DFT-Cotulla's Development Thread

Thread cleaned. As mentioned before, this is a pure development thread. As such, requests, opinions etc go elsewhere. If you have nothing concrete to contribute, forever hold your peace

Cotulla said:

...
But do Android and applications really need that functions?
I know that /etc/ is linked to /system/etc and many other things, but is it really needed for /data?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

DeSaint2 said:

Starting with 4.2 Google added 3 places where the data/media is linked. This was so there could be multiple users per device similar to the way Windows is. Each user gets their own folder for data. Though the weird part is, if you delete from any of the symlinks it deletes it from data/media as well. Hope that helps.
...

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

DeSaint2, mate, you are... erm... wrong. Well, you are thinking straight, but your symlinks got mixed-up. Those symlinks you mentioned are there for compatibility reasons, not for multi-user environment. They are all connected to same place, that's why stuff gets deleted "everywhere" when you delete it from one directory. Users should have each ones own directory (/data/media/0, /data/media/1, /data/media/2, etc...)

Cotulla said:

Tetris needs proper control. We have only 3 real harware button.
So it needs redesign...

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I got an idea:
Back button left
Home right
Vol - accelerate
Vol + exit (or maybe it will be better for power button for that)

And i got to ask you. What was the hidden feature in magldr. Reaching 111111 is pretty impossible...

Cotulla said:

Tetris needs proper control. We have only 3 real harware button.
So it needs redesign...


Well it won't solve a problem I already can connect USB Stick 32Gb via USB Hub and etc. But this prevents me from debugging cuz it's also done by USB.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

How do you access serial uart output on your bootloader? Do you run code to put usb into serial or are you using special cable, eg with resistor on ID-GND? I had one like this for my Galaxy S2 but it doesn't work anymore on my Galaxy S4.

Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

NTFS supports symbolic links - from wikipedia, I've used them in the past...

e.g.

mklink /D "c:\link-here\" "c:\to-somewhere-else\"

I don't know how much effort would be involved using NTFS as the partition format over ext4, NTFS (read) support existed in the Linux kernel since 2.2.x. The NTFS-3G project supports symbolic links and looks to be the way forward.

Here's a thread by shardul_seth about his experience / progress on the matter.

streetster said:

NTFS supports symbolic links - from wikipedia, I've used them in the past...

e.g.

mklink /D "c:\link-here\" "c:\to-somewhere-else\"

I don't know how much effort would be involved using NTFS as the partition format over ext4, NTFS (read) support existed in the Linux kernel since 2.2.x. The NTFS-3G project supports symbolic links and looks to be the way forward.

Here's a thread by shardul_seth about his experience / progress on the matter.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

NTFS symlink are not the same as linux symlink, they're not compatible with one another.

Programs such as NTFS-3G simply allows you to access NTFS partitions once the system starts up, but that's about it. It does not allow you to install linux on a NTFS partition for a lot of different reasons, simply because NTFS does not support a lot of features such as linux permissions and etc.

Do you really want to go to all that trouble for repartitioning?
I have a simpler solution: simply use a static lvm binary & cryptsetup if you want encryption, but if you want an automated solution, you need to have your key file somewhere on the device (for example repack it into the initrd, but then again, this defeats the purpose of encryption - it's like keeping your credit card & pin in the same place)
;]

1: manually pvcreate on mmcblk0p35-37 (for the international HTC One)
either create symlinks for the functions to the lvm binary or invoke it from the tool (lvm pvcreate /dev/block/mmcblk0p3x)
2: create the vg, add the 3 pvs, create your lv(s) + mkfs

You also need to modify the init.device.rc in the initrd (either directly or exec a script) accordingly to vary on the vg on boot before mounting
If you really need it, you can also modify your recovery to do the same instead of manually doing it from adb
Partitioning support via menu options for LVM would require more work though.

I've been using this since my days on the Desire HD with no issue.
I'm also using cryptsetup on my 64Gb microsdxc (on my tablet).

NOTE: you need to either add sleep for a few seconds in your script or invoke lvm vgscan & vgchange -ay early enough in order to allow the dm mappings to be created & settle

NOTE2 (off topic): For a lightning fast rom, you can also repackage it (/system) into a loop-mounted image which needs to be copied to a tmpfs.
The only downside is that you need to wait for the image to be copied on image boot (anywhere from 15-45s depending on the size of the system partition) & you need to remember to edit the image also if you're pushing anything to /system, otherwise the changes will disappear on the next reboot. Then again, this is only for purists ;]

Cotulla said:

Actually it's fake repartitioning, I am not going to modify main GPT, I am going to tell Linux/Android that it has less space in userdata than it is and use the rest for another purposes.
It should work I hope.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

But what about windows? Have you limited it also?

First off all thank you for everything you done for HTC HD Mini and HTC HD2, I am glad to see a legend aka Cotulla here.

Cotulla said:

But if someone want and can he/she can implement it in the recovery and share results with community.
Or maybe make android use NTFS instead of EXT4 and use shared partition.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Thinking to buy One for my spare time, and I will make recovery for these purpose, but first of all waiting a result of Magldr, than for sure One is my next phone.

NTFS... do you mean about runing file based partitions (trought loop device) in NTFS?

Cotulla said:

I am not using UART, only USB Serial.



No, I don't want encryption.
I need solution to cut space from "userdata" for another purposes, like Windows RT.
Actually it's fake repartitioning, I am not going to modify main GPT, I am going to tell Limux/Android that it has less space in userdata than it is and use the rest for another purposes.
It should work I hope.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I am not an expert but I know that in linux you can create a file and mount it as a partition.
Is it possible to create a file (with X size) in userdata , and then mount and use this file as a partition for your own purpose ?

Cotulla said:

I am not using UART, only USB Serial.



No, I don't want encryption.
I need solution to cut space from "userdata" for another purposes, like Windows RT.
Actually it's fake repartitioning, I am not going to modify main GPT, I am going to tell Limux/Android that it has less space in userdata than it is and use the rest for another purposes.
It should work I hope.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Could you explain please the way to get debugging output?

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Thread Cleaned​

Guys, this is a development thread, lets keep posts focused that way. I understand some are getting excited about this, but dont clutter the thread!​

Cotulla said:

I am working under USB MS (Mass Storage) support in MAGLDR.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I will ask you something that crossed my mind. How are going to boot into recovery h-boot or magldr? I'm asking because we already need a recovery adapted to magldr since almost everything is changed.
+ will you have to increase the size of boot partition?

please make this in a way we can choose another partition layout, witch exist on dual sim variant's . thx