grabbed the image ubuntu-netbook-10.10-preinstalled-netbook-armel+omap.img.gz from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-netbook/ports/releases/maverick/release/ . After first unpacking the tgz, then unpacking the raw disk image to partition images (with 7zip on windows) and then flashing the 1.img file to the second partition on my sdcard I managed to run a much more bug free ubuntu than before.
Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) uses an older version of som libraries that don't crash with the old o2x kernel.
This has lead to the following:
https://ha.xxor.net/o2x/gdm.jpg
Obviously touch screen isn't working properly (pressing it puts the pointer into the upper left corner :S) so can't get further than this currently.
3. Misc
avahi-daemon and cups seems to be crashing all the time and restarting, so removing them (apt-get purge if ubuntu/kubuntu) will make the boot much cleaner. Also I get lots of alignment trap kind of errors that shouldn't be there for different kinds of services, (due to tegra bug mentioned earlier).
edit 1: Ubuntu 10.10 with much more working X11 noted in section 2.2.1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its good you got it to work.Saves me some work.I was gonna begin this project my self after the 19th when my exams end.Maybe i could help you.
ergoen said:
I can give it a try later, not that it would make any difference .
edit: 72 Hz also seems to work, cool, that's higher refresh rate than my computer screen...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most computer screens usually support atleast 72hz also, it's just that it only works with d-sub, and sometimes only at a lower resolution.. It's possible to make special drivers to some screens to enable higher refresh rate through dvi also.
Anyway, it's good the screen on the phone refreshes at 72hz instead of 60 for android, but in linux I really don't see the benefit.. Doesn't hurt to have though. Btw, if we would stay on this kernel, can we use the drivers from android then? Shouldn't gpu also work? Or are the drivers limited and don't allow xorg for example? Sorry if it's stupid question, don't have that much knowledge how android works yet.
Update: X11 and touchscreen work on Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick with new kernel (just a few hacks )!
manasgirdhar: sure! Lot's of things to do new kernel is needed for anything newer than ubuntu 10.10, and even here things like sound etc (cpu scaling maybe too) don't work.
kruppin: actually i removed the xorg.conf now, the phone thinks its running at 106 Hz and it works. Unfortunately in practice it goes at more like 20 Hz because of the hack I made to enable the fbdev output in the kernel. Android doesn't use X11, so those drivers wont be of any use. (I will post the kernel modifications to github soon)
edit: kernel source up on https://github.com/ergoen/LG-Optimus-2x-linux-kernel
A List of Things working at 2nd Post would be nice.
So anybody could fast see Updates,...
Edit:
Have you tried some "cleaner" Linux like Debian?
Alpha 1 is up in the second post for anyone who wants to test it (don't ^^).
I have not tried debian no, I thought ubuntu would be the easiest to google errors and bugs for .
You are great! i was hopin' for this since I have mine. You should try to make usb(otg) work to get some devices going i will try to test it soon
That's amazing We have to test USB OTG function. If it works by default, I'll try this right now
It is possible to make a dual-boot: ubuntu and android?
I don't think usb otg works since I am basically using the android version of the kernel, I also won't be able to try since I don't have a cable... (will buy one sooner or later).
Dual boot probably works if you flash the boot.img onto the recovery partition instead of the boot partition (/dev/block/mmcblk0p7 instead of /dev/block/mmcblk0p5). I have not tried this though. That way regular booting would give android and booting while holding volume down would give ubuntu, only problem with this is that cwm will be gone and the only way to fix broken things would be to flash with nvflash.
well it is not a major deal if have cifs avail needs kernel support as well. Benee mentioned (might) some otg support, mayb u could ask.
also, you might give E17 a try, it is butter-fast, and has a touch module for keyboard (letter zooming.!..) LINK
this can be compiled on a lot of hw, and gives good response with fbdev non-accel drivers also.
and most linux apps work on it fine. ofc until we have 2d/3d accel and might try compiz/fusion as well
LINK
Great job ergoen!
I've worked on exactly the same some weeks ago but i never accomplished it. because i stuck creating a working ramdisk. Which toolchain do you use?
MfG
Since we got a x86 cpu i want to use ubuntu on it, as im from germany i still dont have my I but has anybody tried linux on android?
Adam Outler mentioned something that this would not work...
Btw can somebody tell me what the kernel version is..?
