Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Erm.. fourthed! But primarily I just joined the forum to say thanks, good work and please keep it going! The current NitDroid makes a great proof of concept, I would really love to see that built on. Please keep us posted!

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

ill even provide some hosting space for this on my server if need be, got rather a surplus of space :)

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Fifthed! Concept seriously rocks. How is it progressing? I hope it doesent die a silent death as with previous attempts.

Well although I say fifthed all i could probably do to help is to see if it is dummy proof..

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

if anyone has links for the source i wouldnt mind having alook at it myself

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

We're trying to get the guy to open up his source, so we can all help. So far it's falling on deaf ears.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Bump. Any updates? Is the OP even still working on this?
Would it be easier to try running Android under a chroot rather than make a fully booting system?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

I contacted him on twitter and received a response that it is indeed the same guy. I asked him to shoot back over to the forum and please to consider opening up the code for us. He mentioned that he got busy with school/work doesn't see it being "usable w/o some hardware gfx, 800x480 is a lot of pix to blit" Hopefully he takes me pleads and heads back here :)

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

It might be easier, but it would probably be faster to have a system that doesn't require Maemo to be running. Maybe it would be a tolerable drop?

perhaps we should start our own project based on the 2.1 branch of android and these instructions. Sounds like we've got a few people interesting in trying, but we just need a common place to work and a place to start.

EDIT:
these guys are pretty active in development for the beagleboard (another OMAP platform, though i'm not sure if they also support OMAP3430). We can ask them for their help.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

count me in for helping whereever would love to see android on n8x0

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

I'm not sure how much help I can be, but I will be a nice Guinea pig and flash my device many times as needed to test some functionality. Pull together, maybe bri3d will let his work out of the bag maybe he won't

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

I'm not exactly sitting on anything exciting: I've got a linux-omap kernel that starts the Android init and then mysteriously crashes in the MMC driver and an Android 2.0 userland that sorta maybe runs under Solca's kernel.

Both require quite a bit of work and time I really don't have (I mostly avoid code at home now - not that it matters much since when I'm not at work I'm at school). I'm also *extremely* frustrated with both linux-omap and the Android kernel at this point - the Android kernel team seems to be doing a decent job but there's no real way to track upstream Linux anymore (since there's no stable tree), so it makes it hard to port to devices which have a seperate project trying to track mainline. Then there's linux-omap, which is just a mess - it's refactored, rewritten, and twisted around 24/7 with seemingly very little regression testing. If you don't believe me check out how many commits are "make xxx device boot again" and so on. I admire the linux-omap project for what they've done, but their scope is way, way big (every OMAP device?!) and I think they're definitely feeling it.

For the userland there aren't any significant modifications, which is why it's mostly broken at the moment - just download a 2.0 Android build environment, check out Solca's NITDroid page for the build scripts, run lunch and make, copy the resulting /system onto the MMC (like old NITDroid) and you're in the business.

My kernel is already vastly outdated and never worked anyway, but if anyone wants pointers http://www.natisbad.org/N810/index.html is a fantastic place to start as he seems to have isolated a linux-omap kernel that works some of the time, which is better than can be said for most linux-omap kernels.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

bri3d: You made breakthroughs. You found and worked around bugs. Have you reported the bugs at least? Have you submitted your patches? Even though you didn't single-handedly solve all of the problems, you solved a few, and I just don't want those fixes to get lost again, when someone else might be able to push a little farther...

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

I've made some progress trying to get android to boot on the n900. I can tell you what I've done so far.

I took the working 2.6.28 maemo kernel, and use some of the patches from nitdroid and built a new zImage. I download a stock branch of the android source and compiled it, and used the nitdroid setup to create the necessary files android needed. I also added a static build of busybox so I could use it with the bootmenu, because android doesn't have a /usr/sbin/chroot by default.

It boots and I see the Android sign and the init messages, but it gets stuck starting the service. I can see on my sdcard that folders and files are being created and modifed, but I cant get it to boot fully yet. I haven't read into further enough to know how to fix the problem yet, but I think its getting there.

Does anyone else have ideas on how we can get this working?

Thanks

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

bdogg64: I assume that you've flasher-3.5 --enable-rd-mode --set-rd-flags=no-omap-wd,no-ext-wd ?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Yep, I have those enabled. I'm gonna go back and look through the documentation more and see if I'm missing anything.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Just an update on the progress. I have patched the kernel with the android specific pieces and am able to boot the kernel into Maemo 5. I have been loading the android init through chroot on my microsd card.

