yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
Haha honoured? I'm honoured that you're honoured :D

As for a CWM zip, this would theoretically be possible if e files were pushed to /data/linux or a MicroSD (this can be decided based on what we have). The kernel can be dd'd to the spare AKB partition used in dual boot and the bootloader would obviously still need APX Mode. I plan to take a look at some point into chrooting the system at kernel/ramdisk level. This should allow the system to reside on the internal memory without needing to reformat the baby :P As this tablet uses ext4 the system should happily coexist with android in its own folder happily on that memory in a chroot.

When compiling the system RootFS I chose for armhf. The hardfloat support is pretty decent in Android now and if possible I'd like to recompile the boot.img for armhf.

Again I'm pretty strapped for time at the moment (and I'm a lazy **** (choose your swear and insert it there ;P)) but I'll see what I can do. I'm not great with building boot images but if I get to work on the CM10 project (it would be a great learning curve for me) I should pick some useful tips up to migrate over to the Linux state of affairs.

It's all certainly possible and exciting but we need as much talent working on this as possible :)
[Acer Iconia A500] Kevin Roscom:
Yeah, I'm just that nerdy :P it was really your involvement with the APX tool that made me a "fan" :D

And I'll try to play around with some armhf rootfs things.. I know the feeling of being booked too and it sucks. But if I see a kernel that boots from /data/data then I'll try it out and update my guide. And if you can get any access to the camera drivers and Wolfson sound chip drivers from Android, that would help out a lot too. Not to be.. uh.. beggy?

But really, good luck on CM 10 and I hope you can get some time soon. I dropped an AP class to make time myself. I'll look around at how to compile kernels so I can help out where I can! :)
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
haha I have a fanbase now?! That I didn't know :P but I am damn proud of that flash tool - best thing I've written tbh. I helped with dropwn (drag & drop iPhone software bundle maker) but that failed for some strange reason and the 1000s of lines of code never left dropbox! :(

Anyway back on topic, *most* of the drivers we need are available from the linux for Tegra page in the OP. That might have camera access - I'm not sure. Often though sound chips etc. actually have vendor drivers available. I know that was the case for (I believe) one of the networking drivers when Android was ported to the iPhone 2G.

And thanks :P I aim to dive in when the next build is out. Hopefully wds can give me a hand understanding the layout of Android's code and how to integrate the a500 patches. Any help is greatly appreciated - even if it's one line or even a useful URL that could help. Anything tbh :P

EDIT: The sound chip is the Wolfson WM8903 which has Linux drivers available. In fact, they have been merged into the official kernel.org source tree and support has been built into the kernel since version 2.6.38 (source: http://opensource.wolfsonmicro.com/content/linux-drivers-wolfson-devices)
[Acer Iconia A500] apapousek:
CWM flashable zip would be easy. Simply have the updater script create an ext4 filesystem, and extract the rootfs. From there, flash the correct kernel to the correct partition, and done.

I would write a script for it, but I really don't have any dev machines at all. Mine fried.
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
Or just mount /data and push Linux to it ;)
[Acer Iconia A500] el.quechon:
Blackthunder3r can you tell me how to create roofts with debootstrap i get dpkg error all the time i dont know of im doing something wrong

And the locale: no such a directory i try chroot in ubuntu 11.04 to see if i could upgtade it but cannot chroot it what to do
[Acer Iconia A500] gears177:
I was getting that to but flashed a different rom and kernel and it worked ;P also +1 for being a fan :)

you can also upgrade it to 12.04 if you run it natively (might cause wifi issues)

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1158260&page=36

there a tutorial you have to sacrifice your recovery though and it takes up 8gigs of internal theres an sdcard way though :P

and heres one for creating your own rootfs

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1782549
[Acer Iconia A500] el.quechon:
I know i have done all of that the only problem i have is when i create rootfs with debootstrap and try to install something in chroot i get all the packages to download but they dont install cuz dpkg just give errors
[Acer Iconia A500] Kevin Roscom:
What kind of machine would this need to be? I've got a few machines at my disposal and I'd love to put them to good use. Noob question here, but would a PC with a Phenom X4 and 4GB RAM do the job? Just tell me what to do and I'll try to make it happen :)
[Acer Iconia A500] apapousek:
Doesn't matter any more. New machine came in. i7 w/ 16 GB of beautiful RAM. And they're scripts.. you write them... yea..
[Acer Iconia A500] gears177:
lmao xD
[Acer Iconia A500] Kevin Roscom:
Coolness. Yeah I'm not really big on writing scripts these days, and I haven't messed around with CWM and how ROMs install and such... could you link me something to learn how to write CWM scripting syntax and how to write a script for it? I wanna get on this ROM and hopefully have it ported to other tabs.
[Acer Iconia A500] sanjayayogi:
what kernel should I use?

