[Gen9 Android Development] letama:
Hi All,

Some saw this already, but in case you missed it:

[YOUTUBE]O6AbBpWZjL8[/YOUTUBE]

So, here is information regarding this if you are interested in participating:

1) I said it already, but I mean it! It's potentially dangerous for your tablet and it could brick it definitively. Don't apply if you're not ready to loose your tablet. My script should be safe, I used it successfully multiple time on my g9 and my it2, but that's why I want beta test with brave (crazy ?) testers.

2) Please read the whole post carefully before applying. If things seems fuzzy or complicated or you don't feel comfortable with this, wait for the end of beta, I'll probably simplify things afterwards.

3) Repartitioning will erase your internal storage and your data partition. Do backups on micro-sd or PC before doing it.

4) Your device should be SDE enabled before applying.

5) You should have a micro-sd with at least 1 GB free.

5) Your device should be flashed with last 4.0.5 official firmware.

5) At the end, you should have a dual boot CWM/Android (or triple if you want to go with the optional second partition). Your new android build (rooted of course) will be running on a separate ext4 partition, natively. No more loopback.

Here is how I would like to proceed:

1) Apply in PM. I will take a limited number of testers at first as I want to be present when you'll do it to be able to check the new partition layout and help fixing potential problem. If everything goes well, I'll open beta more widely.

2) If I give you the ok in PM, contact me on IRC starting this afternoon (CET). I won't be present whole weekend and I can't give more precise information on when I'll be there. I'm on vacation for two weeks so I should be pretty available. I'll be hanging on #archos and #openaos on freenode but I won't be always in front of PC, so send a direct chat and see if I reply, I don't want to clutter these channels with this :). If I'm present, we'll go through the whole procedure.

Here is the procedure, just here for reference, we'll do it together. It looks a bit complicated looking at it, but it's quite easy in fact. I will simplify the procedure at the end of the beta test, but during beta all steps will be done one by one to give me a chance to follow it closely.

1) Flash cwm

2) Boot developer edition, you should see cwm, backup your device partition table:

adb shell mount /sdcard
adb shell dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/backup_partitions.bin bs=1024 count=100000

3) Push scripts to device:

adb push simulation.sh /tmp/
adb push execute.sh /tmp/
adb push reformat.sh /tmp/
adb shell chmod 755 /tmp/simulation.sh
adb shell chmod 755 /tmp/execute.sh
adb shell chmod 755 /tmp/reformat.sh

4) Do simulation *:

adb shell /tmp/simulation.sh

it should look like that at the end:

Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 7457 MB, 7457472512 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 227584 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 5 1605 51200+ 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 1605 10760 292969+ 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p3 10761 34198 750000+ 5 Extended
/dev/block/mmcblk0p4 34198 227584 6188367+ 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p5 10761 11011 8024 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p6 11012 22575 370040 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p7 22576 34197 371896 83 Linux

5) If I give you the go, do real one *:

adb shell /tmp/execute.sh

6) Verify repartition *:

adb shell cat /proc/partitions

7) Format new partitions *

adb shell /tmp/reformat.sh

8) Remount rawfs to be able to reboot:

adb shell mount -t rawfs /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/rawfs

9) Reboot with this command:

adb shell reboot_into sde

then select cwm again.

10) Copy build zip to microsd

adb shell mount /sdcard
adb push letama-4.0.5-1.zip /sdcard/

11) Install new build from CWM

select "install zip from sdcard"

select "choose zip from sdcard"

select "letama-4.0.5-1.zip"

select again "letama-4.0.5-1.zip"

12) Wait for installation

13) Verify cwm log *

adb shell cat /tmp/recovery.log

14) reboot with this command:

adb shell reboot_into sde

15) Let it boot android

* means that I want to see the result of this point before doing next one.

And voila! Looks complicated, but it's not. Still tempted ? :)

Notes:

- This build is using a modified kernel, there is a bug in hsmmc that crashes the tablet when installing build on ext4 partition.

- ClockworkMod is functional but few things are not finished/not like I want: wipe Cache/dalvik-cache are not wiping the right location, don't use them. Reboot is a normal reboot, it won't reboot to SDE. Except this, everything should work.

Feedback from beta:

- Five success so far, looking good.

- In one instance, new firmware didn't boot because of audio system crashed in kernel. A power down (15 seconds until led goes off) / power on fixed it.

- adb in cwm is using old honeycomb usb ids, I'll try to fix that. If you are in linux and can't get adb with it, "sudo adb kill-server ; sudo adb start-server" could help.

- cwm mass storage export doesn't work.

- Wipe data/factory reset in CWM doesn't work properly and trash data partition. Don't use it.

Thanks to all beta-testers!