Sorry mods for (possibly) posting in the wrong section :/
//Robert
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda premium
Robbilie said:
Since we got a x86 cpu i want to use ubuntu on it, as im from germany i still dont have my I but has anybody tried linux on android?
Adam Outler mentioned something that this would not work...
Btw can somebody tell me what the kernel version is..?
Sorry mods for (possibly) posting in the wrong section :/
//Robert
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kernel version is 3.0.8.
If you can install linux distros on the backend of rooted ARM devices it should make sense we could do the same....maybe
Ubuntu on a RAZR I ? Linux x86 apps + windows apps with wine without even recompile? I think this devece needs some love. It can be the next HTC HD2 for shure.
I dont understand the htc comparison
But i have your ideas about no need to recompile and wine in mind too...
But i understand adam because linux for android is compiled for arm achitecture so a usual desktop image would make more sense...
Why is the kernel version so low?!
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda premium
What we need to do
I have a friend with this device, after rooting he reports there is no chroot command from terminal. If so we must:
Compile busybox (with more extensions) for x86 and install it alongside root (or after root)
Make a mountable image from an ubuntu clean install and mount it (probably also needs busybox)
chroot into this mounted image
run a vnc X server on a framebuffer
vnc from android
This is how it is done on other android devices, will attempt to compile and try these instructions out this weekend when I meet him but booting native ubuntu is a much better idea (even better if we can make it receive calls ).
And for what Windows on 4,3 inches display? It dont have hdmi.
Odoslané z GT-P7300 cez Tapatalk 2
The micro usb is acting like hdmi with adapter...
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda premium
Go look up the HTC HD2. It can run Windows Phone 7 and Android dual-booted (with Linux from SDCard), and was originally the last, albeit most powerful, Windows Mobile 6 phone ever made.
Even though it is four years old, there is a massive and vibrant dev community behind it, making it reach the front page of XDA forums.
However, even the venerable HD2 is getting old, with 1GHz processor and half a gig of RAM that was top-of-the-line years ago, and people have looked in vain for some kind of successor. Hopefully, the Razr I, with an unlockable bootloader and Intel processor, will be the one. But that remains for us to do.
pablocrossa said:
I have a friend with this device, after rooting he reports there is no chroot command from terminal. If so we must:
Compile busybox (with more extensions) for x86 and install it alongside root (or after root)
Make a mountable image from an ubuntu clean install and mount it (probably also needs busybox)
chroot into this mounted image
run a vnc X server on a framebuffer
vnc from android
This is how it is done on other android devices, will attempt to compile and try these instructions out this weekend when I meet him but booting native ubuntu is a much better idea (even better if we can make it receive calls ).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I tried this out and there is a chroot-compatible busybox after rooting ("busybox chroot" needs to be called as opposed to "chroot" as there is no properly made link), so anyone with this phone can try (using a PC) install Ubuntu without the grub bootloader using manual partitioning on a single ext3 (I am not sure if ICS supports ext4) partition on a microsd, put into your phone, use a root terminal, mount it, mount the adequate dev, dev/pts, proc and sys partitions and chroot right in. You then might want to install a VNC server in Ubuntu to be able to create a VNC X session in a framebuffer and a VNC client on the android side to VNC into localhost (127.0.0.1), but that should work, I didn't have time to try it this weekend If someone gets stuck post and let us see what happens I cannot wait to see if wine can run desktop Spotify with sound, excited a little hehe.
EDIT: So to make this more understandable you must:
Install Ubuntu (using your computer) to a MicroSD, specifying partitions manually and choosing only a single ext3. Right before clicking install there is a button with something along the lines of "Advanced options", disable the install the bootloader (grub) option.
Insert the MicroSD into the phone and open a root terminal
I don't use Android, maybe it automounts in /media/sdcard or /sdcard, if not you will have to find the device and partition name (probably /dev/mmcblk0p1 or /dev/sdb1) and issue "mount /dev/DEVICEPARTITION /media/sdcard"
mount -t proc proc /media/sdcard/proc
mount -o bind /dev/ /media/sdcard/dev/
mount -t devpts devpts /media/sdcard/dev/pts
busybox chroot /media/sdcard /bin/bash
Now a shell from Ubuntu should open. apt-get update && apt-get install vncserver (maybe the DNS settings must be set in /etc/resolv.conf, not yet sure)
vncserver (or start vncserver, something along those lines)
Now from Android install a VNC viewer and vnc into 127.0.0.1 (or localhost)
That should do it, again if you get stuck post here
i had htc hd2, the most amazing phone in the world. I wanna buy the rarz i for the x86 processor in it. But cpu power without community and developers is nothing :|
Sorry for my bad english.