I really want to get Linux onto my A500

Is this thread primarily for Linux as the primary OS or also using loop back to run Linux on Android?
[Acer Iconia A500] Kevin Roscom:
It's for running Linux natively as a second OS. Or a first OS. Actually installing it ON the tab. Just like on the PC.
[Acer Iconia A500] Tautvaldas:
Where can I get latest kernel source for native linux? I want 3.0x kernel. Thanks. Sorry for bad English.
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
The main Linux sources are at kernel.org but the latest version of Linux4Tegra is the 3.1 release and you can check that out from nv-tegra.nvidia.com
[Acer Iconia A500] Tautvaldas:
can you give me a link to download that kernel source? I can't download from nv-tegra.nvidia.com/git...
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
You have to git clone it. Download the tar file of documentation from the linux4tegra homepage. Then open that and load the PDF file. Now you can see how to compile all that stuff and it also tells you how to checkout the kernel source
[Acer Iconia A500] Tautvaldas:
Thanks for your help.
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
How much of an android zImage can we use with this?
[Acer Iconia A500] Tautvaldas:
Any progress?
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
Not sure. There's several threads around but I've had a bunch of stuff to work on so I haven't even booted into Ubuntu in about a month and a half. Lol
[Acer Iconia A500] Tautvaldas:
So, what do we need on it? Just modify android source or edit like board-acer-t20.c etc and put it to gnu kernel source like 3.0.10? I was see board-tf101.c from tf101-gnu-kernel and it is similar to android version. Sorry for bad english.
[Acer Iconia A500] Holyoblation:
I'm using multirom v4 by tassadar on my nexus 7 to boot any ROM plus Ubuntu 13.04. Works well.

It uses kexec-hardboot to multi boot ROMs with different kernel. It would be great if this could be applied for the a500.
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
Hmm I'll have tk take a look at that
[Acer Iconia A500] Kevin Roscom:
So I did some poking around online, and I believe I found that kernel 3.2 has built in multi touch drivers for the Atmel chip in the a500. I've still gotta set up a sufficient PC for chrooting and Linux development, but even so I have no idea of how to build and flash a kernel to the iconia from scratch. Anyway, alongside Ubuntu 12.10 or 13.04 I think the multitouch will be fully appreciated. Also I think the wolfson sound chip (which appears to be integrated with most tetra devices, correct me if I'm wrong?) Has drivers since 3.x. A newer kernel may just be the solution to all our prior problems.
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
Indeed you're right about the sound drivers; they're built right into the Linux kernel. Interesting find about the multitouch drivers!

To flash a Linux kernel just flash Skrilax's bootloader then use fastboot to flash your kernel to secboot then use power and volume up to boot secondary kernel ;)

As for the rest of the codecs and drivers, NVidia has provided most of what we need via L4T.

I'd suggest just doing all the development in a VM as you'll need a lot of packages so it's easier to have an environment that's destroyable and easy to roll back if you mess up. As long as you have hardware virtualisation (ie VT-x) you'll have no problems. Also you could just install a minimal Ubuntu server in a VM and use it via SSH if you want to - it's actually less fiddly for this stuff than using the UI. Just set yourself a static IP on Ubuntu server because it frequently changes its IP via DHCP so the SSH dies. Also use byobu ;)
[Acer Iconia A500] Kevin Roscom:
Yeah the thread says "improved" but since the driver was already functional since 2.x, the only addition i could assume is multitouch..

I need to do some poking around inside the 3.2 kernel precompiled for Tegra to see where it boots from, and see if I (or someone with more knowledge) can edit the default boot partition. I'm gonna look into setting up a dev VM now that I've got a running computer and Ubuntu. I think the Unity interface + all that multitouch goodness + our tabs is gonna be a match made in heaven.

On a side note, but still loosely relevant, has anyone seen the Ubuntu Phone OS? The source comes out late February, but I think this could be useful ported to our Tab.
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
Unity in its current form is nowhere near a good replacement for a lighter desktop like XFCE...

