Possible to run webtop without android processes?

[ShotSkydiver]

So, I actually own an Atrix 2, but I figured I'd post this here as webtop/linux development is much more active. I've gotten my device set up with a custom linux installation, but it seems the OS could run much faster were it not hampered by the phone running its own OS at the same time. Would it be possible to, say, modify the android boot scripts to launch webtop instead if it detects a dock? Just have the phone with a blank screen fully powering the /osh environment on the lapdock. Once undocked, you'd have to manually reboot so the system could actually boot up android again.

It seems like there's no reason why this shouldn't be possible. Just a simple boot script that uses the phone's ability to detect whether or not it is docked; if it is, boot into webtop, if not, run android. Once, my phone had a forced reboot while I was in webtop mode. However, instead of webtop going down with the phone, I opened the mobile view and actually watched the phone's boot animation and boot process, with webtop still running. Maybe there could be a script that runs android until webtop is fully "hooked", then shuts down android and continues running webtop?

 

[ShotSkydiver]

Secondary question, is it possible to upgrade the linux install itself with the sudo dist-upgrade command?

 

[bchliu]

I think it is actually quite possible to do this. The reason I say that is because I have seen the Android component of the phone reboot whilst being docked into the Lapdock. The whole Android environment is then reloaded once again meaning that Ubuntu is running as the host OS.

The challenge is if you can get it to boot directly into the Ubuntu shell primarily as opposed to going directly into Dalvik.

 

[ShotSkydiver]

I think it is actually quite possible to do this. The reason I say that is because I have seen the Android component of the phone reboot whilst being docked into the Lapdock. The whole Android environment is then reloaded once again meaning that Ubuntu is running as the host OS.

The challenge is if you can get it to boot directly into the Ubuntu shell primarily as opposed to going directly into Dalvik.

That's exactly what happened to me! Te webtop environment stayed booted, but just ran the boot script again. All you'd have to do would be to edit the android boot script to check if RM_IS_DOCKED, right? Or does the webtop rely on certain android components to run?

Secondary question, if I were to go the route of letting it load android, then webtop, then unload android, how would I send a command to android to shut down without *actually* shutting down?

Sent from my ATRIX 2 using Tapatalk 2

 

[bchliu]

I dont know enough about the technical details of the boot scripts to do this. But just as a observation, it does look plausible from the Dalvik rebooting separate to the Jaunty instance I have running.

 

[bonshob]

I would like to know how to do this as well

 

[giuanz]

Sorry guys, this is technically not possible.
At boot, the Linux kernel starts first. It is a custom kernel with Android patches - that implies, as far as I know, some extra security (only users with uid of 3000something have IP access) and something that breaks udev. The latter thing messing up init scripts of most modern Linux distros.
Then the Dalvik VM is started - which is the one that sucks the RAM.
Then the mountosh command is started, which takes care of mounting the webtop partition.
Then ubuntu.sh is started, which takes care of initializing the webtop environment.
The "docked" event launches a script in /etc/init.d (don't remember the name, probably stg like StartWebtop.sh) which starts the Moto's customized Xorg and some other software for the trackpad.

I think that what you have seen rebooting is probably the Dalvik VM - not sure why, I've seen it too at times.

IMHO webtop is slow because the Linux apps in Ubuntu are memory-hungry and not optimized for ARM.

I think Moto was hoping that HTML5 apps would take off sooner - so to make webtop useful just with the bundled firefox - but that never happened.

In the meanwhile, android tablet apps are getting more and more mature, and they are optimized for lower memory and less CPU than Ubuntu apps (eg Quickoffice vs Libreoffice, maildroid vs thunderbird). Hence Moto killing the webtop the way we know it and replacing it with TabletUI ICS.

Sent from my MB860 using xda premium

 

[adlx.xda]

Interesting thread. I have always been amazed by the Atrix with webtop (only had it for a few days, until I hard bricked it ).

Actually, from what I was able to see, it was not Android as host OS, then running Ubuntu. It was 1 kernel (the Linux kernel for Android, as we always have on an Android phone), and on top of that kernel, two different OSes: "Android" and "Webtop (ubuntu based)". It was especially visible when running ps from one or the other, you could see there was actually no distinction, no isolation between both. From Android you could see all the webtop processes, and from webtop the android processes as well. It was amazing!

(confirmed in https://books.google.nl/books?id=E9...btop a second OS on same linux kernel&f=false, Figure 6.8)

Technically it 's the once and only time I have seen this happen actually. Never before, and never since.

So, yes, it was very possible to "soft reboot" any of the two OSes and keep the other one running, as long as the kernel was kept running (not rebooting the phone). That would mean restarting the Android zigote or Ubuntu/Webtop init (or whatever was doing that function).