Posts Tagged ‘build’

openAOS Froyo Alpha2 for Archos5 IT

Friday, September 17th, 2010

We’ve had a busy time and are happy to have the next release – Alpha 2 – for you to play with over the weekend!

Important note: This needs up to date zImage and initramfs to work properly! See further on in the text.

Here’s the Image for you and here’s a md5sum if you want to verify it.

Make sure that your Menu entry contains the words ‘froyo’ or ‘android’ OR the line in menu.lst ends with ‘|0′ – this is needed for now to address the framebuffer fix (see previous post).

We need more developers! There’s plenty of work and not many people! In addition Al Sutton will not be available for the coming weeks. So go ahead, send patches! join us on IRC! file issues! find solutions! help us! etc. etc. pp.

ReleaseNotes/ChangeLog:

Alpha2 is tested and works together with this zImage and this initramfs.
Please install those or preferably most recent before reporting bugs.

openAOS brings you: FroYo alpha1 for Archos 5 IT!

Sunday, September 5th, 2010

We had some early development snapshots already, but for an real alpha version we said we want to fix at least WiFi and SGX. For WiFi we even had an bounty and I guess this image is best proof that the bounty has been earned. Furies did the work on it. Thanks to AndAppStore for sponsoring the bounty!

Well we don’t want to make the tension unbearable here is the image:

FroYo Alpha1 for Archos5IT

This also needs this boot-menu update: zImage and initramfs

Enjoy your FroYo! Here are the much easier new instructions for setting up the boot-menu if you haven’t yet.

This image needs the following line added to menu.lst (do NOT use notepad! use an editor capable of proper unix line endings!):

openAOS Froyo alpha|/dev/sda1|/rootfsfroyo.img|/init

This all comes with a bootnote, a rather extensive one:

  • This is alpha grade software intended for developers and tech-savy testers.
  • There are still many unresolved issues and problems.
  • If you ‘just want FroYo’ – this is not for you! Wait until it’s stable and usable.
  • If you don’t plan to give us feedback – this is not for you! Wait until it’s stable and usable.
  • If you expect everything to work – this is not for you! Wait until it’s stable and usable.
  • After this has been said, thank you very much you seriously want to help us with this. We appreciate this very much as we really need every help we can get!
  • If you notice anything that doesn’t feel right, please file an ticket and
    use Android 2.2 Alpha2 as the target milestone
    and Android 2.2 – alpha1 as the version
  • Please do the same if you want some feature included or something improved
  • First boot will take very long! Keep your USB cable connected.
    • First the rootfs gets unzipped (You can unzip it on your PC that’s much faster!)
    • The Android cache is compiled – this can also take a while, just watch the boot logo while this happens.
  • Please join the mailing-list to discuss this image!
  • Want to see if someone is online right now to ask a question or discuss? Join us on IRC!
  • Yes sound does not work, sorry. Next Alpha maybe.
  • Don’t want to install the alpha but still want to help? Consider donating to the openAOS project!

¹ please note that the default Ångström image needs to be modified to work with this kernel! adding the command ‘fbset -nonstd 0′ could fix at least part of the issue during boot process. Expect updates on this soon.

Still a long way to go, but “Huston we have first boot!”

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Bruno (Gr8K) showed up with good news on IRC today!

Bruno's A5IT with a fresh FroYo build

Bruno's A5IT with a fresh FroYo build

He’s got his FroYo build to boot into the UI. Sadly it has the ArchDruid problem of a not cooperating touch screen controller. Exactly the same output in the log.

Nevertheless we thought you might like to know that we are actually making progress. To stay up to date please subscribe to the mailing list, check back here and the wiki every now and then (or subscribe to their RSS feeds).

That’s all for today folks!

Thomas, your friendly neighborhood ArchDruid

Debugging Archos devices just got a lot easier.

Monday, July 12th, 2010

UPDATE:

This guide is outdated, please do not use it anymore! There is a new and updated procedure that is easy to follow and integrates g_serial debugging. The files linked to in this guide will be no longer available.


I’ve been talking about this idea for a while now, but today I finally had the right mood to work on it and I think I’ve found a sufficiently flexible solution for now.

I’m loading the kernel modules (musb_hdrc and g_serial) in the initramfs. Fortunately there was enough space left for that.

I’ve created 3 separate serial interfaces using g_serial.

  1. /dev/ttyGS0 – unused (root shell on Archos Android firmware)
  2. /dev/ttyGS1 – unused
  3. /dev/ttyGS2 – kernel messages. this is simply ‘cat /proc/kmsg’

You can now attach terminals or logs to this in your images. Usually by editing /etc/inittab and adding a line like:

s2:235:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --autologin root ttyGS0

If you need to disable this you can just kill the ‘cat’ process and if running stop the getty’s. After doing that you can remove the g_serial and then the musb_hdrc module. You can then e.g. reload musb_hdrc to have it act as a host controller again.

The important changes are in the initramfs. The zImage is only needed if you want the root shell for Android. Get the files here.

Enjoy your easy debugging! No need for serial dongles anymore!

Cheers

Thomas, your friendly neighborhood ArchDruid
PS: As a bonus this zImage will boot Archos 2.0.x firmwares. There will be some problems with transparencies though. We’re going to fix that in the long run though.

PPS: If there is demand I can generate a set for gen6 too.

MeeGo HX on A5IT – looking for help

Monday, July 12th, 2010

I was anxiously waiting for the handset experience to surface. After all I had quickly gotten the MeeGo core image to work on my A5IT (see previous posting Maemo and Meego on A5IT – proof of concept).

Once it was out I managed to get my hands on a kickstart file referencing the correct repositories and set up mic2 (which is a serious pain in the back).

Sadly the resulting image (I had added our kernel modules and some slight modifications) didn’t get the Xorg server up.

After some investigations and tests I added the SGX modules from the 2.0.x Archos firmware but still Xorg fails.

I am now looking for people that also want to try get this working. I suspect some libraries need to be replaced or even recompiled. To make things easier I’ve hacked up an USB-console into the image. So when you attach it to your PC it will show up as a serial device and you can directly use a terminal software to access the root console bound to it.

So if you want to help drop me a line on IRC (see chat link top right corner).

Cheers

Thomas

PS: Due to hardware differences this will work on gen7 only. Gen6 is missing the SGX GPU core.