[Arm-netbook] Tutorial: kernel + android + livesuite image creation for A10 tablets

["Sztupák Sz. Zsolt"]

Hi!
> Does your tablet have any ICS firmware out? If so, you could try using
> the kernel and modules from that firmware.. (I know, the point is to
> have everything compiled from source, but at least it might work this
> way).
Yes it does, but they doesn't work out of the box giving some "nice" 
stack traces into logcat. Will investigate them, but at least my first 
priority was done: getting it to boot/run
> That's how I got other devices ICS firmwares running on the Novo7:
> http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/28788-dev%C2%A0n7a-transformation-script/
Thanks for the link, will try different bins from here, maybe... :)
> Oh, I'm also working on trying to run Ubuntu on the tablet, basing on
> the Gingerbread firmware (as the full sources are out there for it).
>
> I've managed to boot on a Ubuntu Core rootfs (*cough* invading the
> Android /data partition) and access the device through the serial
> console (by changing script.bin to redirect the console though the SD
> pins and using a SD breakout board), but it freezes after inserting
> the mali/display/lcd modules (modprobe also makes it freeze). WiFi
> works, although the driver is quite crude and requires an insmod
> parameter with the path to the firmware location. Will keep
> investigating...
ADBD can work on it's own, it's only dependency is having a 
/system/bin/sh avialable. I sometimes start adbd even before the real 
init (simply create an init.sh with a shebang, run the commands inside 
it (mounting /dev, /sys and /proc, starting adbd and running the old 
init at the end)) just to get very early access to the device. And It's 
probably simpler to debug the device this way as you don't have to 
reconfigure the pins in script.bin, which can actually be another source 
of problem. Besides adb pull and push is probably faster than using 
serial console to get files on/off the device, and you can run multiple 
amounts of it (having one cat /proc/kmsg is very useful, especially if 
insmod restarts the device)
> ¿Is it possible to make an image with an additional partition with the
> tools you use on the tutorial? Having a blank ext3/ext4 for Ubuntu so
> I don't need to touch /data would be nice.
>
/dev/block/nandi is currently the sdcard part (at least on the GB 
partitioniong scheme), but it doesn't get flashed with my tools, as it's 
. For that you would need to create a different partitioning scheme, 
where you have to add another "partition mirror". Never tried this, but 
as I would also try to get ubuntu running I will sometime :) For testing 
though I think it would be easier to put /usr on the sdcard and try to 
mount it. If you use adbd instead of a serial console, you will have 
access to the sdcard port, and it's much easier to copy files to the 
sdcard from your PC.

  SztupY