yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Asus Transformer TF700] cogano:
This is difficult to debug remotely. It would help if you can learn how the boot process works and look at the scripts to find the point of failure.

The standard process is:

choose your "F2FS enabled linux rootfs" in kexecboot screen;

the tablet reboots;

the /boot/zImage is loaded;

/boot/initrd.img is mounted as a RAM disk;

and /init is run.

the "/init" from within /boot/initrd.img does a few things and eventually runs:

export rootmnt=/root
export init=/sbin/init
# ... cut on purpose ...
# Chain to real filesystem
exec run-init ${rootmnt} ${init} "$@" <${rootmnt}/dev/console >${rootmnt}/dev/console 2>&1
panic "Could not execute run-init."

Does your rootfs have an executable file "/sbin/init"? Or does it actually fail already in step 5 above (i.e. it tries to run /sbin/init but in initrd.img there is /init only).

BTW, you can unpack the /boot/initrd.img by:

# mv initrd.img initrd.img.lzma
# unlzma initrd.img.lzma
# mkdir initrd && cd initrd
# cpio -i < ../initrd.img
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
I unpacked the initrd.img, but had no idea what to look at.

There is a /sbin/init with 755 permission. I changed the permission to 777 but that did not help. I think it has something to do with the format of the partition, for I used your files to replace the ones of the same rootfs installation on a ext4 partition and the system works fine. Did you modify 'fstab' or any other files?

It seems that there were no logs for the process, so I took a photo of the screen. Hopefully, there is useful information. https://www.dropbox.com/s/cnbuipeu13fnaqr/20151229_165058.jpg?dl=0
[Asus Transformer TF700] jcfunk:
Post the initrd.img I'll have a look at it.
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
Here it is.

Actually, it is from [MENTION=1626944]cogano[/MENTION]'s post. "The Linux initrd.img is here http://ge.tt/2OMjgFG2/v/2?c"
[Asus Transformer TF700] cogano:
Hm. The screenshot shows that /init script of /boot/initrd.img failed right at the end (see my prior post with "exec run-init..."). If you want to test, I can re-pack initrd.img with a few debugging info printed to console.

BTW, do you use the rootfs with ubuntu 12.04 installed on external sd card or inside a filesystem img on internal storage of TF700t? (Honestly, I tested only with external sd card, since anything on internal storage is so slooow.)
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
I'd be happy to test out new kernels.

A 'ubuntu_12.10.img' was created on the internal storage with TF700t-AKBI v2.6.8 installer. I copied the image to a SD card and mounted on a Ubuntu desktop. All the files were then copied to a ext4 partition on a micro SD card with 'cp -rvp ....' command. Then I used the files from you replaced the corresponding ones on the ext4 partition, and adjusted the file permission. This copy of system works with kexecboot, but you know what happened when I copied the system to a f2fs artition on another micro SD card. Something strange is that there was no 'UUID' assigned to the f2fs partition created with gparted.
[Asus Transformer TF700] cogano:
Well, this is initrd.img, not kernel ;)

You can download "initrd-ubuntu-12.04-v02-f2fs_dbg-sam369.zip" from http://ge.tt/3WrwQpU2/v/0 (temporary for 30 days).

Extract initrd.img to /boot/initrd.img of your rootfs and boot again.

The init will print some info and open a simple shell right before handing over to /sbin/init of your rootfs. If you do not succeed yourself, you can make a photo of the screen (try to underexpose about cca -2 EV and stabilise the camera) and ask for help here.

You should see something like what is shown on the image added to the album at ge.tt (above).

---------- Post added at 10:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:14 AM ----------

cp might be not the best choice. Try to use "-a" option or some other command (rsync, cpio, tar) to preserve all the special file/dir types. E.g. as root:

# rsync -avhWH --no-compress --progress /src/ /dst/
[Asus Transformer TF700] jcfunk:
I use tar

Copy the file system.

execute these commands:

add -v option to tar to see files being copied

$ cd <rootfs>
$ sudo tar -cpf - * | ( cd <new_rootfs> ; sudo tar -xpf - )
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
New screenshots.
[Asus Transformer TF700] cogano:
I can see that your rootfs is on the 5th partition (k1p5).

