Differences between revisions 9 and 11 (spanning 2 versions)
Revision 9 as of 2012-06-18 05:26:35
Size: 2415
Editor: ?NeilStockbridge
Comment:
Revision 11 as of 2012-07-30 14:55:55
Size: 2740
Editor: ?AndreasKloeckner
Comment:
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
Line 20: Line 20:
Then remove the µSD card and replace it in the phone, start SSHDroid and SSH to the phone, then: {{{#!wiki note

You might want to consider using [[ArmHardFloatPort|--arch=armhf]] if your phone supports ARMv7. Note that then you also need to change `squeeze` to at least `wheezy` if not `sid`.

}}}

Then remove the µSD card and replace it in the phone, start [[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=berserker.android.apps.sshdroid|SSHDroid]] (which provides chroot command). Then SSH to the phone, then:

Installing a Debian chroot on Android

This is an account of installing vanilla full-fat Debian squeeze in a chroot on Android.

This was tested on a Vodafone 845 ( a re-branded HuaWei u8120 / Joy / Ascend).

  • First, the phone was rooted by side-loading z4root

  • CyanogenMod 7.2.0-RC0 22b was flashed. This might not be necessary though

  • Set CPU to 710 MHz with the interactiveX governor. YMMV

  • Side-loaded SSHDroid
  • The SD card was formatted with the MBR scheme and a single ext3 partition was created. 15 sectors were left over

Then, on a workstation ( any architecture), insert the µSD card, and:

  sudo debootstrap --arch=armel --variant=minbase --foreign  squeeze  /media/PHONE\ CARD/squeeze  http://mirror.local:9999/debian

You might want to consider using --arch=armhf if your phone supports ARMv7. Note that then you also need to change squeeze to at least wheezy if not sid.

Then remove the µSD card and replace it in the phone, start SSHDroid (which provides chroot command). Then SSH to the phone, then:

  mount -o remount,exec,dev /mnt/sdcard/
  chroot /mnt/sdcard/squeeze/  /bin/bash -l
  debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

Then build up the Debian system as you normally would a minimal installation.

Many thanks to all the people whose hard work made it so trivial for me to install the environment I know and love on my phone.

Available memory

Android pre-loads applications ( in some case that the user has never started) when there is free memory. This reduces the memory available to applications in a chroot.

It looks like the *_MEM properties in /init.rc along with the /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree could help.

Zygote starts ?SystemServer and ?SystemServer restarts zygote, so simply killing one of them won't work. Instead, "mask" zygote from the system and then kill it:

Go to the Android root ( start telnetd -l /system/xbin/bash from Android if you wish to telnet localhost from your chrooted SSH), then:

mkdir /dev/bin
cp -a /system/bin/* /dev/bin/
cd /dev/bin/
mv app_process app_process.orig
ln -s sleep-forever app_process # have to compile sleep-forever first
mount -o bind /dev/bin /system/bin
killall zygote # actually killed the pid because I don't have killall yet

If you wish to save some RAM them use symlinks instead.

The display is now blank and ready for SDL. The input devices only partly work with SDL on the 8120 ( write your own code to read /dev/input/event*) but graphics work well.