I currently run both on my acer a500 on Ubuntu Raring (armhf) and the latest nvidia tegra drivers ( R16.2 ).

Did have some issues getting it to run though:

I wanted to boot from internal mmc, but somehow my partition table is different ( with data on mmcblk0p8 ) and the reverse engineered nvtegra partition didnt work... so I just manually searched for the start sector of p8 and modified nvtegra.c to add the p8 partition hardcoded ( ugly... yes i know, but it works :p )...

X does not start with the latest tegra drivers because of EDID issues ( i guess )... modifying xorg.conf and manually adding a modeline works

Ubuntu Raring related issues:

LightDM crashes ( known bug ), so I just installed GDM

Unity only starts as root... with any other user I have no left sidebar ( havent looked into it any deeper )...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It does seem to use the GLES driver though as running /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p shows:

root@gemini:~# /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p
NvRmPrivGetChipIdStub: Could not read Tegra chip id/rev
Expected on kernels without Tegra3 support, using Tegra2
NvRmChannelSetPriority: NvError_IoctlFailed with error code 14
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: NVIDIA Tegra
OpenGL version string: OpenGL ES 2.0 14.01002

Not software rendered: yes
Not blacklisted: yes
GLX fbconfig: no
GLX texture from pixmap: no
GL npot or rect textures: no
GL OES EGL image: yes
EGL KHR image pixmap: yes
EGL version is 1.4+: yes

Unity supported: yes
[Acer Iconia A500] Kevin Roscom:
Why not roll back to 12.04 for the LTS? It's also faster and more stable than newer versions. It'd just be a major shame to run Ubuntu on a touchscreen without Unity. The Unity not loading unless root problem also happens on the PC, at least it happened to me when I upgraded to 12.10. It may just be a bug in Unity itself. Also the source code of Ubuntu Phone should be releasing fairly soon, I think it's another viable option for an alternative OS.. another idea: what if we use the Android kernel to boot Ubuntu? They do this with Ubuntu for Android, does anyone know exactly how they do it / how it works / if theres any source?

Back to Unity, I just think it looks the best and is best suited for the touchscreen. XFCE was fast and desktop-like, but the only way to actually use things was with a USB mouse/ keyboard. As a ROM, it'd be fairly easy to adopt, but if there's a better, more touch-friendly window-system that will work on the iconia, that would also work.

If anyone knows where I can get or how I can build a 3.2 kernel that will boot from an internal partition, that would also be helpful. I'm gonna do a bit more reaserch before I start messing with my A500 again...
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
I just went ahead and used the latest ubuntu version ( id rather use debian wheezy but as far as I can tell gnome 3 has no GLES support at all )... as for unity only running as root ive read that it might have something to do with the user profile which unity --reset might fix.

As for unity itself... the only thing it has over xfce and other gtk-based UIs is the left panel... the top panel is still too small for touch ( close / minimize etc ) and too much depends on double / right click events. I do agree that it will be the thing to use in the future with the current development on Nexus 7 and Ubuntu for mobile.

To get a 3.x kernel running you will have to port the current work... If you have a working kernel + source I can guide you if needed... I might have some time left this week to try to get one of the newer nvidia kernels ( eg tegra-l4t-r16r2-rc ) to work.. anyone knows what the current issues are to getting it work?
[Acer Iconia A500] guimendes:
An option for UI is using Enlightenment. They developed a theme for tablets. It seems a good option, and could be fast. The distro Bodhi, which is based on Ubuntu, uses it.

@rogro82, glad to see you working on it. Here you can find some problems with 3.0 kernel: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1158260
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
You can repartition the tablet via nvflash (--create command).

btw. what cmdline do you use for internal boot?
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
mem=1024M@0M vmalloc=256M lp0_vec=8192@0x1840c000 video=tegrafb console=tty0 usbcore.old_scheme_first=1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p8 rw rootwait rootfstype=ext4 debug
[Acer Iconia A500] LordYuuki:
Hey guys!

I'm from the A700 forums and I'd like to ask you guys some questions.

I struggle with getting linux run on the A700. As far as I know I need to achieve following:

-unlocked bootloader (checked)

-rootfs on external sdcard

-compiled linuxkernel (are you using the chromeos-kernel or the "stock" linux kernel?)

-booting this kernel

-drivers etc.