Yesterday we tried something:
We used dd to put an arch linux image on a micro sd card...
Though my laptop wasnt even able to boot from any sd card, this should work on our phone...
but how to make it boot from the sd card? xD
btw you might have noticed, this will make only linux boot, not android, we dont chroot, may somebody build a simple ubuntu img for complete linux installer?
//Robert
so right now i am trying to chroot into an img file, mounting it and then chrooting it but all i get is:
chroot: can't execute '/system/bin/sh': No such file or directory
whats wrong?
Robbilie said:
The micro usb is acting like hdmi with adapter...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Razr i MHL capable???
as far as i know, sadly not no
Ok so finally I got Ubuntu Quetzal running with chroot, still some problems (missing randr extension in vnc) but ill get over this
Hey,
great work. :good:
Good to see there are people with the same ideas. I´ve searched a lot for this thread.
I will also try to get this device for the same reasons when it´s cheaper. Has anybody tried to get Plasma Active or Tizen to run?
I think Active should now be possible through kubuntu Active?
Cheers!
Hi all
At first you can try a application from play store called Linux installer
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zpwebsites.linuxonandroid
Otherwise you can wait some weeks for an nexus 7 Ubuntu port witch looks really interesting.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1957561
Ahhh maybe have a look at the andrinux project here at xda
[/COLOR]Here's the andrinux link
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1387105
Sent from my sweet little Blackbox
Robbilie said:
Ok so finally I got Ubuntu Quetzal running with chroot, still some problems (missing randr extension in vnc) but ill get over this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for your post on preparing an arch image (I don't have permision to post in devel forum, maybe because I'm a newbie ), It worked well for me although I had to adjust some things such as path and pts mount
I now have a gcc toolchain and a latex distrib on my phone I had never used arch, found it very good
I've also tried some window managers ... the one I find best for the moment is enlightenment in the touchscreen mode, awesome works great as well.
I would also suggest to use Hacker's keyboard instead of stock android, it is a complete keyboard, very usefull when dealing with terminals ... as for VNC viewer, one should recompile android-vnc-viewer with the patches given in Issues 238 and 239 (can't post links either), it's a lot better
I've had a lot of fun, thanks
First, Complete Linux Installer doesnt work because its images are compiled for arm not x86 (i tried )
Secondly, I did a tutorial here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1966984
the nexus 7 stuff is interesting and we consider making flashable fastboot for the razr i since we dont have cwm or such you know
i am talking to jordan keyes who recently owned a nexus 7 who probably will try out the ubu stuff and i might get some system info
but i would really prefer a dual boot, capable of booting from sd...
I came across this site today:
http://www.pvsm.ru/wine/10369
translated here
I don't know if this could possibly help you any further but I thought that I might as well post it.
Hello, recently purchased a asus tf701t laptop/tablet hyrbid and the device itself is perfect. Powerful cpu, good storage and an insane 2k resolution for a 10' inch screen which I don't think has been done before.
However I absolutely hate android (no offense to android developers) and decided to try installing Linux Mint 17 which can be installed on any regular laptop easily. Essentially, I want to get rid of both android bootloader and the OS itself and replace that with Grub bootloader and Linux Mint 17 OS. But android is fighting me every step of the way trying to prevent me from doing just that I unlocked the bootloader so my warrenty is void now.
But beyond that I can't install linux iso because the android bootloader isn't registering the usb stick (with linux iso on it) so I can't launch the linux live iso at all. I tried using cdrom iso using disk to launch through usb and still doesn't come up in the bootloader options. I know its possible to use linux on these devices because I've seen people have done it before on the internet.
I am now at this point starting to consider android itself as malware as the very definition of the word, ....lets start with the fact that they locked the bootloader, prompting me to give ip address just to enable me to unlock the bootloader (malicious and very dodgy). No root access therefore, third party programs are required to enable root which further my belief that android os is more malware than it is a legitimate operating system. Lastly, either possibly no usb driver for bootloader or usb port is locked out by design at bootloader (either way, might explain why I can't use usb linux iso).
