yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Best place to start with dual booting ubuntu is with Rayman's thread over at notion ink hacks. His link to the developers page, where he's actually posted the files to try, with some directions, is about the 2nd or 3rd page in. Finding a good tutorial for nvflash is difficult, however you can probably (heard it's worked, haven't tried it) use the files to unbrick the adam on NI hacks, and replace the recovery.img with rayman's boot.img (renaming rayman's to recovery.img). This (should) give you ubuntu on the recovery image. Or at least the bootloader on the recovery image, which you can then use to boot from an external sdcard.

Having trouble mounting the extracted omap images. Will post back if I figure it out.

Good luck.

~tillum
[Adam Android Development] tmckenn2:
K thanks ill look at his stuff over the weekend.

As for the omap stuff, look at the link I posted, there is no easy way to mount it but you can zcat it to an SD card (has to be a physical one not a mounted image... in dev. Folder... this is why I cannot do this... BC vm. Doesn't mount USB well) then copy contents to a ext2 formatted image... done
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Here's the ubuntu preinstalled omap image in an ext2 container. Good luck with it. While I am interested to see what happens, I don't think this will work. My understanding is that it is very specific to the omap boards, and the rest of the install happens on first bootup. Give it another 20 minutes after this post before trying to download. Zcat creates 2 partitions, a fat one to boot from, and an ext with the filesystem, kernels, etc.. This is only the file system. Image here:

Omap4 (ext2) preinstall Ubuntu Image:

http://www.curiouslegends.com.au/misc/projects/linux/omap4-ubuntu.img.zip

md5sum: 6c8042045293636b7551dfdebf475505
[Adam Android Development] tmckenn2:
Yea I got an io error when running bootubuntu... with omap. Image
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Sorry, my fault. I made a mistake copying the files across, and it's probably missing all the /dev files. I'll remake it and repost in the next day or so. Was able to use the beagleboard image I made (A8 cortex) to boot ubuntu from chroot on my nexus one. Worked, and got up a gui... unity, but didn't work properly. Will likely run better on the Adam.
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Odd... have remade this, but still had a few errors copying libraries across... about half a dozen in /usr/lib gave me an input/output error. They still copied over, so I'm not sure what's going on. It's possible the original image was corrupt, I'm not sure. Anyway, here's the revised image. Try this:

http://www.curiouslegends.com.au/misc/projects/linux/omap4-ubuntu.img.zip

md5sum: f056b496a9056aa829e39f4c4565b386

I'm uploading it now, so give it a good hour or so from this post before you try it. You should be able to rename this file ubuntu.img and have it boot. Let me know how you go, and what ui you get running. (screenshots would be nice)
[Adam Android Development] paronnax:
Hi everyone,

I've had a chance to play around with Tillium's natty omap4 image. With a bit of tinkering gnome loads to an error message and a wall paper.

To get to this stage from the image you need to do two edits.

1) /etc/apt/sources.list and uncomment the natty universe repositories then install tightvncserver

2) cd /root/.vnc and edit the xsession file, adding a line gnome-session &

My 10.10 image that booted to a working desktop didn't need this edit, but without this edit the natty image just booted to a blank screen with an x for a cursor.

How's everyone else going?
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
That makes sense, thanks for following up that. Have you booted into Unity, or is it the regular gnome-session?
[Adam Android Development] tmckenn2:
Well I'm at a standstill until I can get my internet working it has now gone from bad to useless... I think it would be nice to work on a native version of this.... my question would be why can't we just make a bootloader and put it where the recovery bootloader it, then to boot up in ubuntu al you would need to do is hold the + volume... then you have both os's... granted you won't have a recovery anymore but... whatever.