I just need some help/guides to get a kernel to be booted on the device. As you guys already did this with the A500 , I'd really appreciate it if you can help me with this matter, so I can achieve this. If you have questions, feel free to PM me.
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
Thanks. Guess I screwed mine up elsewhere as "stuck on BL screen" (fbcon doesn't want to activate).
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
I know the feeling... now have a 3.1 kernel up and running... still need to fix some stuff, but atleast it boots up...
[Acer Iconia A500] macia10:
Hope you'll post it when its usable :) btw what works in your 3.1 and what does not?
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
Has anyone figured out a complete work flow to get Ubuntu yet? I mean like a set of commands that any user could use to install Ubuntu *from scratch* to the internal storage or USB hard drive? What bootloader are people using right now? Still just the Android one? In my opinion we should find a way to chain load uBoot so we can even PXE boot our tablets (i think that'd be really quite awesome as a concept that could be considered way beyond this tiny community. Think tablet thin clients....)
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
u-boot will not really bring that much (that is when I finish ext4 bootloader in patched bootloader so the only thing that will not be there will be no sdcard access from bootloader). After that, you will be able to repartition it and use mmcblk0p7 (AKB) for linux and maintain full compatibility with Android (you can do it now too, except that I use flexrom (mmcblk0p6) for rootfs and AKB for kernel image.
[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
Full ext4 will be very very cool! Having a list of kernel images won't actually be impossible. Think: /data/boot/kernel and /data/boot/initrd and pick/choose zImages etc...is that possible? Also take a look at berryboot: there's probably so,e inspiration to be had there ;)
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
As of now, if you check the sources, there is ext4fs support (tested on "fastboot getvar version-android" (see "fastboot_get_var_android_version" in "fastboot.c"), but I haven't written the "menu.lst" parsing yet :P
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
Sweet!

Tomorrow ill also upload my kernel source to github. its build against the latest tag tegra-l4t-r16r2-rc (3.1.10).

Most basic things work now ( panel, touch, usb, wifi etc ) so hopefully some more people will be able to help out as I am currently very limited in available time.

Ill also try to get Clutter to work with an eglnative backend ( it needs some small changes as far as I can tell now ) so that people can also run Gnome 3 using gles.
[Acer Iconia A500] Timelord83:
I do not have an A500 i have an A501 so i was wondering if someone had a mini guide to setup the kernel to look for the correct partition on my A501 and the basics for getting the ubuntu rootfs complied and on the tablet...
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
3.1.10 kernel source is up:

https://github.com/rogro82/picasso-kernel

Currently it has only been tested with rootfs on internal storage ( mmcblk0p8 ) as I have no external sdcard laying around which i can use.
[Acer Iconia A500] guimendes:
Which rootfs are you using? Would you mind to share the file or link to get it?
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
dd if=/dev/zero of=debian-armhf.img bs=750M count=1
sudo mkfs.ext4 debian-armhf.img
mkdir rootfs-mnt
sudo mount -t ext4 debian-armhf.img rootfs-mnt/
sudo qemu-debootstrap --arch armhf wheezy rootfs-mnt/

# in case you are on wheezy you can copy your sources.list... if not generate one here http://debgen.simplylinux.ch/
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list rootfs-mnt/etc/apt/sources.list

# copy wifi/bt firmware files to rootfs-mnt/lib/firmware/brcm

sudo chroot rootfs-mnt/
apt-get update

# now install whatever you want ( eg wpasupplicant or anything else you want to use to setup wifi )

passwd root
adduser {yourname}

Thats about it... I dont pre-install anything so that i can get back to a clean base install easily ( besides wifi of course ).

Also if you dd an image over an internal partition do not forget to run resize2fs afterwards ( eg resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p8 )
[Acer Iconia A500] Tautvaldas:
Awesome!!! Is it working with custom initrd?
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
Thnx Ill patch USB gadget.

As for CMDLINE / lp0_vec that all came from 2.6 kernel ( https://github.com/astarasikov/icon...-2.6.38/arch/arm/configs/iconiaa500_defconfig )
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
Yeah but the cmdline params were changed with the ICS bootloader. Anyway how do you input login shell now?
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
Ah ok I missed that change... I just use a usb kbd directly
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
Ah I see, thanks. In which case I'd say that USB host works, USB slave doesn't (no enumeration attempt on host PC).
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
K ive atleast applied the patch ( https://github.com/rogro82/picasso-kernel/commit/082b927560aa757d9e48aed6b3ad8bc955aaed20 ) ... ill take a look at usb slave mode

Also anyone knows if upower is broken? all battery related stuff shows 0% capacity ( and upower -d also does ) while sysfs reports the correct battery capacity.