Although I am not sure why it could be a problem for run-init, would you try to have only one partition on the sdcard?

It may be also worth to try to use the old classy MBR instead of GPT.
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
I tried both MBR and GPT with one partition on the card. Because you used Lubuntu 12.04, so I also tried to see if the version makes a difference. However, none had worked. Here are the screenshots.

[MENTION=1626944]cogano[/MENTION] Am I supposed to do something with the 'config' file in 'kexec-linux-that11-cogano1.zip'? Does your f2fs partition have UUID?

If you cannot find a solution, would you please share your rootfs used with the f2fs setup?
[Asus Transformer TF700] jcfunk:
How are you formating sdcard? Maybe if using updated f2fs maybe issue. May want to use tablet to format sdcard. The kernel used is very old now, if using computer that maybe the issue. What size is sdcard?
[Asus Transformer TF700] cogano:
Nope. It is only for reference for those who would want to re-compile the kernel themselves.

It does have it:

[root@here ~]# blkid /dev/sdg
/dev/sdg: PTUUID="0001b898" PTTYPE="dos"
[root@here ~]# blkid /dev/sdg1
/dev/sdg1: LABEL="tf700-l1204" UUID="b2844a8a-8e40-4864-8636-3395a98235a5" TYPE="f2fs" PARTUUID="0001b898-01"

However, some of the fs tools in initrd (and probably also in ubuntu 12.04) do not recognise F2FS and e.g. blkid does not report anything at all for my sdcard, findfs does not work either.. That is to say: I do not really know if UUID makes any difference.

I would have to do a bit of clean up of my ubuntu beforehand. Also, I do not use any bigger cloud storage and do not want to register anywhere because of a single issue; do you have an idea where to upload it?

Nonetheless, could you boot again with the "initrd-ubuntu-12.04-v02-f2fs_dbg-sam369" and when you get to the busy box shell, can you try these commands and make a screenshot again?

# ls -la /root
# /root/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk1

I wonder if at least some commands from the F2FS can be executed.

Also as jcfunk mentioned, F2FS is still evolving and you may want to try a different version of the tools for creating the filesystem. (I do not recall how I formatted my sdcard, probably in Arch Linux cca half year ago.)
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
32gb micro SD card formated with Gparted. Just tried to format the card with TWRP. Same result.

---------- Post added at 09:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:13 PM ----------

[MENTION=1626944]cogano[/MENTION] Screenshots with the commands you mentioned.

If you can send the file to me, I can upload it to my dropbox. Or, maybe [MENTION=3971563]workdowg[/MENTION] can upload the file somewhere and add it to the OP.
[Asus Transformer TF700] cogano:
Interestingly, fdisk from the same partition works fine.

Then, it is a question what the permission error of run-init actually means.

I will clean and pack the sdcard image tomorrow.
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
Thanks. I read somewhere that maybe just your copy of the /sbin/init makes a difference.

Happy New Year!
[Asus Transformer TF700] cogano:
Have a look at your PM Inbox here on xda.
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
Just replied.

---------- Post added at 05:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:03 PM ----------

I am trying to get KatKiss - KatshMallow to work with Kexecboot, but got a kernel panic. (screenshot)

Here is what I have done:

Unpack the blob file with BlobTools.

Extract kernel and ramdisk with bootimg_tools.

Rename the kernel to 'zImage'.

Make ramdisk

cd ramdisk && find | cpio -H newc -o | lzma -9 > ../initrd.img

Replace the files in TF700t-AKBI v2.6.8/KatKiss with files generated above, and run the installer to install the kernel.