The most important thing to get now is drivers for everything... that's the hard part.
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
I agree, have just done that with Rayman's boot image, and have installed my natty minimal fs on an external sdcard. Am able to dualboot into both os now, but have not gotten a gui up and running yet. I sympsthise with your internet... Apparently the wholesale provider to my telco has just terminated my phone line... Arbitrarily... wont have anything of decent speed again until next week. Anyway, will post back when I have more info. Am focusing my efforts now on a native install.
[Adam Android Development] webs05:
Tillum, did u get access to the Google Code page yet?
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
No, however my internet and email is down... in their infinite wisdom optus has decided to terminate our phone line... as it's easter, I won't find out why until Wednesday. My thoughts are there has been some stuff-up. Anyway, have only just got my emails setup again on another server... temporarily. Would appreciate if you're able to resend whatever it is you resent last time... Nothing much to add right now to this thread. Have been attempting to use the vegan image to natively boot my adam, keeps hanging with the wireless drivers... I think. Something about errors with ar6000. (wireless driver) Am about to give up for now, and hopefully will hear something soon over at Rayman's thread about what to try next. Just about to wipe the sdcard (again) and try with a very minimal natty rootfs, then install things from there. Will be a few days before I can really test this out though, as my downloads are limited to megabytes right now. Will post back when I have more. T
[Adam Android Development] webs05:
I resent it to your first email you gave me.

Sent from my mobile device
[Adam Android Development] Jar0b_:
Im just posting to tell you guys, that im here, reading you and waiting impaciently to get Ubuntu on the Adam ;)

I dont think I can help more than thanking all of you your work :D

Thanks again !
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Hi folks, slow progress. First, thanks Jar0b_ for your support. Hopefully we'll have something to try soon.

I'm getting discouraged at this process. Partly because there's seemingly very little interest over at notioninkhacks.com in getting a native install working on the Adam. There is very little support there for this project, with the devs replying far too infrequently to comments, and no more updates for the community to try Ah well, I suppose rayman and the others are busy with other projects, and off to greener pastures. Hats off to rayman at any rate for creating the initial boot.img containing a hacked up linux kernel, and working out how to boot from the sdcard onto the adam.

The vegan folks have got ubuntu running on their tablet (tegra 250 based) with accelerated graphics, and unity-2d so it is possible. Theirs is an internal install however, and trying it on the sdcard breaks access to it. Problematic when trying to boot from one... I'd be happy to install entirely on my adam, and get rid of android altogether, but no idea how to do that at this point.

What I have done is used rayman's method to flash the recovery partition with his boot.img, which allows you to boot into either android or linux. I've created a VERY minimal Ubuntu rootfs, with wicd-curses installed. This program is a graphical interface on the commandline (yes, they exist) to connect to a network. Tried straight commandline with iwconfig and dhclient... couldn't get a connection.

I am so close... but not quite there. Setting a static ip for my adam within wicd-curses I can connect to my wireless network... but can't access anything on the web. I can locally ping my server through my router, but I can't ping anything outside of my home-network. Seems to be a dns issue, and I can't figure out how to get around it. Would appreciate any advice. And I mean ANY advice. Am stuck, and can't seem to work my way around it. Have tried creating other rootfs builds, (last one was with lxde) but it fails with a kernel panic. In any event, until I can sort this out I doubt I'll get very far.

Our internet connection has been very sporadic the past week due to a fault on our line. It's back up now, however my server is still down. (should change soon) I'll post the minimal rootfs once we're back up again.

@webs05, still haven't gotten an email to any of my accounts about access to the google code project, though I know you've tried. Is it worth setting something up on Launchpad instead? Would appreciate some more encouragement from people following this thread, my enthusiasm for the Adam is quickly drying up. I expect Notion Ink to be dead before they can release another product. Cheers.
[Adam Android Development] paronnax:
Hi Tillium,

Have you tried another wifi network?