What I can't understand is, why google can lock down a device tighter than fort knox on a Asus brand device. This is like buying a brand new car and not being able to open your own car even though you purchased it. What google has done is borderline illegal and I'm abit astonished how they can get away with it...
Sorry for the rant guys I'm abit fustrated atm. Can anyone please help me? I really love linux mint and if its possible to format android and install linux mint on this device I would be eternally grateful
Update: I attempted to flash the device with the command: fastboot -i 0x0B05 flash recovery recovery.img which works...but when I reboot and push power and down volume into bootloader...and try to get into recovery...the screen looks like its about to load into it but then resumes boot of android.
I'm really puzzled by this. So cannot flash a custom recovery for some strange reason
Its not so simple I dont think. You might want to watch whats happening on this thread for now.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/transformer-tf701/general/native-linux-asus-tf701t-t2973119
I would think you would have to completely replace the bootloader with something like uboot maybe if you wanted to wipe the tablet. But I dont think anyone knows. Then you could end up with some permanent brick. There would be no recovery or fastboot option if you were somehow able to get some kind of boot loader on this thing. I have no idea.
Edit: Also there is no arm based Linux Mint afiak.
YayYouFixedIt said:
Its not so simple I dont think. You might want to watch whats happening on this thread for now.
I would think you would have to completely replace the bootloader with something like uboot maybe if you wanted to wipe the tablet. But I dont think anyone knows. Then you could end up with some permanent brick. There would be no recovery or fastboot option if you were somehow able to get some kind of boot loader on this thing. I have no idea.
Edit: Also there is no arm based Linux Mint afiak.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks I appreciate the reply. I understand this won't be easy but I'm stubborn that way
Can you give me some advice on where I can start learning how to place a native linux os on the device? Would grub bootloader work with tf701t?
have you considered returning your tf701 and replacing it with the tf700 infinity? you can replace the OS with ubuntu.. theres much more support for that model than the tf701
tf701mega said:
have you considered returning your tf701 and replacing it with the tf700 infinity? you can replace the OS with ubuntu.. theres much more support for that model than the tf701
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Out of curiosity, have you used the tf700t? it is good for development, but it could run pretty slow at times. It might of been because of the tegra 3 processor, because the tf300t also had this performance issue. I was barely able to type up documents on a CM Rom because the tablet would lag when typing out and would then force close and corrupt my document.
atleast for me, that was the reason why I went with this one rather than the tf700t. This is just my 2 cents about getting the tf700t. I would suggest trying it out before getting it.
Sent from my K00C using Tapatalk 2
Just how stubborn are you?
How much work do you want to put into this? There are two options, the easy route that you probably will consider imperfect, and the much more complicated route that I'm not certain will work. I'll do my best to explain both.
The method I use is to install a linux distro (in my case, ubuntu) inside a chroot. There are several apps on the android market to help you set this up. The one I used sets up an Xvnc server, so you can view your linux desktop by using an android VNC viewer -- but it's just connecting locally, not going over the network.
This works nicely out of the box, but it's slow, partly because it's using the VNC protocol and partly because there's no 2d hardware acceleration. I tinkered with my setup and installed XSDL, a native android X server with hardware acceleration. I had to modify the linux startup script to skip starting Xvnc and instead connect to XSDL (which is on :0.0 like a normal X server).
This works great and is fairly fast. For me, this is a good compromise between a full-fledged linux laptop and the convenience of android apps written specifically for a multitouch screen. I generally do most of my stuff in Android, but I can drop into my Ubuntu desktop whenever I need more power.
The really big downside is that it's hard to prevent Android's low-memory killer from sacrificing XSDL when I haven't used it for awhile. I've mucked about with various solutions involving oom_score_adj and such, and that helps, but android still ends up killing my X server sometimes.
So, that's the easy method. For the more complicated method, I'm just theorizing, and this stuff may not work. You're going to need to either already have somewhat deep linux knowledge or be willing to learn Here goes.
In this post, I described how I managed to boot my tf701t after the internal memory card died a horrible death. The important bit here is that I learned how to boot any initrd/kernel combination using fastboot, and how to roll that combination into a boot.img so that the tablet always boots it. This is what you'll need to do both for the installation and for future boots into your Linux install.
