Native Linux for Asus tf701t

[Geometry]

ArchLinux is the best option. :good:
I have been using Arch on my device for two months and everything is running fine (wifi, bluetooth, keyboard, touch-pad, touchscreen, audio, video). Sadly, the touch screen requires android lib to works. The IRQ function in the touchscreen driver has to be modified to work independently. Also, Linux is missing HiDPI screens support. I have tried XFCE,Mate,LXDE & Enlightenment (lightweight desktops). Enlightenment is the best so far but its efl engine is not working on my device.
could someone try Enlightenment in Ubuntu or Debian? (dont forget libgles2-mesa-dev)

So you have some idea of what needs to be done to make the mtev driver work natively? That would be great! It seems rm-wrapper is not so stable and is causing some problems when updating packages...

 

[UbuntuBhoy]

Getting a small issue running the Xubuntu rootfs from SD. I installed internally and everything worked really well, but I need the space so decided to go down the SD route. It wont boot for me from the tablet Micro SD slot but boot's fine from the dock SD and appears to work identical to the internal install (same rootfs so you would exepct them to ru the same) except for wifi. I can enable and disable both networking & wireless but no netorks show up. If i check with iwconfig it says wlan0 has no wireless capabilities.

Anyone shed some light?

 

[Geometry]

Getting a small issue running the Xubuntu rootfs from SD. I installed internally and everything worked really well, but I need the space so decided to go down the SD route. It wont boot for me from the tablet Micro SD slot but boot's fine from the dock SD and appears to work identical to the internal install (same rootfs so you would exepct them to ru the same) except for wifi. I can enable and disable both networking & wireless but no netorks show up. If i check with iwconfig it says wlan0 has no wireless capabilities.

Anyone shed some light?

Look at the advice from the README in the repository:

As well as installing to internal storage, you can install the rootfs on an SDcard just by unpacking it to SD, formatted in ext4 file system. In that case, edit the file "/etc/fstab" in the rootfs, uncommenting the line that starts with "/dev/mmcblk0p14".

Did you do the recommended modification of the "/etc/fstab" file? Otherwise /data will not be mounted and the kernel cannot find the wifi configuration file "/data/misc/wifi/nvram.txt" from Android.

 

[Geometry]

kwin_gles for Xubuntu 14.04

It is possible to combine the stability of the Xubuntu 14.04 rootfs with the benefits of the powerful and graphics accelerated window manager kwin_gles from KDE.

Follow the instructions in this video, with one small modification: Instead of writing "kwin" in the configuration file, write "kwin_gles".

Replacing xfwm4 with kwin_gles has the added benefit that the graphics corruption issue of xfwm4 upon resume and change of graphics mode disappers.

Enjoy!

 

[Trel725]

It is really strange that systemd in ubuntu crashes. In Arch it works like a charm.

Also, in 15.04 Mate DE is available. I think it is good idea to try it also.

 

[Geometry]

It is really strange that systemd in ubuntu crashes. In Arch it works like a charm.

Maybe it is a simple configuration issue. What I did was just install Ubuntu Core 15.04 + kernel modules + configuration files (see initial part of the Xubuntu installation instructions) and boot it and it didn't give me a log in prompt. In fact, some initial configuration is in "/etc/init/tf701t.conf" which is an upstart script. I am not sure if systemd would call this. If not, then that might already explain the issue. The solution would then be simply to convert this to a systemd script, whatever that means.

 

[Trel725]

Yes, I've used systemd script in Arch. I think that it would be better to stay with Upstart yet.

 

[@[email protected]]

So you have some idea of what needs to be done to make the mtev driver work natively? That would be great! It seems rm-wrapper is not so stable and is causing some problems when updating packages...

evdev should handle the touch screen input like laptops' touch screen but our driver does not work without a process. I have tested all irq flags but no luck since the interrupter does not responded. Also, I could not find many touchscreen drivers that use SPI (not I2C) and work with an irq interrupter. A manual for the touchscreen that has the technical specification is nowhere to be found. It is difficult (not impossible) to modify or rewrite the touch screen driver without a reference. Initializing the touch screen main variables (version, name, screen resolution, sleep time, ...) is easy and could be done without the android library but the question is how to handle the touch screen input in this driver using the irq_interrupter?

Sadly, rm-wrapper wont work perfectly.