Tried disabling IPv6?

gedit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases

Change the following line:

alias net-pf-10 ipv6

to

alias net-pf-10 off

Reboot and try apt-get again
[Adam Android Development] paronnax:
If that fails, have you tried getting the 3g working? This post has a script for enabling (3g script is half way down the page) http://htc-linux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ubuntu/Leo
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Success!!! Still don't know why, but changing my router to WPA worked I no longer had to set a static IP, and was able to connect. Am attempting an install of the ubuntu-netbook meta package. Will let you know how I go...
[Adam Android Development] imtiyazee:
We all are waiting for you......
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
It's nice to have encouragement, but not sure how much more I'll be able to do. ubuntu-netbook packages are all downloaded now, but have been having issues configuring them. Have asked (nicely) my adam to install them anyway, whether it likes it or not. See what happens. I'll post the files I'm working from up later on today. Sorry webs05, haven't sorted out the google code thing yet, not sure what's happened to those emails you've sent. Can you send me a link to the project page? Maybe I can try and register from there. For now I'll continue posting them on my server, though at some point moving them would be great. I haven't done much more other than making a minimal rootfs with wicd-curses installed, and fixed up some dependency problems (mainly with libc, etc). You should be able to connect to a wireless network through it, and have oodles of fun installing. It's not hard, and if we want Ubuntu running on this piece of hardware, we're going to need some help. That means everyone watching and following this forum thread that hasn't posted yet.

Ok, back into it, will write an update later today, hopefully with a link to some updated files for you to try. Cheers
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Ok folks, here are the files I've been working with. Please have a go building this yourself, it's not hard, fairly simple. If we have enough people working on this, we'll get a working version of Ubuntu up shortly. Of course, all the usual things apply... we are not responsible for bricked adams, etc. But of course, if that were an issue, I doubt you'd be reading this anyway. The files to use are:

http://www.curiouslegends.com.au/misc/projects/linux/native-install/minimal-ubuntu-wicd.tgz

&

http://www.curiouslegends.com.au/misc/projects/linux/native-install/armelbuild-6.tgz

minimal-ubuntu-wicd.tgz is the same as the armelbuild-6.tgz, except that I've fixed up the libraries that break the system, configured fstab, etc. Basically, when you install anything you will be asked to fix the installation with apt-get first. It's fine to follow those commands and upgrade the packages, providing when you're done you downgrade them again... otherwise you won't be able to boot into the GDM on next boot, and will have the pleasure of adam spewing errors at you. To revert, run this command:

sudo libc-fix

The login details are:

user: dickens

password: dickens

Why dickens? Why not...

In order to use this, you will need to format an external micro-sdcard to ext2/3/4 (doesn't matter which, though I'm using ext 4), and extract the rootfs onto the card. Edit fstab appropriately. (i.e., ext 2, ext 3) Assuming you've named your card "ubuntu", I use this command from a ubuntu system:

sudo tar -C /media/ubuntu -pxzvf minimal-ubuntu-wicd.tgz

You will then need to follow rayman's method to flash the bootloader. I have this booting from my recovery partition, so I can dualboot. For more info, go here:

http://notioninkhacks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1651

The easiest way I found to do this was to use the files from NI to unbrick your adam, and replace the recovery.img with rayman's linux-boot.img, of course renaming it to recovery.img.

A note for linux users:

For some reason, I couldn't easily use notion ink's unbricking files to do this. I needed an extra step not listed. Get the files for your adam here:

http://notioninkhacks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=327

Then after extracting them, go two folders UP, then symlink the files into that folder. I don't know why it works, but it does. Ie, if you extract them into /home/user/working/extract/adam, you will need to symlink the extracted files to /home/user/working, then run them from there. You'll also need to make download.sh and nvflash executable. Also, running this will revert your adam install back to stock. As in, ALL YOUR DATA WILL BE WIPED! Wipe on baby...

Feel free to post back if you need clarification. If you aren't comfortable with possibly bricking your adam, I'd recommend not following this. If you are, please help us get this running! Running: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-netbook will spew errors at you, and might not be the best way to do this. The meta-package seems specific to omap4 boards. It might be better to try and install unity-2d first on it's own, with gdm to get it booting.
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Last post for today. Here you go folks, Natty Narwhale on the Adam:

Rootfs: http://www.curiouslegends.com.au/misc/projects/linux/native-install/natty-gui-1.tar.gz

Md5sum: 711b1731d8a91d64c360da89e71d0842

*Uploading now, will be up in about an hour.

