[Kernel][ICS] Kappa Kernel - Stock & Boost

[kast]

Hi ,
after more than a day and half of usage of the kappa kernel , I faced multiple freezes and random reboots some of them happen on the web browser or when launching the game " don't touch the white tile " ( or " piano tiles " ) half of times the phone frezes and reboots , which make this bug very annoying and a serious one , here I brought some last_kmsg logs in the attachment ..

EDIT : another bug need to be mentioned , is that video streaming on facebook mobile page ( where I noticed the bug ) is half of the time laggy or with very low fps lets say ..

job.

Hi there,
first of all, thanks for your help!

I'm trying to find out what is actually happening with the lag. Personally not a gamer (Except for 2048 ) nor I watch videos on my phone.
For basic stuff like I do, I never saw any "appreciable" lag. Yet... Very recently somebody very close to me installed Kappa 1.7 too and I'm getting reports of lags and stuff. He's more of a "phone user" than me ( ) and he also reported lags happening from time to time when either browsing or watching a vid.

I managed to reproduce something similar to that (except for the reboots) the other day by running Antutu Benchmark multiple times in a row. After the second or third time, the OpenGL test would simply freeze. Not the whole system, just Antutu.

Gathered all the patching strength I could, called my trusty bug seeker dog. Checked logs... Nothing that could really tell me anything wrong. Then decided to try something stupid... Play with entropy generation.
As everything relies on ramdom data, when "not enough" random data is available, the system may just freeze that application till available again.
Although Kappa had already Havege builtin, tried first to replace it with Frandom... And suddenly no freeze anymore.
Yet, was quite surprised when flashing back the phone with Kappa on Havege... Lags were gone too.

Long story short... I'm battling with this issue a bit.
I rebuilt another branch ( this must be the 20th after 1.6) that starts cleanly from the master branch. Added the most relevant patches to avoid chaos and make it more easy to follow. I'll keep testing this last version before distributing it (Kappa1.7Master).

Here is 1.6 (all 4 devices) with the battery bug fix while I debug 1.7
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/h98dpkxmfxzyh/Kappa


Thanks,
Ka.

 

[Bitterballen]

Hi there,
first of all, thanks for your help!

I'm trying to find out what is actually happening with the lag. Personally not a gamer (Except for 2048 ) nor I watch videos on my phone.
For basic stuff like I do, I never saw any "appreciable" lag. Yet... Very recently somebody very close to me installed Kappa 1.7 too and I'm getting reports of lags and stuff. He's more of a "phone user" than me ( ) and he also reported lags happening from time to time when either browsing or watching a vid.

I managed to reproduce something similar to that (except for the reboots) the other day by running Antutu Benchmark multiple times in a row. After the second or third time, the OpenGL test would simply freeze. Not the whole system, just Antutu.

Gathered all the patching strength I could, called my trusty bug seeker dog. Checked logs... Nothing that could really tell me anything wrong. Then decided to try something stupid... Play with entropy generation.
As everything relies on ramdom data, when "not enough" random data is available, the system may just freeze that application till available again.
Although Kappa had already Havege builtin, tried first to replace it with Frandom... And suddenly no freeze anymore.
Yet, was quite surprised when flashing back the phone with Kappa on Havege... Lags were gone too.

Long story short... I'm battling with this issue a bit.
I rebuilt another branch ( this must be the 20th after 1.6) that starts cleanly from the master branch. Added the most relevant patches to avoid chaos and make it more easy to follow. I'll keep testing this last version before distributing it (not on Github yet but soon).

Here is 1.6 (all 4 devices) with the battery bug fix while I debug 1.7
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/h98dpkxmfxzyh/Kappa


Thanks,
Ka.

I had flash Kappa Kernel 1.6 with battery bug fix for my coconut, but until now my coconut still not boot up. Of course I had trying another method by re-downloading the kernel, using flashtool, then fastboot command by erasing userdata & system, but, still the same, my coconut won't boot up. Is anyone (a coconut users) success to boot up with this kernel?

 

[job.bousix]

Hi kast ,
please , when testing the next kappa build , install this game ( piano tiles ) , because it is a way to reproduce the freeze and reboot issue even on the latest fixed kappa v1.6 I got a freeze and reboot when launching this game ,

thank you very much
job.

 

[kast]

I had flash Kappa Kernel 1.6 with battery bug fix for my coconut, but until now my coconut still not boot up. Of course I had trying another method by re-downloading the kernel, using flashtool, then fastboot command by erasing userdata & system, but, still the same, my coconut won't boot up. Is anyone (a coconut users) success to boot up with this kernel?