First off, choose your Linux distro. I don't think you'll be able to use Mint, since, as someone pointed out above, there's no ARM build of Mint. However, there is an ARM build of Debian and Mint has the "debian edition", so maybe there is an ARM version. It may be, though, that the Mint folks only built their special stuff (Cinnamon/mate/whatever) for x86 platforms. I'd recommend Ubuntu as a compromise since I know it runs on the tf701t.
For the initial installation, put the contents of the install ISO onto an SD card -- just copying your bootable USB drive over should work. Now for the tricky bit: you'll need to pull the kernel and initrd ("ramdisk", "initial ramdisk" -- usually initrd-<something>.gz) off of the usb drive and into a working directory on a Linux laptop or desktop (let's call it the "host"). You might get away with just fastbooting this kernel/ramdisk directly. Install the fastboot package for your distro (Ubuntu has one, anyway). Connect up your tablet, put it in fastboot mode (I think that's done by booting with volume up and down held) and do 'fastboot boot <your kernel> <your ramdisk>'.
This will boot the kernel and load up the initrd, which is a tiny little linux filesystem stored in memory. The kernel runs a program called init inside the ramdisk and init takes over and boots into the actual installer. The question in my mind is how it goes about finding the ISO contents. If it searches by filesystem UUID, and there's a good chance that it does, then it will find your the ISO contents on the SD card just fine and the installer will start up.
If not, well, things will get a lot more complicated. Normally what one would do in a case like this would be to pass kernel command-line arguments (you do this in the SYSLINUX bootloader for distros like Ubuntu) telling it where to find the installation media. We can't do that because fastboot doesn't let you pass command-line arguments. Instead, you'd need to extract the initrd on the Host machine, modify the init script in some way to tell it where to find the installation media (probably /dev/block/mmcblk1p1), and then repackage it. I went into somewhat shallow detail on how to do the extract/repackage parts of this, but this is where either prior linux knowledge or a willingness to do some research comes in. Hints: gunzip the initrd, then use the cpio tool to extract it.
Okay, so let's say that you get the installer booting. The next big question is whether it's going to work at all. In theory the graphics chip inside the tf701t is supported by linux, but in practice, maybe it's only supported by a kernel module that Samsung built. Maybe you'd need to substitute the stock kernel. The next question is whether X has a module that will work with the graphics chip. But maybe even if it doesn't you can use a text-mode installer. That would at least let you get a system installed that you could then hack on to try to get X running.
So, let's say you do get linux installed (probably onto the internal SD card, /dev/block/mmcblk0). Now you want to boot it. You'll need to look into the installed system and steal its kernel and ramdisk, and get them onto the Host machine. Or maybe you could just extract them from the debian packages, since I'm not sure how you'd get things off of that internal SD at this stage. As a hint, these may well NOT be the same kernel/initrd as in the installer.
Once you've got the kernel/ramdisk, you can try to boot into them with fastboot. If that works (big if), then you'll want to be able to boot them without fastboot. That's where the 'fastboot flash:raw' command comes in. It takes a kernel/ramdisk, builds an android boot.img out of them, and flashes it to the device. From then on, the device will boot that kernel and ramdisk by default.
So, in theory this could work. The biggest potential stumbling block is whether X is going to natively support the graphics chip. If it doesn't, you may be stuck using the basic framebuffer driver, or maybe that won't even work at all. ...or you could just settle for the chroot method and be done with it
Good luck. I'm very interested to hear whether this works. I'm probably not going to try it myself since I like Android enough that I want to keep it around. I also can't walk you through this in finer detail because of external limits on my time, but I'd be happy to answer theoretical questions and specific technical questions, so long as you're willing to do the legwork of reading manpages and such I hope this works out for you!
Oh, one thing just occurred to me: skip the part in the installer about installing grub. It's not going to work on this device and may cause problems. You'll take care of the bootloader part yourself with the fastboot flash:raw command.
Oh, I see there's already some decent progress in this thread. Also it looks like I totally missed the -c option in fastboot that lets you pass kernel command-line arguments... that'll definitely be a time-saver. Given what I see over in that thread, it looks like we may actually get a reasonable native linux on our TF701t. Not sure how far the OP has gotten on things like mouse/keyboard input, though.
