[HOWTO] Linux on Folio 100

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bdalenoord

Member
May 15, 2010
10
0
Enschede
www.dalenoord.eu
Hey guys!

My first post here...

I am very pleased with the way that our tablet is turning with the development of ICS. I am however a person who likes playing and fiddling with the device.

I got Kubuntu running from the SD-card with the help of the previous posts in this thread. I cant however seem to get any other system running.

I am very interested in Plasma Active One, which is the default OS on the recently released Spark KDE tablet. I found out that some developers got Plasma Active running on the Advent Vega/Viewsonic Viewpad 10. As the Advent Vega served as a base for the previous custom Vegacomb roms from Dexter, I think that it should be possible to boot the images from these developers.

I am however getting several errors when I try to boot from the SD-card, varying from '/dev could not be mounted: no such device' to 'kernel panic: init not found', or nothing might be happening after a little while. Is there anyone who has more experience and could explain to me/us how it might be possible to boot Plasma Active?

Then my second question, more to DerArtem/Nopy or other developers: The kernel that is mentioned in the first post is actually quite old. ICS runs on a much newer kernel. Would it be possible for the newer 3.1 kernel to boot from SD as well, and if so, how?

EDIT
The newly prepared SD-card doesn't work and causes a kernel panic. The exact error message is as following:
Code: 
[   12.432889] Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

From what I've found on the net, this error could be caused by so many things, both software and hardware based... so I am not sure what to do next... Anyone?

EDIT 2
I've read something about the nVidia Linux for Tegra releases... the kernel that nVidia mentions on their website is 3.1, is this usable for a possible Linux-booting Folio? What kind of modifications should be made to the release before compiling, in terms of drivers and so?

Thanks so far!

Regards,
Bas Dalenoord
the Netherlands

p.s. At the moment I am trying to build an SD-card with a different release of Plasma, I will post eventual results here. There is a custom kernel for the Advent Vega that I found. Would it be possible to flash this kernel to our Folio's without to much of a hassle?
 
Last edited:
B

bdalenoord

Member
May 15, 2010
10
0
Enschede
www.dalenoord.eu
Nobody?

My current idea is to try and flash the kernel image found on the following URL:

share.basyskom.com/contour/Deployment/mer_arm_install_archive/point_of_view_nvidia_tegra2/

I am not certain if this might harm the Folio... Could anybody tell me?

If this could be achieved, the other package should be bootable from SD without to much hassle. When I write the image, 2 partitions are created on my SD-card... thus it makes the kernel from the first post unusable as it will be looking for only 1 partition.

Regards,
Bas
 
D

DerArtem

Senior Member
Apr 13, 2010
210
610
Bad Homburg
Hello,

please use this kernel:

https://github.com/DerArtem/android-tegra-nv-2.6.39

And use the tegra_betelgeuse_android_defconfig. If you wan't to boot linux you must also disable some android security features in the kernel, otherwise you will get problems with networking.

You can not just use a different kernel like on a x86 PC. The kernel for the Folio was heavy adapted to work on it...
 
S

shidima_101

Senior Member
Feb 24, 2011
75
5
Katwijk
www.treedevelop.com
So, since im a bit fed up with ICS i wanted to install Ubuntu on my folio. So i got al the parts i needed from this thread and set to work. The thing is now that i cant get the sd/mmc boot update to install. I keep getting an assert failed: write_raw_image error.

Some digging on my part revealed that it has to do with the size of the boot partition. I'm running CWM v5.5.0.4. Is there a way for me to resize the partitions, or do i have to go to the stock recovery partition?
 
M

Maremagnum

Member
Jan 4, 2011
30
2
I'm getting the same "write_raw_image" error when trying to apply the boot.img on the update.zip.. any idea on how to fix?
 
I

in4man4

New member
Jan 25, 2016
1
0
The most astonishing question is how make (adaptate) video driver, nvidia included for very old Xorg-xserver in their Linux-for-tegra package (16.5 as I recline), and in all your examples video=tegrafb. What's this? It isn't detected by Xorg -configure and however works in display default swrasterizer
 
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    D
    DerArtem
    Hello,

    I have prepared a few update.zip's with kernels to boot linux:

    There are two different zips.

