[Android] Dr. NoMoRootfs! or How I learned to stop worrying and love the extra space

vilord · Jan 29, 2010

Everything needs to go in /sdcard/andboot
FILES YOU NEED:
the nbh flashed to your phone
an sd card with the andboot folder at the top level
an androidinstall.tar file plopped into the andboot folder

thats it

then just hold down volume up or dpad center or the middle of your touchscreen when booting and go through the menu to choose where to put things and then install the system. (for those without a dpad, pretend the touchscreen is a giant dpad)

if you're doing it with haret, extract basefiles to your sd, plop the androidinstall.tar into the same folder, and boot, hold down volume up (camera on kaiser/polaris) just like the nand people (but don't pick nand to store the files, it won't work)

---------

all the files
basefiles for the haret folks out there

Grab the nbh files for your device. Only difference between eclair and non-eclair is that eclair is set up to use the newer hw3d driver, non-eclair is set to use the older one (for donut/cupcake)

These do not use rootfs. They remove it completely and free up that extra space in your nand for a bigger, cleaner system.

They also have my new menu-based installer! Yay! Just hold-down volume-up or dpad center or the middle of your touchscreen

THIS WON'T WORK WITH ANY OF THE OLDER SYSTEMS! THE SYSTEM MUST INCORPORATE THE APPROPRIATE FILES FROM ROOTFS (and the rom cooks will let you know when theirs is ready)

The first system to use this is based on eclair 2.1 with working sleep and audio

Here's my tattoo system for this method

FYI Craig & I spent a lot of time on these!!!

vilord · Jan 29, 2010

How to create a build

How to make your build work with this

So it actually isn't that hard.
Extract your sqsh to a folder somewhere, so you have, say /android/system
Mount/extract whichever rootfs worked best with your system somewhere else, say /android/rootfs

Code:

cp -a /android/rootfs/init.etc/* /android/system/etc
cp /android/rootfs/lib/donut/* /android/system/lib
cp /android/rootfs/lib/modules/* /android/system/lib/modules
cp /android/rootfs/lib/hw/* /android/system/lib/hw
cp /android/rootfs/init.cfg/init.donut.rc /android/system/sysinit.rc

You'll need to modify the sysinit.rc a bit, as in the rootfs some things are commented out that shouldn't be, and it references a few things in /bin or /etc that aren't there anymore.
Also, don't forget to uncomment the line near the top of sysinit.rc that creates a symlink from /system/etc to /etc

Once you are done, just do this to create the installer:

Code:

cd /android
tar cvf androidinstall.tar system

Soon, I may upload some packs for making the process easier, with updated sysinit.rc's for each system type. If I have time, we'll see...
Note, you can update the contents of the .tar file from windows/izarc/winrar/etc and it'll still work. you don't need to keep messing about with linux anymore if you don't want to

vilord · Jan 29, 2010

How to update things

How to create an update pack
Since not everyone gets things right the first time, and we keep getting updates, the rootfs made it easy to install updates without downloading the whole system again.
Well now anyone can create an update pack

just create a tar file called androidupdate.tar, make sure it has everything in a /system folder with whatever files you want, drop it into /sdcard/andboot and reboot holding down volume-up (camera on kaiser/polaris). Choose the update option and you should be good to go.
If things get wonky when you try to boot up, give the fix permissions option a shot in the installer, if it still fails, try wiping the dalvik cache, that can fix things up too.

About the installer
I ripped it off from here, but put about 6 or 7 solid hours into getting it to fit and react with the keys/screen

sshark · Jan 29, 2010

May be new

rootfs

may be new

better eclair support

---
with android development this fast for "yomama so old" phone, who knows what future holds?

jamezelle · Jan 29, 2010

sshark said:
May be new

rootfs

may be new

better eclair support

---
with android development this fast for "yomama so old" phone, who knows what future holds?

whats a rootfs hahaha

nabicat · Jan 29, 2010

Might be something called "Code Name Ginger"....or our tame racing car driver, we call the Stig.

jamezelle · Jan 29, 2010

nabicat said:
Might be something called "Code Name Ginger"....or our tame racing car driver, we call the Stig.

what the..... that was random

mssmison · Jan 29, 2010

Holy cow.. like there's nothing even in this thread and it's already filling up..

myn · Jan 29, 2010

I think I know what it is..

Vilord ported Dalvik from 2.5 which now includes native support for HW accel for MSM7500..

prairiefire · Jan 29, 2010

jesus.

CyCLoBoT · Jan 29, 2010

Do we still need to have three partitions on the card? Or would one FAT32 partition be sufficient?

JeckyllHavok · Jan 29, 2010

@vilord:
is everything needed for the rootfsless nbh in the git? I would like to test this with ´my kaiser

luzbel_es · Jan 29, 2010

This works for Polaris? Really thanks!

vilord · Jan 29, 2010

the bootenv git should have everything needed for this. I haven't tested on my polaris yet, but it should "just work" on polaris and kaiser as long as martin's method to drop the active key into /proc works on all hardware.

myn · Jan 29, 2010

What happens to the .conf files?

What about /media ?

Thanks for all of your efforts

vilord · Jan 29, 2010

conf files are no longer used from the sd card.
If the cook put things in the right places, there should be a /system/etc/userinit.conf that gets parsed during android boot, but it is up to the cook to not screw that up.
This way is a lot cleaner, but it does a LOT less handholding for lazy cooks.

the upside is that it is *very* easy for anybody to fix a broken androidinstall by just piecing together what needs to change into an androidupdate.tar

/media is still used if it is on your SD card, but there's enough space and things are fast enough that media files should be included in /system now

myn · Jan 29, 2010

This is a HUGE development for rom devs.

I will be honest in saying I've been having a hard time not hitting the 90MB cap with my next Warm Donut release.

Infact, I spent 4 hours yesterday de-odexing and compressing the classes.dex back into the jars and apks to save space.

With this new method this gives us ALOT more space. I applaud you for doing this. It breaks alot of the current builds but at the same time gives us a ton more flexibility for future.

And what I really like from this is it removes the confusion and headaches on configuration, giving the power to the ROM dev to include the necessary settings.

Question though. Different phones (Vogue, Polaris, Kaiser) may require different configurations. In the past it was a simple "just use this conf with this phone"

Thanks again

JacenSolo2001 · Jan 29, 2010

so when running from haret - getting an error about looking for a system file, I have all the files in andboot folder, any ideas on what I'm missing.

myn · Jan 29, 2010

Know what would be really nice? In the setup, the ability to change LCD_Density and resolution.

This would eliminate the confusion users may have in editing the build.prop and rom files to change these values.

I guess the ROM devs could distribute separate files/tars for each res/density but that gets redundant if you know what I mean.

Barogi44 · Jan 29, 2010

I'm using haret, but I dont see any option to choose to install not to nand, i get into the installer and it says install system so i click that but then it just goes through installation and fails. How do i choose to install to sd card?

[Android] Dr. NoMoRootfs! or How I learned to stop worrying and love the extra space

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