[Sony Xperia M] alvinhochun:
Disclaimer

I (alvinhochun) am NOT responsible for events including but not limited to bricking any electronic or non-electronic devices, losing data, fever, heart attack, thermonuclear war, or the cooling down of the Sun, either caused by or not caused by downloading or installing this mod.

You are expected to back up all your data by your own means before installing this mod.

You should always only follow tested instructions and install only tested ROMs with a tested setup, or else you should have extended knowledge in the inner workings of Android, Linux and MultiROM Xperia.​

Notice

This is an unofficial port of MultiROM.

Before anything else, I would like to say thanks to [MENTION=3418703]Tasssadar[/MENTION] who developed the original MultiROM (thread for Nexus 7). Without him, this mod wouldn't be here.

Unless otherwise specified, anything that is designed for just "MultiROM" (without "Xperia" after it) will not work for this because there are some operational differences between "MultiROM" (original) and "MultiROM Xperia" (this mod).​

Introduction

Perhaps you want to try the new CyanogenMod 11 ROM, but don't want to erase your phone to flash it because you need to keep your stock ROM and all your data, and don't want to bother backing up and restoring every single time? Don't worry! MultiROM Xperia can help you.

MultiROM Xperia is a mod which lets you install alternative Android ROMs to your internal memory, microSD cards or USB storage connected via OTG and boot them. Together with a kernel with kexec-hardboot patch, you can even boot ROMs with kernels different from the one you've installed!

The idea is that you can install ROMs to external storage spaces via a modified TWRP recovery, but it is not ready yet.

This mod is mostly ready for testing, but since the installer is not ready yet, I've uploaded the boot image (to be flashed with `fastboot flash boot`) and the files of unofficial CM11 Beta 1 (Thanks to [MENTION=4343949]PecanCM[/MENTION]) to be placed on the microSD card or USB device in the form of a zip archive. At the time being, they can only be used when you have stock 15.1.C.2.8 firmware (Android 4.1.2) installed.​

Warning

This mod is basically one giant hack. Neither the ROMs nor the device itself is designed with multiboot in mind so there is no absolute guarantee that it will work properly. Technically, installing it only modifies the boot partition (sometimes casually called the kernel) which is the same thing that custom kernel is installed to, and in the worse case you only need to (re-)flash a stock or custom kernel or flash an ftf to remove MultiROM Xperia, but the MultiROM booting mechanism is hacky and is not guaranteed to always work.

Always make backup, frequently, like you should do even if not using MultiROM Xperia.​

Features

Boot any number of alternative Android ROMs installed onto microSD cards and USB storage

Support alternative "internal storages": For every ROMs (including internal ROM), you can have multiple separated "profiles", which is represented by an entire "emulated" /data partition. Technically, the profiles can also support encryption.

Installation

This instruction is reviewed on 2014-01-09.

Prerequisite: You need to unlock your bootloader and be on stock 15.1.C.2.8 firmware (Android 4.1.2),

Download multirom-boot-********-c1905-test.img and multirom-cm11beta1-********-c1905-test.zip.

Use fastboot to flash the boot image:

fastboot flash boot multirom-boot-********-c1905-test.img

Extract multirom-cm11beta1-********-c1905-test.zip directly to the root of a microSD Card or USB flash drive.

Currently, these filesystem formats are supported: vfat (FAT16/FAT32), ext2, ext3, ext4.

******** represents the date of the release.​

Usage

To boot a ROM (including internal stock ROM), insert the microSD card or connect the USB flash drive and switch on the phone, then select the corresponding ROM and press "boot". (Note, the first boot of an external ROM may take very long depending on the speed of the storage device.)

To enter CWM recovery, switch on the phone, select "Misc" tab and press "Recovery". Alternatively, you can execute `adb reboot recovery`. The included CWM recovery is the same as the one in unofficial CM11 Alpha 2 (Thanks to [MENTION=4343949]PecanCM[/MENTION]).

Note: Do NOT attempt to use any existing recovery to flash any ROMs unless you don't want to keep MultiROM Xperia and your existing data!

[/LIST]​

Downloads

2013-01-08 / 2013-01-19

multirom-boot-20140107-c1905-test.img (10 MiB)

multirom-boot-20140108-c1905-test.img (10 MiB)

multirom-cm11alpha2-20140107-c1905-test.zip (173 MiB, 1 GiB extracted)

multirom-cm11beta1-20140119-c1905-test.zip (202 MiB, 1.2 GiB extracted)​

Screenshots

See Screenshots​

Source code

MultiROM Xperia:

https://github.com/alvinhochun/multirom-nicki

Device tree (used to build MultiROM Xperia):

https://github.com/alvinhochun/cyanogenmod_device_sony_nicki/tree/multirom

Kexec-hardboot patch:

See http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2568151

Stock kernel with kexec-hardboot patch:

https://github.com/alvinhochun/sony-xperia-m-kernel

CM11 kernel:

See original unofficial CM11 Beta 1 thread​

XDA:DevDB Information

MultiROM Xperia M, Tool/Utility for the Sony Xperia M

Contributors

alvinhochun, Tasssadar

Version Information

Status: Testing

Created 2014-01-06

Last Updated 2014-11-04