What is working:

- Unity 2d

- Wireless networking

- screen resolution

What is not working:

- touchscreen

Not tested:

- everything else

This is a development build, and hopefully enough to spur people reading this post into action. Flash rayman's boot.img, untar this image onto an sdcard, stick it in your adam and boot. It should boot into Ubuntu. Password is dickens, user is dickens, or whatever the system tells you on first login. You will need a keyboard and mouse.

No idea why the touchscreen is hosed, think it's because I used the ubuntu-netbook meta package, and it wanted to install some kernels. Rayman's method already has a kernel in the boot image, so this may conflict with it. This system is sloooow. From an external sdcard, what would you expect? On the desktop you will see 2 other sdcards however... the internal one the adam uses, as well as the 2gb partition NI uses for the adam files they don't want you to touch. It's probably possible for some clever person to reformat both these into an ext partition, then untar the file above onto it, if they can figure how to get rayman's boot.img to point there. My guess is this would run faster... as well as getting rid of android.

If I was going to remake this again, I would try installing only unity-2d. This "should" give you a gui without everything else.... no idea if it would work, but it's possible you could get a very minimal system up and running without losing the touchscreen.

I would encourage anyone else reading this thread who has actually created something more useful to please post it and let us know. This is a very small first step, and should be treated as such. It is also twice the size of the vega image, so my guess is they built theirs differently Cheers.
[Adam Android Development] cbaggers:
I'm finally through the 10 post trial!

Fantastic work mate!

Downloading this now. I'll start torrenting it as soon as I have downloaded so we are not putting as much load on your server.

As soon as I have it working on mine I'll knock together a youtube video which will hopefully get the slightly more cautious having a go!

3 hours to go until play time!
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Awesome on all counts, thanks for getting involved. Made another build with just unity-2d, and gdm. Worked fine, but still no touchscreen. As rayman said it was working, I wonder what needs to be done? Makes me wonder if it's something simple like the xorg config. Might be worth looking at the vega ubuntu image and seeing what their xorg configuraton is. For what it's worth, I think a custom build from a minimal install using unity 2d is the go. Too many things (like banshee, at least for now, as no sound) won't have much use, and cups is a pain.

Thinking about about the internal flash drive... shouldn't be too hard to wipe android, and put Ubuntu there, then point the bootloader in that direction. Heck, we could probably do it through a Ubuntu install. I'm pretty sure it's mmc1, though would need to check on that. If we can pull apart rayman's boot.img, then we can probably point it to another part of the tablet. I'm game... I think we will have a very slow device until we are using that drive.

Looking forward to seeing what people come up with. Cheers.
[Adam Android Development] cbaggers:
Ubuntu Natty Image

To give Tillium some breathing room on his server, here is the Natty Narwhal image in a torrent.

Beware this is my first torrent so if it doesnt work the call me an idiot and I'll try and get it right :D !

p.s. Sorry for the archive, I had to zip up the torrent file before I could upload it.

[EDIT]

OH for ***** sake the ******* card is not ******* big enough....*breathes* Hehe ah well I've got some on order now so should only be a few days!
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
Thanks matey, the torrent looks fine. Keep in mind it will only work when you're computer is on to seed it to others.... at least until enough people are seeding it.

How big is your sdcard? You can also grab the minimal image, and have a go with that... you'll be able to make something much smaller than the other image I have... just don't install ubuntu-netbook!

Look forward to seeing where this goes.

~dinky
[Adam Android Development] tmckenn2:
fantastic work... ill try and get working on it but school is a very real time constraint. btw why dont you just use the terminal command for flashing the image to recovery... should work something like this:

adb shell

su

flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img

should be good to go. while some people say you need to check system and make sure there isnt a recovery there that will over write this one, i dont think it is needed... but here are the commands anyways:

adb shell

cd system

su

mount -o rw,remount /dev/block/mtdblock1 /system

rm recovery.img

mount -o ro,remount /dev/block/mtdblock1 /system

exit

exit

remember the boot image needs to be renamed to recovery... oh and if you have a recovery image prior to doing this, do a nand back up because if tis goes south your going to do a factory reset.... and the back up will still be there even though you reflash recovery with this.... bc its stored on the sdcard.
[Adam Android Development] tillum:
That's really interesting, particularly because adb shell gets you into the shell of the actual device, i.e., with my nexus one, into android. So does that mean in android, (or Eden here) there is a command to flash the bootloader within the system, or have I missed something? The other possibility would be doing this within apx mode, which I'd find even more interesting... as that's without android running at all... could you clarify this?