Edit:

Nevermind.. just checked out the latest version of UPower and found the issue... added additional calculations to the battery driver.
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
Hmm, I'm getting either kernel panic upon inserting wifi module or it bugs here: https://github.com/rogro82/picasso-kernel/blob/master/drivers/mmc/core/sdio_io.c#L28

Maybe I missed something - I did:

apt-get install broadcom-sta-common broadcom-sta-source firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43legacy-installer b43-fwcutter

and put files to /lib/firmware/brcm

bcm4329-fullmac-4.bin
bcm4329-fullmac-4.txt
bcm43xx-0.fw
bcm43xx_hdr-0.fw

On a side note I must say that Acer's sound driver is pretty awkward.
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
Hmmm wifi issue could be because the current configs builds the staging brcm driver and besides that also the bcm4329 driver as a module... i just reinstalled and also had issues with wifi and they were related to the bcm4329 module so i recommend removing it and taking it out of the config for now.

Also I never do:

apt-get install broadcom-sta-common broadcom-sta-source firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43legacy-installer b43-fwcutter

I just copy the 4 files ( from which only 2 are used if im not mistaking ).

Currently sound is broken ( well speaker output ) because of this ( in board header ):

#define TEGRA_GPIO_SPKR_EN	PICASSO_GPIO_WM8903(0)

should be:

#define TEGRA_GPIO_SPKR_EN	PICASSO_GPIO_WM8903(2)

Besides that volume control seems a bit awkward and ill need to play with alsa a bit to see if i can get it right.

https://github.com/rogro82/picasso-kernel/commit/8d88b02e35542776d3df4a3e0575d8eb377141b9
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
I see about the wifi.

As for sound in the stock 2.6.39.4 kernel, in tegra_wm8903.c there are routing changes ( https://github.com/ezterry/AcerTabKernel/blob/master/sound/soc/tegra/tegra_wm8903.c ), and in the same directory also other code by Acer (yeah, pointless drivers + devices etc.). Anyway there is extra code for volume control and mic recognition, which could be useful. Well I'm trying to clean that. Also it sends two extra commands to EC.
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
Ah ok... I havent digged that deep into sound as I didnt know if it was working at all with the 2.6 kernel. I guess the biggest issue is that the sound is over amplified as sound control works in the lower region.

As for wifi Ill check if i can get the bcm driver working instead of the current staging driver. Any other big issues you have seen so far?
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
No, just the wifi, USB Slave and half-working sound.
[Acer Iconia A500] macia10:
Hi,

Any tips on compiling this thing? what toolchain I need etc. :)
[Acer Iconia A500] randomblame:
nice work I'm cloning the repo now

got it to build with the android requirements lol fun.

It boots to text that says android_ no usb crap well at least it loaded init. Must be some paths off

*got adb yay

I'm just having fun no real point I know
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
You can use arm-none-eabi ( Sourcery Lite ) and im currently using linaro arm-linux-gnueabihf...

Nice!
[Acer Iconia A500] rogro82:
For anyone using the latest version of ubuntu and is having issues with trying to get emulation for right mouse click to work this might be because the latest evdev driver has multi-touch which has broken some other things.

I have had success reverting to an older build and can now once again use long press to emulate right click.

git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-input-evdev
cd xf86-input-evdev
git checkout -b evdev-2.7-branch origin/evdev-2.7-branch
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
make && sudo make install
[Acer Iconia A500] randomblame:
can't find blobs for the newer kernel video drivers surface flinger won't start :(
[Acer Iconia A500] Skrilax_CZ:
Try downgrading the drivers/video/tegra to those in 2.6.39.4 kernel from Acer.
[Acer Iconia A500] randomblame:
been trying to do that but it's not working out. I just tried adding the picasso bits to raymans tf101 3.1.10 kernel which was already downgraded to 2.6.39 video drivers and I've got a zimage to test * nope now I have no video and no usb hrm well maybe I can coax the grouper blobs into working
[Acer Iconia A500] guimendes:
I'm some days away from my linux computer, so can someone please post a compilled version of the kernel and a rootfs? Thanks in advice. I want to play with this...