What other modifications need to be done? From the messages, I can see that maybe fstab should be revised.
[Asus Transformer TF700] cogano:
Bad news: during clean-up of my sdcard, the fs got frozen on my Arch Linux - I had to hard reboot. Then I fsck'ed the sdcard, errors seemed to have gotten corrected. Unfortunately, the boot in TF700t ends up with kernel panic like for [MENTION=6915060]sam369[/MENTION], no matter if I extract the files from backup again. Unfortunately, I do not have an image backup of the card.

Anyway, I will try to find older kernel with F2FS support and format the card again to see if that is the culprit...
[Asus Transformer TF700] cogano:
Good news: the problem is with the new default mount option "inline_data" and disabling it before copying files over to sdcard solves the problem.

The comparison of Documentation/filesystems/f2fs.txt for _that11 kernel (3.1.10 patched for F2FS) with the current kernel code shows there are a few more mount options nowadays.

When the sdcard gets mounted automatically by udisks2 on Arch Linux, the default mount options are:

/dev/sdg1 on /run/media/user/tf700t-l1204F2FS type f2fs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,background_gc=on,user_xattr,acl,inline_data,active_logs=6,uhelper=udisks2)

When I copied the rootfs to the F2FS partition, booting on TF700t fails with kernel panic.

After remounting:

$ sudo mount -o remount,noinline_data /dev/sdg1

and copying the rootfs to the F2FS partition, booting on TF700t works.

The documentations reads:

I also updated my original post on F2FS http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=60702268&postcount=1358.

[MENTION=6915060]sam369[/MENTION]: can you try the above solution?
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
[MENTION=1626944]cogano[/MENTION]That solved the problem. Thank you very much. The system is much faster now.

---------- Post added at 07:02 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:26 AM ----------

After splitting the boot.blob of KatKiss 6.0.1, it works by just renaming the ramdisk.cpio.gz to initrd.img and use it with zImage of that12 kernel. However, WIFI isn't working this way. If I use zImage of KatKernel, it cannot be loaded by kexecboot. Here are the files. What kind of revision needs to be done?
[Asus Transformer TF700] sam369:
[MENTION=3971563]workdowg[/MENTION] I updated the rootfs*.tar.lzma files in the OP with new souces.list and the kernel and initrd.img files from [MENTION=1626944]cogano[/MENTION].

rootfs-lubuntu-tf700t-01052016-that11-kexec.tar.lzma

rootfs-minimal-Lubuntu-12.04-01052016v1.4.dirfixed.tar.lzma

rootfs-ubuntu-12.10-01052016-that11-kexec.tar.lzma

Here is the initrd.img for KatKiss 6 MarshMallow. It works with zImage of _that kernel and grimlock kernel, as long as the required files are in /lib/modules/ .

Maybe you can add these to the OP or the installer package. As to the kexec.blob file, I think you can just replace the original one with the one from [MENTION=1626944]cogano[/MENTION].
[Asus Transformer TF700] workdowg:
Sure. I'll update it all Friday.... Glad that people are still interested.
[Asus Transformer TF700] jja2000:
How's that updating going?

Can't wait for that kexecboot for katkiss hue
[Asus Transformer TF700] RVC46:
I am interested in this! I have also seen similar efforts for the TF700T. I do not own either of these tablets currently and the 700t is more available at this time. Can anyone summarize the status of either ubuntu project for these tablets/2-in-1's so, I know where they stand? I would greatly appreciate this. Hopefully, you can appreciate that I do not want to purchase the tablet until I know which to buy based on the ability to have ubuntu running on it...dual-boot or native is fine with me.
[Asus Transformer TF700] jcfunk:
Yes, it can dual boot. But it using an older version of ubuntu. Asus has not updated proprietary drivers.
[Asus Transformer TF700] RVC46:
Could you be a little more specific? What version of Ubuntu? I hope it is LTS... Will this work for either the tf700t or, tf701t? Please forgive the question(s)...I know I have a lot of reading to do. We need some means to summarize the status of large projects such as this to make it more efficient to address questions such as this...maybe I need to create a database mod!
[Asus Transformer TF700] jcfunk:
Ubuntu 12.10. OP does a good job at summarizing