I'm familiar with the mount commands, etc. For remounting the /system folder in android, and get what you're doing there. Next time I flash it I'll have to give it a go.

Has anyone had a go with the gui version of Natty I put together? Any luck with the touchscreen? I just realized I forgot to clean the package cache, so ... sudo apt-get clean should fix that. Also I tried it with an ext 2 partition. Good luck.

I'm passing my Adam onto professor arronax (parronax) tonight, I just don't have the time to be playing with it right now. Study, work, and family is taking up all my time. I might have another play in a few months, but for now need to focus on other things. I'm still happy to post things up on my server, either pm me or parronax and we'll sort it from there.

I still think the Adam is an awesome machine with some great hardware, but I'm more interested atm in getting something like the samsung sliding pc 7, with an oaktrail chip, and running Ubuntu on it. No Pixel QI, and battery is unlikely to be as good, but the sliding keyboard would suit my work flow better, and 'should' be easier to get a fully working version of Ubuntu from the word go. See what happens.

Cheers folks, catch you around.

T
[Adam Android Development] tmckenn2:
yea i saw those... looks like a pretty sweet device.

anyways that is supposed to be run from a command prompt in windows, it can be run within android on a terminal emulator the same way but without the adb shell commands. terminal emulator is what i use... its free... it works. ik this method works with my android phone and am confident it will work with any android device.

i think it requires the android system... i dont think it is busy-box but the native built in version. but all it does is write an image file to a partition, the recovery does the same thing... im sure it uses basically the same commands but with a different partition. like you can flash using that command to any partition by changing recovery to something else... there was a guide online but idk where it is.
[Adam Android Development] cbaggers:
@tillum: I'm still waiting on my micro sd cards but I'l' be testing as soon as they arrive. The slider is very cool but the arm and pixel qi combo is just too alluring for me to leave the adam! Hope all goes well in the real world!

@tmckenn2: Thats very cool, I wa hoping for that as after flashing the recovery partition android has the boot loop issue and trying to go to recovery just loads ubuntu on the sdcard.

Again I'll have a tinker when I have the sdcards.
[Adam Android Development] tmckenn2:
oh i understand... you want a way to fix android if it gets fubar'd by running that command in either apx mode or ubuntu.... im pretty sure apx is a no go but maybe ubuntu could work... anyways the ideal way of doing it would be to have the recovery partition as recovery and the boot partition have a selection screen.... this whole flashing the two is a work around really.
[Adam Android Development] cbaggers:
Righto peoples I'm having to take down the torrent as I'm moving house and I need to pack this computer away :(.

Doesnt look like anyone was using it anyway but for those who would have, sorry!

Catch ya all in a week or so
[Adam Android Development] paronnax:
A quick update from my end.

I'm now focusing on a native install. Currently running a basic natty install with unity 2d and gdm. Wifi is working, and focusing on getting the touchscreen working.

The only progress I've had today is getting an xorg conf set up and still being able to boot into the gui.

The touch screen is recognised as a device.

cat /dev/input/event2

and touching the screen tells us that. Next step is to get the xorg.conf and the driver evdev translating the input into a cursor.

After that - configure HDMI, sound, . . . Not sure about accelerometer, graphics acceleration, and battery management.

How's everyone else going?
[Adam Android Development] Jar0b_:
I havent tested it yet, im very busy with the exams and some works.

Im still seeding the torrent, my computer is on since i finished the download !

Tell us more as you get it ;)

Greetings !