[Moto G Android Development] montamer:
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Introduction

I was able to get multirom working on Motorola Moto G and would like to share with you guys. Moto G (falcon) is my first android phone (ya, you heard me correct. It took a longtime for me to switch to android :p) and I am new to android development and XDA community.

I have converted my XT1033 to single sim variant after flashing XT1032_RETAIL-GB_4.4.4_KXB21.14-L1.40_36_cid7_CFC_1FF.xml.zip firmware. I did this to install Parandroid (currently it only supports single sim). It might work on the default firmware.

MultiROM is one-of-a-kind multi-boot mod for Nexus 7. It can boot any Android ROM as well as other systems like Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Active, Bohdi Linux or WebOS port.Besides booting from device's internal memory, MultiROM can boot from USB drive connected to the device via OTG cable. The main part of MultiROM is a boot manager, which appears every time your device starts and lets you choose ROM to boot. You can see how it looks on the left image below and in gallery. ROMs are installed and managed via modified TWRP recovery. You can use standard ZIP files to install secondary Android ROMs, daily prebuilt image files to install Ubuntu Touch and MultiROM even has its own installer system, which can be used to ship other Linux-based systems.

Features:

* Multiboot any number of Android ROMs

* Restore nandroid backup as secondary ROM

* Use for example Ubuntu Touch or Desktop alongside with Android, without the need of device formatting

* Boot from USB drive attached via OTG cable

You can also watch a video which shows it in action.​

There are stil many issues, and I am still testing and learning :angel:.

- Only for falcon stock firmwares. Doesn't work on falcon GPE.

- Sometimes Wifi not able to get IP address (static config works) on secondary rom. (same issue is observed on primary rom - fixed after flashing latest kernel)

- Sometimes secondary rom boot failure. Need reboot.

- Touch doesn't seem to work on multirom, so need to use volume down key for navigation and power button got selection. (Fixed)

- On GPE sometimes when booting I see "exec '/system/bin/sh' failed: Permission denied" errors. reinstalling the rom in multirom fixes this issue. Need to check.

You can get the relavent files at following location

http://d-h.st/users/montamer

Multirom Files

TWRP with Mutirom changes

multirom-20140902-v28-UNOFFICIAL-falcon.zip

multirom_uninstaller.zip

Patched Kernels

Stock Kernel (only for Stock firmware not GPE)

Modiefied 3.4.103-XPerience-STK-14-gpemod for GPE stock firmware (original kernel from TeamMEX)

PA Kernel

I have tested booting following roms

- CynogenMod

- ParanoidAndroid

- Boot2Gecko

I will share any code modifications as soon as possible.​

Warning!

It _is_ dangerous. This whole thing is basically one giant hack - none of these systems are made with multibooting in mind. It is messing with boot sector and data partition. It is no longer messing with data partition or boot sector, but it is possible that something goes wrong and you will have to flash factory images again. Make backups. Always.​

Installation

1. Via MultiROM Manager app

Not supported at the moment.
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2. Manual installation

Firstly, there are videos on youtube. If you want, just search for "MultiROM installation" on youtube and watch those, big thanks to all who made them.

Note 1: Your device must not be encrypted (hint: if you don't know what it is, then it is not encrypted).

Note 2: There have been reports that (not only) MultiROM does not work properly with older bootloaders.

MultiROM has 3 parts you need to install:

Modified recovery (TWRP with Mutirom changes) - download the IMG file from Multirom Files section and use fastboot or Flashify app to flash it.

- Fastboot command "fastboot flash recovery recovery.img"

Patched kernel - You can use either one of the stock ones in Kernel section or third-party kernels which include the patch. Download the ZIP file and flash it in recovery. or flash the img from fastboot.

- Flash the "Stock Kernel (only for Stock firmware not GPE)" if your using STOCK 4.4.4 firmware images using below fastboot command

fastboot flash boot stock_boot_patched.img

- Flash the 3.4.103-XPerience-STK-14-gpemod from recovery if you are using GPE 4.4.4 firmware.