Can't test Coconut 'cause I don't have one myself but here is another build, just in case

http://www.mediafire.com/download/cmdimmd34071dpe/KaCoconut3.img

Ka.

 

[kast]

Hi kast ,
please , when testing the next kappa build , install this game ( piano tiles ) , because it is a way to reproduce the freeze and reboot issue even on the latest fixed kappa v1.6 I got a freeze and reboot when launching this game ,

thank you very much
job.

I'll do that, thanks for the tip, but first I'll make my phone totally empty. Don't know why a game asks permissions even to know what I had for lunch.

Ka.

 

[kast]

Hi there,

for people willing to test ongoing 1.7 Betas... I tried to make it a little easier.
My friend Jenkins is making every night a new build based on the latest committed changes. You can grab the releases here:

Kappa 1.7 Beta Releases

And Travis-CI will tell you if at least it builds

This was also posted in the opening thread.

Thanks,
Ka.

 

[kast]

Hi kast ,
please , when testing the next kappa build , install this game ( piano tiles ) , because it is a way to reproduce the freeze and reboot issue even on the latest fixed kappa v1.6 I got a freeze and reboot when launching this game ,

thank you very much
job.

Did you have the freeze and reboot before the battery bug fix?

Ka.

 

[job.bousix]

Did you have the freeze and reboot before the battery bug fix?

Ka.

Hi ,
I don't know if its related because I have just started playing this game , which means only tested on the new kappa 1.6 v2 with the bug fix but I retest it with the old one and I will test also the new build of kappa 1.7 kernel and report a full test report as soon as possible

EDIT : so I flashed back the old 1.6 version , booted the phone , then tested the app at launchin more than 6 times but there was no freese bug I rebboted the phone and the same result , but I was not weel confident of the results so retested the new version of the 1.6 and surprisenly I have no freeze bug also , which means that this bug is not battery patch related :good:

now I will test the new 1.7 build and report back the full test report tomorrow morning , I guess , or maybe later in the day ..

thanks agan for your work we really appreciate it
job.

 

[kast]

Hi ,
I don't know if its related because I have just started playing this game , which means only tested on the new kappa 1.6 v2 with the bug fix but I retest it with the old one and I will test also the new build of kappa 1.7 kernel and report a full test report as soon as possible

EDIT : so I flashed back the old 1.6 version , booted the phone , then tested the app at launchin more than 6 times but there was no freese bug I rebboted the phone and the same result , but I was not weel confident of the results so retested the new version of the 1.6 and surprisenly I have no freeze bug also , which means that this bug is not battery patch related :good:

now I will test the new 1.7 build and report back the full test report tomorrow morning , I guess , or maybe later in the day ..

thanks agan for your work we really appreciate it
job.

Thanks!

Give a try to the latest Jenkins build if you fancy!

Ka.

 

[job.bousix]

Thanks!

Give a try to the latest Jenkins build if you fancy!

Ka.

Hi kast ,
there is a wifi problem : it is not switching on as expected like previous builds ( mango with the latest jenkins builds ) and and when flashing lupus wifi switch on and works fine , I don't know why ?

I will attach a dmesg as soon as possible or you can test it yourself and fix af it's possible because I can't continue testing if wifi don't work :/
thank you very much for your precious work

EDIT : there is no wifi modules in the rek folder of the ramdisck

job.

 

[kast]

Hi kast ,
there is a wifi problem : it is not switching on as expected like previous builds ( mango with the latest jenkins builds ) and and when flashing lupus wifi switch on and works fine , I don't know why ?

I will attach a dmesg as soon as possible or you can test it yourself and fix af it's possible because I can't continue testing if wifi don't work :/
thank you very much for your precious work

EDIT : there is no wifi modules in the rek folder of the ramdisck

job.

Check again the latest releases on Jenkins... Wifi should work now.
http://build.ka.st:8080/job/Kappa/ws/release/
Me silly, didn't update the default configs... The automatic build process was using old ones with no embedded wifi drivers.

Sorry about that,
Ka.

 

[Bitterballen]

Can't test Coconut 'cause I don't have one myself but here is another build, just in case

http://www.mediafire.com/download/cmdimmd34071dpe/KaCoconut3.img

Ka.

Yeah, now my phone has successfully booted up I will reporting back after I test this kernel for another minutes.