tf701 is different from tf700. The concept here can be run on any Android device but the specific files here are for the TF700.
[Asus Transformer TF700] gardiol:
TF700T only, i guess. The TF701T is a quite different hardware and i believe this thread would not be relevant. To be honest, if you already own such hardware it's a great way to make it shine a bit more, but otherwise...

Unless you can get one for free or almost for free, of course, than it can be an amazingly interesting playground.

It's 1GB of RAM only and an tragically slow (for such a top end device at the time!) internal memory that it is borderline unusuable in any configuration, be it Android or Linux. I had it dual booting, but never booted Android again. I am not aware of a simple way to remove the dual boot and go back to single boot.

I managed to squeeze some fine performances (even Chromium working) with an heavily customized Gentoo build, ZRAM, and a very fast microSD card. Still a pain most of the times. (Thanks Asus for the crap hardware)

At the moment (unless somebody manages to get a newer kernel working and tries with OpenTegra X drivers) you are stuck with the Ubuntu of the OP or my Gentoo image. Nothing "newer" can work due to the prehistoric binary-only drivers provided by Nvidia.
[Asus Transformer TF700] RVC46:
gardiol.

Yes, your post helps tremendously. I am very much intrigued by the tf700t & tf701t yet, it appears ASUS emphasized business development rather than customer service via delivering solid product. Linux was the primary attraction for me and it does appear the market is saturated with excellent used tf700t's now. I guess I am beginning to understand why. It is not so much the playground/path/pursuit of improving the tablet I am interested in...this is a large factor yet, my need is for a laptop/desktop replacement piece of hardware that can perform the 1080p streaming & playback our son needs/wants. I think the 1080p is easy, just look at the Chromebooks. It is their reputation that has me concerned about the Core M, Cherry Trail, Bay Trail, etc. It is very difficult to think these 14nm processors are sufficiently developed to replace an i5. However, I will add that I would love to observe this!
[Asus Transformer TF700] gardiol:
Then avoid it. The binary nvidia drivers for X sucks, there is no OpenGL support (only GLX, which is pretty useless on Linux), and i bet 1080p playback is a dream on Linux on the TF700T. I was able to properly playback videos, and without too many issues, but i sure they where not 1080p.

And the CPU is magnitudes slower even than any low level intel CPU. It's an old ARM chip, and ARMs are way slower than Intel in any practical application.

To give you an idea, compiling a small program on RAM disk it takes about 6 times compared to an oltre Pentium 4 1.5ghz, single core.
[Asus Transformer TF700] jja2000:
http://xdaforums.com/nexus-7/orig-development/wip-linux-tegra-nv-3-4-bringup-t3128195 doesn't this maybe help with the problem that linux4tegra won't work on older kernels (correct me if I'm wrong).

The Nexus 7 2k12 uses a tegra 3, but I don't know if it's cardhu.

Also, what happened to workdowg? His account is suspended.
[Asus Transformer TF700] gardiol:
Since i don't have the tf700t anymore i cannot help you out on this. I guess it's worth a try... Some stuff might not work, but who cares at first. I would say just getting something on the screen at all would be a success.
[Asus Transformer TF700] jja2000:
If you're actually able to make zip of lets say Katkiss. Then I can try it out for you and troubleshoot where possible.

I simply don't have enough knowledge of porting and compiling custom roms to pull this off.

And besides, if it can't be done, it's not the end of the world anyways.
[Asus Transformer TF700] jja2000:
Can anyone remind me of what the problem was with the tf700 not being able to run newer linux distros?