    One to boot linux from a USB Flashdrive and the other from a SD card.

    Installation Instructions:
    ALWAYS HAVE CHARGER CONNECTED WHEN UPDATING A FIRMWARE.

    1. Please follow the instructions here to prepare your SD / USB Drive - start at "== Create a rootfs SD card ==". http://ac100.gudinna.com/README/

    2. Extract contents to a folder and follow instructions below.

    1. copy the update.zip to a sdcard, and insert sdcard into folio.
    2. Enter "Recovery menu" when folio is just turned on and press (POWER) once and (VOL up) next.
    3. press (VOL up) Factory reset or system update.
    4. press(VOL down) to continue to system update.
    5. press (VOL up) to confirm system update.
    6. during installation progress bar will show har far it is.
    7. folio will reboot after installation.
    8. insert the usb or flashdrive with the prepared filesystem into the folio and the tablet will boot automaticly from it
    View
    3
    Topogigi
    Topogigi
    [ONLY FOR DEVELOPERS AND SKILLED PEOPLE: NOT FOR NEWBIES!!!]

    My 2 cents:

    I installed ubuntu and it works quite well. I'd like to point out that it you can boot android or ubuntu flashing the boot.img containing the linux kernel in place of recovery kernel (fastboot flash recovery boot.img). You can even try a kernel before flashing it to the device (fastboot boot boot.img). To enter fastboot mode in your device, simply press the power button three times when the Toshiba logo appears on the screen at powerup, then press volume up one time. Voila, you are in fastboot mode...
    To boot linux, you have to press "power+volume up", then follow the instruction on screen to wipe the device (don't worry, it will boot linux and it will not wipe anything). You'll miss the recovery partition that way, but you'll gain a dual-boot tablet with android and ubuntu in change. Not a bad trade.
    If you really need recovery, you can always reflash it with fastboot, so the process is perfectly reversible.

    Now, back to business:

    1) Touchscreen works (sort of). If you apt-get evtest, you'll notice that /dev/input/event3 is bound to the touchscreen and it reports to be alive and kicking. The test reports the coordinate changing and the pressure on the screen (multitouch works too). But......in Xorg, the device only reports the pressure and coordinates are not changing. You can test with xinput as I did. It seems a software-related issue: the drivers does not report correctly what the hardware is telling him. I'll investigate and report back if news will come out.

    2) Wifi could eventually work. The card is bound via SDIO bus, and a ar6000 driver supporting SDIO is available. I'll try to compile the driver ASAP.

    3) Suspend, cpufreq do not work and I doubt they will work without driver sources

    4) Battery is working, framebuffer is working good and the system seems quite snappy also with an EXT4 partition on a MMC. Openoffice works great, quicker than expected.

    5) If you compile the kernel with nilfs2 support, you can easily mount all the android partitions within ubuntu with ease. Not bad...

    That's all for the moment: I hope that someone will help me to make this little devil fly.
    View
    2
    A
    Akta77
    Here is an Ubuntu NetBook Remix IMG suitable for folio 100. It's a 4GB image so you need a 4GB SDCard or USB FLash drive.

    aliantic.com/files/ubuntu-netbook-folio.img.bz2

    You can write this image using dd : dd if=/pathtoimage of=/dev/sdX (X is the letter of your key) bs=1024k

    At the login screen, choose ubuntu-netbook 2D. Login is ubuntu as the password
    VirtualKeyboard is easy to enable.

    Akta
    View
    2
    E
    eraph2
    Actually, I just found what the problem was : on the image I uncompressed on the usb key (tegra-rootfs.tgz), the /dev directory was empty, and lacked a console and a null entry (see h**p://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=28550)

    The folowing command solved the problem (to do on your sdcard/usbkey) :
    cd dev
    mknod -m 660 console c 5 1
    mknod -m 660 null c 1 3
    View
    2
    L
    liblack
    I think this topic deserves more!