EDIT: I noticed that wi-fi is not working, but not a very big deal, cuz I had flashed wi-fi modules for Doppler kernel V3 & and it's working again.

 

[job.bousix]

Check again the latest releases on Jenkins... Wifi should work now.
http://build.ka.st:8080/job/Kappa/ws/release/
Me silly, didn't update the default configs... The automatic build process was using old ones with no embedded wifi drivers.

Sorry about that,
Ka.

Hi !
now I will give you the test report of the latest kamango13 build

* connectivity : - wifi , bluetooth , gps , radio , data connection , tethering : good

* hardware : camera ( front and rear ) , screen , physical keyboard , speakers , eare phone , light sensor , accelerometer , proximity sensor , notification led , led flash : good :good: and 100% battery bug is gone also :good:

* stability : everything seem to be very stable exept one time when apps like root explorer and titanium backup didn't want to run which was fixed by a reboot

* kamenu : agan not able to change min - max frequencies but able to change governors ( the kamenu script was not well tested )

* init.d : still not well working , it is not setting frquencies like in the script , so not working :/ but I fix it with the script attached (zip_init.d.zip : thanks to the dev , the thread is here : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1933849 )

* battery life : I used the phone very heavely to make a faster test , and the battery life on screen is abselutly IMPRESSIVE !! here is my counts :
on screen with wifi OFF : 13~18% per hour
on browser with wifi ON and data OFF : 15~19% per hour and streaming 18~21% per hour , and with data everyone knows that is battery draining
when gaming : ( piano tiles ) 15~20% per hour

* performance : speed is AWESOME boot time is good ( 41~45 seconds faster than the other build 21 seconds from them are taken for the kernel to boot :good: ) , game loading is really fast in addition to butterly smooth scrolling , smooth gameplay and a smooth music play back ( no cuts ) excelent :good: !!

I hope this will help and as I said I'm ready to test and report new builds as much as I can
and I hope also v1.7 will be released soon because in two weeks I will travel for university and will not be able to access any computer and do stuff like this like I used to do till now

PS : if I face new bugs I will list them here

EDIT : I faced the "kernel reboot bug " , when I boot the phone , then there is the vebration then kernel logo then it just freeze there after several seconds kernel reboots agan "seccesfully" to system , I have attached a last_kmsg which I don't know really if it's related to the time of the bug or not ..


thank you very much
job.

 

[karandpr]

Yeah, now my phone has successfully booted up I will reporting back after I test this kernel for another minutes.

EDIT: I noticed that wi-fi is not working, but not a very big deal, cuz I had flashed wi-fi modules for Doppler kernel V3 & and it's working again.

How can Doppler Modules work on kappa ?
They aren't even remotely compatible.

 

[kast]

Yeah, now my phone has successfully booted up I will reporting back after I test this kernel for another minutes.

EDIT: I noticed that wi-fi is not working, but not a very big deal, cuz I had flashed wi-fi modules for Doppler kernel V3 & and it's working again.

Quite strange you got it working by flashing another kernel's modules. Drivers / Modules are tied to the kernel by what is called "Version Magic"... Generally you can't load a driver which was compiled against another kernel, with a different version magic.

Anyway... Better download the latest Kappa 1.7 from here: http://build.ka.st:8080/job/Kappa/ws/release/

Take care,
Ka.

 

[kast]

Hi !
now I will give you the test report of the latest kamango13 build

* connectivity : - wifi , bluetooth , gps , radio , data connection , tethering : good

* hardware : camera ( front and rear ) , screen , physical keyboard , speakers , eare phone , light sensor , accelerometer , proximity sensor , notification led , led flash : good :good: and 100% battery bug is gone also :good:

* stability : everything seem to be very stable exept one time when apps like root explorer and titanium backup didn't want to run which was fixed by a reboot

* kamenu : agan not able to change min - max frequencies but able to change governors ( the kamenu script was not well tested )

* init.d : still not well working , it is not setting frquencies like in the script , so not working :/ but I fix it with the script attached (zip_init.d.zip : thanks to the dev , the thread is here : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1933849 )

* battery life : I used the phone very heavely to make a faster test , and the battery life on screen is abselutly IMPRESSIVE !! here is my counts :
on screen with wifi OFF : 13~18% per hour
on browser with wifi ON and data OFF : 15~19% per hour and streaming 18~21% per hour , and with data everyone knows that is battery draining
when gaming : ( piano tiles ) 15~20% per hour

* performance : speed is AWESOME boot time is good ( 41~45 seconds faster than the other build 21 seconds from them are taken for the kernel to boot :good: ) , game loading is really fast in addition to butterly smooth scrolling , smooth gameplay and a smooth music play back ( no cuts ) excelent :good: !!