If it was the ABI, can't you add

Option "IgnoreABI" "1"

to xorg.conf or isn't it that simple?
[Asus Transformer TF700] gardiol:
I would have known about it sooner... now can't test it since i don't have the thing anymore.

As for the kernel, it's quite advanced stuff to do. For the best chance of success it owuld be good to access the RS232 debug port, which is most probably not even connected to the Tegra3 chipset on the board, so it would require advanced soldering skills and deep hardware knowledge. It is NOT required, of course, but i can tell you any stock kernel (from 4.10 onward all the required patches should already be there) will not initialize the screen framebuffer, i tried that. And since the display does not have any text modes, it means stuck on black screen from step 0. That is where some serial debug would come handy, to troubleshoot it.

Anyway if anybody want to attempt with the kernel, i can appily forward him the email exchange i had with the maintainer of the OpenTegra drivers, he had given me great tips on how to start and what to do!

Required skills would be:

1. C programming

2. Linux knowledge

3. good thinkering capabilities

I would say, specially n.3!
[Asus Transformer TF700] maxou2604:
Hello !

I was trying to install gentoo on my TF700, I follow the tutorial which is on Gentoo wiki but i'm getting some weird problems...

I'm on Crombi-KK, with _that 11 kernel, I have a 64GB samsung micro-sd card (two partitions, 32GB ext4 / f2fs, 32GB vfat)

First, I tried with ext4, but when I try to mount with

mount -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk1p1

it gives me Mount : Invalid Argument (but this partition is ext4...)

I decided to format this partition in f2fs, i follow the tuto with success, but at reboot, I can't go on Gentoo (before clicking on it, it does not recognize the partition it says " (null) ") and after, it takes me to the Option menu with "repair, modify boot.cfg..."

I format the partition again in ext4 (with nothing in it), and ... Surprise Kexec menu recognize the partition as ext4... but of course, I can't mount an ext4 partition in Android :confused: so can't follow the tuto...

Any Idea ?

Thanks :)
[Asus Transformer TF700] _that:
Where do you want to mount it? Try adding a mountpoint to your command. ;)
[Asus Transformer TF700] maxou2604:
No no, I did put at destination (just forget to write it properly here, sorry) (otherwise mount would not work with f2fs either :p )

It was precisely /data/media/0/tmpGentoo (of course I created the folder tmpGentoo in /data/media/0)

so when the first partition of my microSD is ext4 the command

mount -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /data/media/0/tmpGentoo

gives me mount : Invalid Argument

f2fs

mount -t f2fs /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /data/mount/0/tmpGentoo

works... (but after doing the tutorial, after reboot, can't boot on linux)
[Asus Transformer TF700] _that:
"dmesg | tail" sometimes reveals more info about a mount failure.
[Asus Transformer TF700] maxou2604:
[I]root@tf700t: / # dmesg | tail[/I]

<4> [7049.572005] EXT4-fs (mmcblk1p1): couldn't mount RDWR because of unsupported optional features (400)

Thanks :D

EDIT : I did

root@tf700t:/ # e2fsck /dev/block/mmcblk1p1

which returned me

/dev/block/mmcblk1p1 has unsupported feature(s) : 64bit FEATURE_R10

I put the microSD in my NAS (running debian jessie 32bit(OMV 3.0)) then i formated my card again, and now it works :)

I need to follow the tuto again to re-try the installation of gentoo
[Asus Transformer TF700] maxou2604:
Hello !

I finished the installation but now when I need to choose which system I want to boot, Choosing Android or Linux always make Crombi-KK boot.