    After several days of reading every page of this forum and all I could find on the net. I understand there are people here who can do their work together and make a distribution to all! Here is my small contribution, and if you agree to open a new thread NEW FOLIO FOR LINUX something like that. In searching for solutions I came across very well HOW TO now I give it to you. I do not know who wrote it, but I thank him a lot!!



    Flash your Android tablet with Ubuntu

    How to flash your folio 100 from Toshiba with a fresh Ubuntu build.

    Here is a quick method to install Ubuntu 10.10 into a folio 100 tablet (originally android).

    First, thanks to all the fox at XDA. More detail at:
    http://ac100.gudinna.com/README/
    http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=907960&page=1
    http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=907960

    So far, wifi and touchscreen are broken, i am sure someone will soon take care of this. most important is to have the tools to debug.

    Two parts:
    build ubuntu for ARM
    build the kernel and flash it,
    install ubuntu on a SD card.

    First we will prepare a rootfs to install in the SD card. It is so handy to do this with the ubuntu tool called roostock. roostock will help you to build a rootfs image for arm, please read the detail at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/RootfsFromScratch

    # sudo apt-get install roostock
    # sudo rootstock --fqdn myhostname --login ubuntu --password temppwd --imagesize 4G --seed ubuntu
    # ls armel-rootfs-201101132334.tgz

    Easy, no? Then the kernel, almost that easy. Toshiba GPL kernel can be found at: https://github.com/tsh/folio100, Attached is the kernel config i used, it is inspired from http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=907960

    # git clone git://github.com/tsh/folio100.git kernel-folio
    # cd kernel-folio
    # export ARCH=arm; export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-
    # make tegra_harmony_android_defconfig
    # make menuconfig
    # make -j16
    # ls arch/arm/boot/zImage


    To flash this kernel, we will need to include it in a update.zip file and ask the folio boot loader to flash it. The kernel image will be boot.img, it contains a header and a ramdisk (empty for us). This boot.img file is created with the tool mkbootimg (available from cyanogen, as well as unpackbootimg). The boot.img will be simply zipped with a script to do the updated.

    Note that here we are telling the kernel to boot on /dev/mmcblk1p1 (sd card) if you plan to boot your system from a usb key, use /dev/sda1 instead in the kernel command line. Attached is an update.zip image ready to be flashed. You can take it as a starting point, remove the boot.img file (with the kernel) and create your own (you will need the attached empty ramdisk file as well):

    # unzip update.zip
    # rm boot.img
    # mkbootimg --kernel arch/arm/boot/zImage --cmdline "mem=448M@0M nvmem=64M@448M vmalloc=192M video=tegrafb usbcore.old_scheme_first=1 tegrapart=recovery:122000:a00:800,linux:a0e00:1000:800,loader:300:400:800,mbr:700:200:800,system:900:20000:800,cache:20900:80000:800,misc:a0900:400:800,userdata:a1f00:80000:800 boardtype=PR root=/dev/mmcblk1p1 init=/sbin/init usb-storage.delay_use=0 rootdelay=10" -o boot.img --ramdisk boot.img-ramdisk.gz
    # zip -r update.zip boot.img META-INF


    Before you can flash your folio’s kernel partition, be sure you know how to restore a working image (available at http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=846199)

    To flash the kernel:
    copy the update.zip file in FAT formated SD card
    insert the SD card in the folio and be sure the folio power cable is plugged
    power on the device and press power and volum-up in the same time
    press volume up to confirm
    press volume down for android update
    press volume up to confirm

    From now your device will boot with you custom kernel and try to boot on the SD card.

    Insert the SD card in your computer, unmount it, reformat it with a ext3 file system and copy the ubuntu rootfs. Here i assume the sdcard is sdb1, your responsibility to change this. By the way, i had to update /etc/fstab...

    # umount /dev/sdb1
    # cfdisk /dev/sdb # change the file system type to 83 (linux) and save
    # mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1
    # mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
    # tar xvzf armel-rootfs-201101132334.tgz --numeric-owner -C /mnt
    # echo "dev /dev tmpfs rw 0 0" >> /mnt/etc/fstab
    # umount /mnt

    Insert the SD card in the folio and reboot it. Hopefully you can enjoy Ubuntu on your device.
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