After running strace and doing some debugging with device nodes and logs, I'm currently stuck at the dreaded "page flipping not supported" error. At first I thought it would be and easy fix because there is already a patch available, but that patch is for the omap framebuffer video driver (omapfb_main.c) and not the omap2 framebuffer video driver (omapfb-main.c). After some digging, I have yet to find a patch/hack yet to fix the issue.

I think its pretty close if I can get past this. If anyone know where I can find a patch I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Unfortunately, I don't have a patch that would help you, but I just want to thank you for your effort. There are several of us who are very excited about your work! It sounds like you're pretty close. What branch/version of Android are you working from, btw?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Are you still working with the deprecated 2.6.30-rc8 code or is this with current stuff (new omapfb, etc)?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Thanks. If anything its been a good learning experience for me. I am using the eclair branch of Android right now.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

I'm using kernel 2.6.28 from the maemo kernel source. I started with that one because I knew it would boot and I could patch in some of the android changes based on the work on nitdroid. I suppose since its prior to 2.6.30-rc8, its using the old code. I looked into getting the most recent linux omap dss2 drivers from gitorious but I wanted to see if there was a way to patch this easily before going down that path.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

id be willin to setup a basic sandbox server that ppl could use to try diff compilations if anyone would be interested

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

I think being able to boot from an android system living natively on an sdcard would be ideal. How exactly does one select the system to load? Is it tough to install some sort of bootloader?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

There is a program that lets you choose if you boot the n900 with the keyboard out. Here is the link http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...5&postcount=22

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

bdogg thanks for the updates. I hope you make some more progress :) I'm assuming that just because you would have it running on the 900 does not mean it will be similar to getting it working on the 810?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

That is perfect. How easy would that be!?!?! Now, to get android working... ;)

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

I couldn't get newer kernels to come up on N810 (varied between framebuffer bringup issues after the n8x0-board refactor, SD/MMC driver issues, and obscure locking issues regarding the clock/watchdog/bringup) so I just used the commit in that blog post I linked.

It looks like with things like http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kerne...4aad7100ca03f0 someone is paying attention - I might pursue this again if I can get a recent kernel to boot right. The key is finding something new enough for the Android patches (PMEM, wakelock, etc.) to apply to without a complete rewrite while not finding something so new that everyone's rewritten everything again - kernel development moves way too fast these days since there is no development branch.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Good news. Android (Donut) boots on the n900! The touchscreen isn't working correctly though. Wherever I press the screen it thinks I'm bringing down the window shade. And I need to update the keyboard layout files, but it works using bootmenu!

I used the rowboat build of android because the stock source build from android crashes when booting.

More details later :-)

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Wait, you were able to dual-boot with android??!? :eek:

I thought this was only possible with kexec, which wasn't fully functional yet

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

....
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http://icons.iconator.com/892/ICONAT...540f2ecbda.jpg

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Yea, I can still boot into maemo 5,. I'm using the maemo kernel with the android drivers patched in. If I can get the touchscreen working right, then I can do some more damage. The stock build from the android source code crashes when it tries to bring up the UI, but the rowboat build works. Rowboat is built for omap3 devices though.

I would prefer to use the stock android source, but rowboat works for now.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

This is damn funking good news. Hope there will soon come a howto. :)

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Excellent work :D
Would be really sweet if it would work out.

Thanks for the great effort everyone puts in to this amazing device to make it even sweeter!

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Screenshot? :D

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Holy crap. NICE WORK. I can't wait to see a youtube video of it... even if it still crashes or doesn't properly register touches.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

WOW!
Impresive!

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

How about running just the processes and dependencies for applications, w do't really need the UI:P

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

You need to load a module for the touchscreen, think it's tsc2005.ko. You did read my post about how to charge under alternative OS'es?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Since im a total noob at this, what do we get when it will work ?
A image that we can use just like easy debian, or will it be more like a howto that tells us step by step what we need and have to change on the N900 ?
Since im into maemo for about 2 Month, i hope i will get more knowlege. Im starting to setup a sdk with vmware, but my head is still smoking :)

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Yes, I read it, great work btw. I will definitely try to use that in the android init process. I haven't tried loading the touchscreen module, I only tried it with the touchscreen driver built into the kernel itself. Would that make a difference? I was hoping the touchscreen patch that was used on the n810 would work, but it didn't solve the problem.

I think if I could get the keyboard working for now would be more useful to me, but I have to build/find the correct keymap file and key layout file for the n900. The screen flashes when I use the keyboard, which I'm not sure whether its due to the keys not being mapped right or something else.

I will try to post a video soon showing how it works and doesn't

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

If possible, I would hope to build the android dependencies as modules you can install, and use bootmenu to load those modules and boot android. I'm thinking its going to be more towards flashing the kernel like nitdroid though.