I'm in the same configuration as in the tuto so I have the same boot.cfg

#Android#
LABEL=CROMBi-KK
BOOT=3
DEVICE=/dev/mmcblk0p1
DIR=/
KERNEL=/boot/zImage
INITRD=/boot/initrd.img
PRIORITY=10
#Linux ext partition image on microsd partition 1 #
LABEL=Gentoo on microSD partition 1
BOOT=3
DEVICE=/dev/mmcblk1p1
DIR=/
KERNEL=/boot/zImage
INITRD=/boot/initrd.img
PRIORITY=110

I also tried to download the kernel, unpack the blob, then put the two unpacked files zImage and initrd.img into Gentoo /boot directory but when I do that, and I choose Linux at boot,

It shows me Crombi-KK bootanim, but it does not boot (I let it more than an hour, nothing else appears on the screen...).

After Hard Reboot, I copied my two files coming from (Android) /system/boot into Gentoo /boot but after choosing Linux, Crombi-KK boots.

Any Idea ?

Thanks,
[Asus Transformer TF700] jja2000:
[MENTION=3705972]gardiol[/MENTION] hi,

Could you help me out with the gentoo install please?

I'm following your tutorial on gentoowiki, but the problem is that there isn't really a functioning handbook for arm devices yet, I'm planning to try the RasPi quick install guide, but I figured there will be some things missing on getting the necessities installed.

Help is appreciated :)
[Asus Transformer TF700] gardiol:
Hi jja2000,

of course i can help you with this. Well, i do not have the TF700T anymore, but if you describe to me in details what you did and what replies you got...
[Asus Transformer TF700] jja2000:
Haha I completely forgot about this between then and now.

Thing is that I've been trying to get your tar.bz2 to work, but I've not been having any luck booting. The furthest I've come is getting past OpenRC and having a cursor infront of a black screen. It's not actually frozen, it just doesn't seem to load lxde.

Apart from that, changing out the kernel and initramfs just boots me into android since (I guess) the mountpoints within the initramfs point to internal memory. In the meantime I also tried flashing that10 with no luck.
[Asus Transformer TF700] lastomen:
Invalid boot.cgf for TF700t-AKBI-v2.6.8

Hello !! After initial setup of dual boot, it works. But 'No boot devices found'. OPTIONS menu appears... option b for Return to Kexecboot.... Fast lines impossible to read, and No boot devices found, with Reboot & Rescan to try again, on top of the screen. OPTIONS menu have several tools, but I have no knowlegde or doc to help myself. I believe the 90% the problem is the boot.cfg specification. TWRP 3.1.1 is alive and I could reflash KatKiss 039 if I would wish. I want to be able to run Ubuntu (rootfs-ubuntu-12.10-that10-kexec.zip used). Can anybody address doc or a source? Could I use GIT to read the installation script, and get the info I need? Any help will be appreciated !! Regards, Norberto :confused:
[Asus Transformer TF700] lastomen:
Invalid boot.cgf for TF700t-AKBI-v2.6.8

After doing some investigation, I ask myself if it is OK that my TWRP 3.1.1.0 is alive and operative... I mean, I believe I have read, that dual boot would use its space to operate, and would had been overwritten. This TWRP has a feature to protect itself against being overwritten. May be that's the reason for dual boot to fail, and I still have my recovery OK!! Many dudes... maybe I have failed very luckily !! I would like to hear your comments...
[Asus Transformer TF700] gardiol:
The info in the gentoo wiki and links hope can help you. To be honest, recovery and dual boot go to different partitions if i remember correctly, no risk there. At most you must flash a kernel again.

You run no risks to brick so far.
[Asus Transformer TF700] workdowg:
Development thread started here
[Asus Transformer TF700] JoinTheRealms:
Aw dude that sucks, let her know JoinTheRealms (Josh) is wishing her the best!:) .

As for me im still trying to get this root-bind thing going, after that ill look into wifi
[Asus Transformer TF700] ITesAndroid:
Hmmm, looks like the reason I could neither enter the GUI nor login was that I've changed the User Accounts settings. I've reinstalled the Ubuntu again and didn't change anything this time, and I'm booting back and forth with Android and Ubuntu, and everything works fine... It boots me to the graphical login page as "Ubuntu User")

P.S. sorry for my English, I'm from Ukraine=)