[TESTING] 3.3/3.4 kernels

Let's make life less complicated and start a new thread for people to provide feedback on 2.6.39, ... 3.3, 3.4 (NEW) RHODIUM kernels. The source repository is here. Note, older trees are not under active development.

By the way, these kernels are developed jointly with jonpry, WisTilt2, and bzo. In addition a lot of code is shared with people that maintain active msm kernel branches (emwe, acl, Alex). Finally, all Xdandroid Kernel developers have in one way or another contributed code.

1. Feel free to use any of these kernels, however DO NOT submit a post in this thread that amounts to "This feature does not work for me." If you wish to submit a bug report, make sure you are proficient at using ADB, AND have installed GetLogs. In your post you should:

a. Include GetLogs output of the problem (or it didn't happen).
b. Include Rhodium model (100, 210, etc).
c. Try to reproduce the problem on the other kernels.

All other bug reports will likely not receive full attention.

2. These kernels are to be used with GBX0B.

3. These are auto-built at:

Auto Built Service generously provided by WisTilt2

The autobuild is down. Please use these links, they were the final kernel builds that were on the autobuild site.

2.6.39.3
3.0.18
3.3.8
3.4.3

4. What works:

This list should look very similar to the current status of .27 with your device. Meaning, if you have a rhodium on which the camera does not work with .27 (for example), camera will not work with these kernels as well. Please do not report issues that are present on .27+your device.

- Only 3.0 has BT support. Would appreciate some feedback on this. I get the impression that pairing/connecting takes a bit of patience, but I am interested in how this compares to BT in .27. If we get some positive feedback we can enable BT support across all three kernels.

5. How do these three kernels differ: They are maintained by the same group of people, and consequently differ very little. There are slight variations in power management code, but other than that they are hard to distinguish in terms of functionality.

6. Kexec: To hot-swap the kernels (boot with a new kernel without rebooting into WinMo):

a. While in Android, copy the new kernel and modules to the same location (over-writing the zImage) as your current kernel (adb push).
b. Go to the shutdown menu in GB, and select "Kexec".
c. Phone will reboot within Android, using the new kernel.

7. Finally, I don't have too much time to hang around xda, so you shouldn't hope for "next-business day" response policy I am just hoping we can attract the advanced user to these kernels, that can do most of the troubleshooting on their own.

Enjoy, RHOD has to be one of only a handful of android devices that are pairing android with kernels as advanced as these.

Just pushed a nice patch from ACL:

We are no longer over-clocking via a command line parameter. Rather, you can use userland apps like SetCpu, AnTuTu CPU Master etc.

Let me know if I broke something.

htc-msm-3.4

I emailed WisTilt2 this morning, and hopefully 3.4 will get added to the autobuild soon.

It's in pretty good shape now, but initially we had a few serious issues with this kernel.

- When it came out, there was a serious problem with the memory manager in the upstream 3.4 kernel that flat out broke the chroot system call (not just for us, but other users as well). If you have ever taken a peak at our initramfs, we use chroot (or rather switch_root) to maneuver onto our rootfs. We were stuck spinning our wheels until around 3.4.2 made an appearance on kernel.org and this problem was patched.

- We had another problem with the patches that instruct the vanilla linux kernel to use the android wake_locks infrastructure. Not sure who's to blame here, but I am inclined to think it's kernel.org again. At any rate, for the first time ever I saw frequent SODs on the 3.x kernels. I think we fixed this also.

- Finally, USB: I think we are victims of our own success here. To get adb, usb tethering etc, to work with android, we use android-specific patches on the vanilla linux kernel. As we progress to newer and newer kernels, so do these android patches. The problem is that ever since 3.0, google has stopped supporting gingerbread-like usb configurations in their kernel patches. So we've been dragging the usb layer from .39 all the way up to 3.3 -> this way we were successful in using the new kernels with gingerbread. This however is a HUGE hack and not good in any way shape or form. Finally something in the new 3.4 kernel prevents us to use the drivers from .39 and we were forced upgrade our usb layer, and together with it bring in ICS geared USB patches.

The result: with some work, we can get adb to work. However gingerbread is looking for active USB connections in the wrong place and even if you get ADB going, GB is unaware of an active usb connection so you can't enable other perks like USB tethering.

Not sure what the solution is to this last problem -> probably need to hack at frameworks in GBX but the motivation for this is somewhat low, since at that point we would need to be distributing a separate build to use specifically with 3.4.

Therefore finally, the current bug-list for 3.4:
1. Kexec is broken
2. USB: We can get ADB (instructions on this to follow), however USB notification doesn't work, and consequently can't enable USB tethering. <--- see here how to take advantage of usb functionality on htc-msm-3.4
3. Bluetooth -> haven't looked at the BT patches yet, but hey BT never really works OK anyways.

On the bright side -> you will be using a kernel that's the bleeding edge in the linux world. Also, this might be placebo, but I think the new usb drivers manage the serial clocks better and perhaps power-management seems slightly better (interested in hearing how other folks think it compares).

OK. There is a trivial bug in the bcm4329.ko wifi driver that prevents wifi tethering from starting correctly. I've patched it and attached a binary here for the current 3.2 kernel.

The patch is here http://lists.xdandroid.com/pipermail/xdandroid-dev/2012-February/000447.html

You also need the 4.217.95.0 AP firmware that I linked above. With both installed, wifi tethering works flawlessly for me. In AP mode, not ad hoc!

First post updated : As of today, all kernels should have extUSB audio support, as well as 3.5mm audio support for CDMA rhodiums (Thanks to ACL and emwe).

Running out of things to do.