 

[issawillwin]

Hello @Geometry, first of all thank you for all the work you did on that project.
I'm considering make cm12 themes on my tablet, on linux, but i see that a few distro don't have touch working.
Could you tell me wich distro is the most stable, with touch working ?

Thank you for your time.

Envoyé de mon K00C en utilisant Tapatalk

 

[UbuntuBhoy]

I wonder if someone could make an Xubuntu 14.04 recovery that boots from the tablet micro SD as opposed to the dock SD?
I seem to keep having issues with a micro SD in an adaptor in the dock which results in a corrupt card, these could be from the adaptors themselves (I have tried a few) or possibly even movement of the tablet in the dock breaking the connection.

 

[Geometry]

Hello @Geometry, first of all thank you for all the work you did on that project.
I'm considering make cm12 themes on my tablet, on linux, but i see that a few distro don't have touch working.
Could you tell me wich distro is the most stable, with touch working ?

Thank you for your time.

The touch support for Xubuntu 14.04 as described here works quite well in my experience. I have not extensively tested the other distros, but since Trel725 is the one who came up with touch support for our device in the first place, I am sure his implementation of it in the other distros he has provided works as well.

---------- Post added at 14:28 ---------- Previous post was at 14:11 ----------

I wonder if someone could make an Xubuntu 14.04 recovery that boots from the tablet micro SD as opposed to the dock SD?
I seem to keep having issues with a micro SD in an adaptor in the dock which results in a corrupt card, these could be from the adaptors themselves (I have tried a few) or possibly even movement of the tablet in the dock breaking the connection.

To use the rootfs on an external microsd card in the tablet slot there are several options:
1. Boot using the boot image "boot-mmcblk1p1-17.img" from "~/prebuilt" in the repository. For this to work the kernel files for kernel version "3.4.107-cmaalxhb-17" must be in your rootfs (as this is the kernel that you will be booting). To be sure, just extract the file "kernel-cmaalxhb-17.tar.gz" from "~/kernel" to your rootfs.
2. Boot using the boot image "boot-sda1-15.img" but use the additional option -c "root=/dev/mmcblk1p1" in fastboot. This works with kernel version "3.4.105-cmaalx-15" which is already included in this Xubuntu rootfs.

 

[giaki3003]

Good but an Ubuntu Mobile version wouldn't be bad, wouldn't it?
Good to see Linux Distros being ported to mobile devices!

Sent from my LG-E400 using XDA Free mobile app

 

[issawillwin]

The touch support for Xubuntu 14.04 as described here works quite well in my experience. I have not extensively tested the other distros, but since Trel725 is the one who came up with touch support for our device in the first place, I am sure his implementation of it in the other distros he has provided works as well.

---------- Post added at 14:28 ---------- Previous post was at 14:11 ----------



To use the rootfs on an external microsd card in the tablet slot there are several options:
1. Boot using the boot image "boot-mmcblk1p1-17.img" from "~/prebuilt" in the repository. For this to work the kernel files for kernel version "3.4.107-cmaalxhb-17" must be in your rootfs (as this is the kernel that you will be booting). To be sure, just extract the file "kernel-cmaalxhb-17.tar.gz" from "~/kernel" to your rootfs.
2. Boot using the boot image "boot-sda1-15.img" but use the additional option -c "root=/dev/mmcblk1p1" in fastboot. This works with kernel version "3.4.105-cmaalx-15" which is already included in this Xubuntu rootfs.

Hello @Geometry, I tried to understand the steps to boot Xubuntu from an external micro sd (in the tablet slot) but it looks kinda complicated to get the all this to work. Does booting from microSD needs a PC to do it by fastboot or it can be booted just like that?

Could it be possible for anyone to do a step by step guide to boot Xubuntu from micro sd?

Thanks a lot to everyone who contriubuted to this project, this transformer will be more usefull than ever !

Envoyé de mon K00C en utilisant Tapatalk

 

[Piglo]

Hello!
How do I find the kernel source 3.4.107-cmaalxhb-17 (github_com/Trel725/tf701)?
I tried to apply the patches, but I did not.
I same can not unpack initrd file( abootimg-unpack-initrd .... not in gzip format ), to correct initrd.