I have to say, I'm pretty excited! It'd be super cool to be able to dual-boot native linux and android on this tablet. Best of both worlds.
lexelby said:
How much work do you want to put into this? There are two options, the easy route that you probably will consider imperfect, and the much more complicated route that I'm not certain will work. I'll do my best to explain both.
The method I use is to install a linux distro (in my case, ubuntu) inside a chroot. There are several apps on the android market to help you set this up. The one I used sets up an Xvnc server, so you can view your linux desktop by using an android VNC viewer -- but it's just connecting locally, not going over the network.
This works nicely out of the box, but it's slow, partly because it's using the VNC protocol and partly because there's no 2d hardware acceleration. I tinkered with my setup and installed XSDL, a native android X server with hardware acceleration. I had to modify the linux startup script to skip starting Xvnc and instead connect to XSDL (which is on :0.0 like a normal X server).
This works great and is fairly fast. For me, this is a good compromise between a full-fledged linux laptop and the convenience of android apps written specifically for a multitouch screen. I generally do most of my stuff in Android, but I can drop into my Ubuntu desktop whenever I need more power.
The really big downside is that it's hard to prevent Android's low-memory killer from sacrificing XSDL when I haven't used it for awhile. I've mucked about with various solutions involving oom_score_adj and such, and that helps, but android still ends up killing my X server sometimes.
So, that's the easy method. For the more complicated method, I'm just theorizing, and this stuff may not work. You're going to need to either already have somewhat deep linux knowledge or be willing to learn Here goes.
In this post, I described how I managed to boot my tf701t after the internal memory card died a horrible death. The important bit here is that I learned how to boot any initrd/kernel combination using fastboot, and how to roll that combination into a boot.img so that the tablet always boots it. This is what you'll need to do both for the installation and for future boots into your Linux install.
First off, choose your Linux distro. I don't think you'll be able to use Mint, since, as someone pointed out above, there's no ARM build of Mint. However, there is an ARM build of Debian and Mint has the "debian edition", so maybe there is an ARM version. It may be, though, that the Mint folks only built their special stuff (Cinnamon/mate/whatever) for x86 platforms. I'd recommend Ubuntu as a compromise since I know it runs on the tf701t.
For the initial installation, put the contents of the install ISO onto an SD card -- just copying your bootable USB drive over should work. Now for the tricky bit: you'll need to pull the kernel and initrd ("ramdisk", "initial ramdisk" -- usually initrd-<something>.gz) off of the usb drive and into a working directory on a Linux laptop or desktop (let's call it the "host"). You might get away with just fastbooting this kernel/ramdisk directly. Install the fastboot package for your distro (Ubuntu has one, anyway). Connect up your tablet, put it in fastboot mode (I think that's done by booting with volume up and down held) and do 'fastboot boot <your kernel> <your ramdisk>'.
This will boot the kernel and load up the initrd, which is a tiny little linux filesystem stored in memory. The kernel runs a program called init inside the ramdisk and init takes over and boots into the actual installer. The question in my mind is how it goes about finding the ISO contents. If it searches by filesystem UUID, and there's a good chance that it does, then it will find your the ISO contents on the SD card just fine and the installer will start up.
If not, well, things will get a lot more complicated. Normally what one would do in a case like this would be to pass kernel command-line arguments (you do this in the SYSLINUX bootloader for distros like Ubuntu) telling it where to find the installation media. We can't do that because fastboot doesn't let you pass command-line arguments. Instead, you'd need to extract the initrd on the Host machine, modify the init script in some way to tell it where to find the installation media (probably /dev/block/mmcblk1p1), and then repackage it. I went into somewhat shallow detail on how to do the extract/repackage parts of this, but this is where either prior linux knowledge or a willingness to do some research comes in. Hints: gunzip the initrd, then use the cpio tool to extract it.
Okay, so let's say that you get the installer booting. The next big question is whether it's going to work at all. In theory the graphics chip inside the tf701t is supported by linux, but in practice, maybe it's only supported by a kernel module that Samsung built. Maybe you'd need to substitute the stock kernel. The next question is whether X has a module that will work with the graphics chip. But maybe even if it doesn't you can use a text-mode installer. That would at least let you get a system installed that you could then hack on to try to get X running.
So, let's say you do get linux installed (probably onto the internal SD card, /dev/block/mmcblk0). Now you want to boot it. You'll need to look into the installed system and steal its kernel and ramdisk, and get them onto the Host machine. Or maybe you could just extract them from the debian packages, since I'm not sure how you'd get things off of that internal SD at this stage. As a hint, these may well NOT be the same kernel/initrd as in the installer.