I hope this will help and as I said I'm ready to test and report new builds as much as I can
and I hope also v1.7 will be released soon because in two weeks I will travel for university and will not be able to access any computer and do stuff like this like I used to do till now

PS : if I face new bugs I will list them here

EDIT : I faced the "kernel reboot bug " , when I boot the phone , then there is the vebration then kernel logo then it just freeze there after several seconds kernel reboots agan "seccesfully" to system , I have attached a last_kmsg which I don't know really if it's related to the time of the bug or not ..


thank you very much
job.

Thank you very much for this pretty impressive test report.
I look into the kernel log you provided me with, it seems that the kernel stop just after setting up the serial console. Then reboots.
Could find no error message, just reboot. Checking if any patch was made to msm_serial on some other kernel...

From today the kernel is compiled with Linaro 4.9, toolchains provided by Christopher83 of this very same forum.
The toolchain I'm using was compiled with optmisations for the cpu our devices have. Kernel is slimmer and hopefully faster.
Jenkins is aware of this change and new builds will be made with he new toolchain.
Now need to check what happens with init.d

Cheers!

Ka.

 

[heerarana]

I had flash Kappa Kernel 1.6 with battery bug fix for my coconut, but until now my coconut still not boot up. Of course I had trying another method by re-downloading the kernel, using flashtool, then fastboot command by erasing userdata & system, but, still the same, my coconut won't boot up. Is anyone (a coconut users) success to boot up with this kernel?

yes, i had the same problem after flashing the kernel "Kappa 1.6 Battery bug fixed" for Coconut, then i seen the other comment and flashed
http://www.mediafire.com/download/cmdimmd34071dpe/KaCoconut3.img

Need to test battery life now, i will update this soon

 

[job.bousix]

Thank you very much for this pretty impressive test report.
I look into the kernel log you provided me with, it seems that the kernel stop just after setting up the serial console. Then reboots.
Could find no error message, just reboot. Checking if any patch was made to msm_serial on some other kernel...

From today the kernel is compiled with Linaro 4.9, toolchains provided by Christopher83 of this very same forum.
The toolchain I'm using was compiled with optmisations for the cpu our devices have. Kernel is slimmer and hopefully faster.
Jenkins is aware of this change and new builds will be made with he new toolchain.
Now need to check what happens with init.d

Cheers!

Ka.

Hi !
well that's our duty as users of free development

I faced the freeze and reboot bug twice on the latest build when launching perfect piano from numerous times of usage of that app , the freeze has taken too long so I was forced to pull the battery out which means no last_kmsg , that happened yesterday , and today agan the phone froze at the launch of the same app but hasn't taken so long and rebooted and hopfully I got the kernel log of the error wich is attached here

Also it's not like before , the freeze bug now is not successing a lag , I mean everything works great and then when launching the app it just freeze there and reboot ..

EDIT : I have flashed the kamango16 build of today , and I will just report if there is new bugs or if old bugs are fixed ..

EDIT : First impressions :
*the new build feels less stable and a little bit laggier than the kamango13 , I say that because of the lag in the video streaming is back but not very important as before , not as smooth scrolling as the kamanago13 kernel was after restoring a clean backup , phone usage feels better smilare to kamango13 .. , and I faced the freeze and reboot bug with the perfect piano app , agan , for the 4th or 5th launching after flashing the kernel ..
*no reboot bug at kernel boot till now ..
*also just saying that the init.d support still missing and the kamenu bug is still present in case you made a modification to fix those two bugs ..

thank you very much
job.

 

[heerarana]

Hi Dev,

i have installed your latest kernel http://www.mediafire.com/download/cmdimmd34071dpe/KaCoconut3.img but still battery draining issue exist.

 

[job.bousix]

Hi Dev,

i have installed your latest kernel http://www.mediafire.com/download/cmdimmd34071dpe/KaCoconut3.img but still battery draining issue exist.

Hi there ,
please try installig the coconut build from here like kast has tolden us before , it has very impressive battery life !

Better download the latest Kappa 1.7 from here: http://build.ka.st:8080/job/Kappa/ws/release/

thank you
job.