By the way what do you think about the project:
github_com/linux-shield/kernel - "This is a temporary project that maintains a version of the Linux kernel that can boot in NVIDIA's SHIELD and TN7."
Shield also based tegra 4 SoC. Do you think it would be easier to use "vanila" kernel instead of blob's Nvidia?

Today the arch is the most stable distribution?
Thanks.

 

[adiabuk]

Thanks @Trel725 and everyone else helping here. I've been playing about with the Arch image for a few weeks which looks awesome. Hopefully I will be able to contribute something myself soon.

I have the image flashed to recovery so when I do a reboot Android (Cyanogenmod in mycase) will boot as it's the default. What is the method of booting back into Linux automatically? Is there a proc file I need to echo something into before issuing the reboot?

Thanks

 

[aydink]

thanks to this projet, i've android cm 12.1 and ubuntu (bind mount) on my asus. but now since the recovery partition is used for the linux stuff: how to install android / cm updates without twrp / recovery ? i downloaded fastboot into linux with apt-get but it does not find the devices (itself .

suggestions anyone?

 

[r00t65]

Arch extSD

First I have to say thanks for your briliant work.

I tried to install Arch on my external SD card but I got many problems. I decided to post my problems and the fixes I found and a short instruction what I did. Maybe it helps someone.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Github Link: github .com/Trel725/tf701 (remove space before .com)

Short instruction:

1. Download the Arch image and the Kernel ending with 17.
2. Use /mnt/media_rw/MicroSD as path to the SD
3. Unzip the arch image
4. If you didn't unzip the image on SD card copy the arch.tar in the SD root else skip to the next step.
5. Untar the arch.tar ( tar -xf arch.tar )
6. Move the content of the newly created archlinux folder to the SD root ( mv -rf archlinux/* ./ )
7. Untar the new Kernel and overwrite the existing files ( tar -xf kernel-cmaalxhb-17.tar.gz )
8. Remove / disable the link to lightdm
9. Add an entry in the fstab to get rw access

Problems I had:

Symlinks won't be created properly:

• Use an Terminal Emulator to extract the tar
• Use /mnt/media_rw/MicroSD as path not /storage/MicroSD
• Move the files from the archlinux folder don't copy them

Black screen after booting:

• It can be a problem with the X server
• Rename display-manager.service in /mnt/media_rw/MicroSD/etc/systemd/system to display-manager.service.alt
• The GUI won't load but you should get to a working command line

Filesystem is read-only after boot:

• One time Fix: mount -o remount,rw /
• Persistent Fix: add "/dev/mmcblk1p1 / ext4 rw,noatime,discard,data=ordered 0 0" to /etc/fstab

Wicd crash on wifi configuration:
Can't find the fix right now. Willl be added later.

At the moment my biggest problem is the X server. I just can't find the source of the problem. Right now I can only say I get a black screen after executing startx / xinit. I think it's a driver issue or a problem with the xorg.conf.

 

[K94U]

This Linux project possibly has corrupted the bootloader of one of your fellow users. Please review this link because the user cannot post in this thread due to XDA newbie post restrictions. http://forum.xda-developers.com/transformer-tf701/help/access-fastboot-whats-changed-t3196110

 

[dmwm]

Suggestion

This Linux project possibly has corrupted the bootloader of one of your fellow users. Please review this link because the user cannot post in this thread due to XDA newbie post restrictions. http://forum.xda-developers.com/transformer-tf701/help/access-fastboot-whats-changed-t3196110

Hi! Can you please provide your "fdisk -l" output? Maybe there is a chance to flash bootloader/recovery partition by using linux shell on your device.
Here are my suggestion steps:
1) Get valid partition images for mmcblk0boot0 and mmcblk0boot1 (here are the images I made with dd command - https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1OF_jA0iYkMbVF1SjY1dmR2N2M&usp=sharing);
2) Copy these images to USB-stick;
3) Load your linux shell;
4) Mount USB-stick;
5) Flash partitions with following commands:

dd if=<path-to-image>/mmcblk0boot0.img of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0
dd if=<path-to-image>/mmcblk0boot1.img of=/dev/mmcblk0boot1

 

[tf701mega]

please dont tell me this thread has died!!?! This is such an amazing project, and I've been dying for all the kinks to get ironed out so I could have a full fledged linux distro run on my tf701.. anyone got any info on this.. any new developments?