MultiROM (multirom-XXXXXXXX-v28-UNOFFICIAL-falcon.zip) - download the ZIP file from Multirom Files section and flash it in recovery.

Note: make sure to disable screen timeout in recovery (multirom_patched_recovery.img) (not required in latest recovery build)

You current rom will not be erased by the installation.

Download links are in the second post.​

Adding ROMs

1. Android

Go to recovery, select Advanced -> MultiROM -> Add ROM. Select the ROM's zip file and confirm. As for the space, clean installation of stock 4.2 after first boot (with dalvik cache generated and connected to google account) takes 676mb of space.​

2. Ubuntu Touch

Use the MultiROM Manager app to install Ubuntu Touch.

Ubuntu Touch is in development - MultiROM will have to be updated to keep up with future changes in Ubuntu, so there's a good chance this method stops working after a while and I'll have to fix it.​

Using USB drive

During installation, recovery lets you select install location. Plug in the USB drive, wait a while and press "refresh" so that it shows partitions on the USB drive. You just select the location (extX, NTFS and FAT32 partitions are supported) and proceed with the installation.

If you wanna use other than default FAT32 partition, just format it in PC. If you don't know how/don't know where to find out how, you probably should not try installing MultiROM.

If you are installing to NTFS or FAT32 partition, recovery asks you to set image size for all the partitions - this cannot be easilly changed afterward, so choose carefully. FAT32 is limited to maximum of 4095MB per image - it is limitation of the filesystem, I can do nothing about that.

Installation to USB drives takes a bit longer, because the flash drive is (usually) slower and it needs to create the images, so installation of Ubuntu to 4Gb image on my pretty fast USB drive takes about 20 minutes.

Enumerating USB drive can take a while in MultiROM menu, so when you press the "USB" button in MultiROM, wait a while (max. 30-45s) until it searches the USB drive. It does it by itself, no need to press something, just wait.​

Updating/changing ROMs

1. Primary ROM (Internal)

Flash ROM's ZIP file as usual, do factory reset if needed (it won't erase secondary ROMs)

Go to Advanced -> MultiROM in recovery and do Inject curr. boot sector.

2. Secondary Android ROMs

If you want to change the ROM, delete it and add new one. To update ROM, follow these steps:

Go to Advanced -> MultiROM -> List ROMs and select the ROM you want to update.

Select "Flash ZIP" and flash ROM's ZIP file.

In some cases, you might need to flash patched kernel - get coresponding patched kernel version from second post and flash it to the secondary ROM sama way you flashed ROM's ZIP file.

Explanation of recovery menus

Main menu

- Add ROM - add ROM to boot

- List ROMs - list installed ROMs and manage them

- Inject boot.img file - When you download for example kernel, which is distrubuted as whole boot.img (eg. franco kernel), you have to use this option on it, otherwise you would lose MultiROM.

- Inject curr. boot sector - Use this option if MultiROM does not show up on boot, for example after kernel installation.

- Settings - well, settings.

Manage ROM

- Rename, delete - I believe these are obvious

- Flash ZIP (only Android ROMs) - flash ZIP to the ROM, for example gapps

- Add/replace boot.img - replaces boot.img used by this ROM, this is more like developer option.

- Re-patch init - this is available only for ubuntu. Use it when ubuntu cannot find root partition, ie. after apt-get upgrade which changed the init script.​

Source code

Original MultiROM - https://github.com/Tasssadar/multirom (branch master)

Falcon modified MultiROM - https://github.com/montamer/multirom

Falcon modified kexec-tools - https://github.com/montamer/kexec-tools.git

Falcon CM kernel with kexec-hardboot-patch - https://github.com/montamer/android_kernel_motorola_msm8226.git

kexec-hardboot-falcon.patch

Modified TWRP - https://github.com/montamer/Team-Win-Recovery-Project

XDA:DevDB Information

MultiROM, a Tool/Utility for the Moto G

Contributors

Tasssadar

Montamer

Thanks

h2o64 for the post template