Once you've got the kernel/ramdisk, you can try to boot into them with fastboot. If that works (big if), then you'll want to be able to boot them without fastboot. That's where the 'fastboot flash:raw' command comes in. It takes a kernel/ramdisk, builds an android boot.img out of them, and flashes it to the device. From then on, the device will boot that kernel and ramdisk by default.
So, in theory this could work. The biggest potential stumbling block is whether X is going to natively support the graphics chip. If it doesn't, you may be stuck using the basic framebuffer driver, or maybe that won't even work at all. ...or you could just settle for the chroot method and be done with it
Good luck. I'm very interested to hear whether this works. I'm probably not going to try it myself since I like Android enough that I want to keep it around. I also can't walk you through this in finer detail because of external limits on my time, but I'd be happy to answer theoretical questions and specific technical questions, so long as you're willing to do the legwork of reading manpages and such I hope this works out for you!
Oh, one thing just occurred to me: skip the part in the installer about installing grub. It's not going to work on this device and may cause problems. You'll take care of the bootloader part yourself with the fastboot flash:raw command.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very stubborn
Sorry I didn't respond sooner as I was away with family for Christmas.
Thank you for the guide, it was extremely helpful. I am still working on getting the device ready so I'll update as I progress.
Thanks again
Suddenly, I can't boot into Manjaro, so until I get time this weekend, I'm stuck on (Barf) Windows.
When I try to boot into my Linux side, it won't go past the Rog Strix splash screen and if I try and Ctrl-Alt-Del, it takes about a minute, then reboots, but if I let it sit, it just sits there for good.
So, I've never done a bot repair off an Install drive. Can anyone give me a quick run-down? Or should I try an earlier Kernel in the boot options screen?
To get you up and running try selecting one of the fallback kennels and see if you can get booted up that way
Boot repairs are not hard specifically but they are a little involved. Basically you'll boot up into a live USB of Manjaro. Then you'll mount your root partition (e.g. /dev/sda2) to /mnt. You'll then mount your boot partition (e.g. /dev/sda1) to /mint/boot. Once you have those two things mounted then you can use "manjaro-chroot /mnt /bin/bash" to get into your system. It will look and act just like of you had booted up into your install.
From there you can update or reinstall grub, look at your last boot logs, install/update software, fix config files, etc. For your case I'd go looking through logs and see what is happening and once you know that you can fix it. When I've had boot problems it was generally because I recently changed either /etc/default/grub or /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and I just need to rollback the change.
Another thing that could have happened is stupid windows had an update and during that update it messed with the boot partition, which is generally what happens during windows updates, and you just need to run an update-grub and that generally fixes the problem. That reason alone is why several years ago I stopped dual-booting and just use Linux exclusively and use Windows VMs if I need something from windows.
Good luck! Hopefully all that helps! Here's a link to the Manjaro steps. https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=GRUB/Restore_the_GRUB_Bootloader
ironLink21 said:
Boot repairs are not hard specifically but they are a little involved. Basically you'll boot up into a live USB of Manjaro. Then you'll mount your root partition (e.g. /dev/sda2) to /mnt. You'll then mount your boot partition (e.g. /dev/sda1) to /mint/boot. Once you have those two things mounted then you can use "manjaro-chroot /mnt /bin/bash" to get into your system. It will look and act just like of you had booted up into your install.
From there you can update or reinstall grub, look at your last boot logs, install/update software, fix config files, etc. For your case I'd go looking through logs and see what is happening and once you know that you can fix it. When I've had boot problems it was generally because I recently changed either /etc/default/grub or /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and I just need to rollback the change.
Another thing that could have happened is stupid windows had an update and during that update it messed with the boot partition, which is generally what happens during windows updates, and you just need to run an update-grub and that generally fixes the problem. That reason alone is why several years ago I stopped dual-booting and just use Linux exclusively and use Windows VMs if I need something from windows.
Good luck! Hopefully all that helps! Here's a link to the Manjaro steps. https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=GRUB/Restore_the_GRUB_Bootloader
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Windows did do an upgrade - a crappy one at that. I need to get out of the WIndows Eval program now that I stay on Linux 99% of the time