[Xperia Z1 Android Development] drakonizer:
​

MultiROM is a one-of-a-kind multi-boot mod. It can boot any Android ROM as well as other systems like Ubuntu Touch, once they are ported to that device. 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 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

* Boot from USB drive attached via OTG cable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDnDNxqfSaw

WARNING

It is dangerous. This whole thing is basically one giant hack - none of these systems are made with multibooting in mind. 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.

IMPORTANT

1. I'm not responsible for anything, you do all this on your own risk.

2. Once you have flashed and set up MultiROM, don't flash another boot.img using fastboot.

3. If you want to uninstall MultiROM, just flash the MultiROM uninstaller.

4. I am not certainly sure about the compatibility with stock Roms, I still need to test this yet.

5. Your device must not be encrypted.

When booting another ROM, you'll notice that in some cases, you can enter the recovery of the boot.img of the ROM. Please don't use it, flash everything using MultiROM TWRP.

INSTALLATION

-> Download and flash the MultiROM recovery from the DOWNLOADs section using "fastboot flash recovery <path-to-recovery.img>

-> Use the recovery to flash the latest multirom zip from the DOWNLOADs section.

-> In order to boot a secondary rom you MUST enable the "kexec workaround" option (enabled by default) in the MultiRom settings found in the recovery: BEWARE that this workaround re-flashes the boot-partition every time you boot a secondary rom, so don't boot secondary roms too often, as it may brick your device on the long term! We still need to fix kexec such that exessive utilization is less risky

That's it. You can now go to "MultiROM menu" (Top right corner in the recovery) to start flashing other ROMs.

NOTE: The touch screen doesn't work if you use a MM/N ROM as a base/primary ROM.

ALTERNATIVE INSTALLATION METHOD

-> Download the latest TWRP multirom recovery from the downloads section.

-> Use a terminal emulator, obtain su, and use the following command Adjust the following command and enter it in the shell: "dd if=/sdcard/<name-of-recovery>.img of=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/FOTAKernel"

-> Follow the steps in the previous method to install multirom

ADDING ROMs

Go to recovery, select "MultiROM menu" (Top right corner in the recovery) -> Add ROM. Select the ROM's zip file and confirm.

USING USB DRIVES

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 "MultiROM menu" (Top right corner in the recovery) in recovery and do Inject curr. boot sector. if it is not done directly during installation of the Rom.

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 "MultiROM menu" (Top right corner in the recovery) -> List ROMs and select the ROM you want to update.

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

SOURCEs

Multirom: https://github.com/XperiaMultiROM/multirom/

TWRP: https://github.com/XperiaMultiROM/android_bootable_recovery

CREDITS

Tasssadar

Olivier

Garcia98

Thunder07

skin1980

Envious_Data

[NUT]

AndroPlus

Panic Brothers

Myself5

Diewi

XDA:DevDB Information

MultiROM v33x for Xperia Z1, ROM for the Sony Xperia Z1

Contributors

drakonizer

ROM OS Version: 2.3.x Gingerbread

Version Information

Status: Alpha

Created 2016-10-22

Last Updated 2016-11-02