Absolutely Minimal Root (AMR) and Apps2SD firmware

[rupor]

@simongee
I still do a bit of playing with code. Unfortunately after spending most of my evenings and weekends for half a year on this firmware I do not have a lot of time, have to work for food So I have no real plans.

Just to answer your question - I do not read mobi and I am not planning any mobi integration for the device, out of list of requests I collected over time only 4 people asked for it So it is very low on my list of priorities...

[kwantum]

Hi rupor, hi everyone,

first of all, thanks for your great work! I like my bad-eink-android-tablet

1. I encountered a problem using the 'manage applications' dialog. Some apps (even the pre-installed) state 'calculating...', some '0.0KB' and some 'package size can not be calculated'. This prevents me from uninstalling them, deleting app caches or copy them to SD card.

2. In your AMR-package there seems to be copies of the Contacts and Calender app. Why are they not shown on page 3 of the launcher? Can I change this?

3. If I try to access Calender (e.g. via opening a reminder from the status bar), Calender crashes.

Any ideas how I can fix this?

Thanks again and bye, Chris

[rupor]

kwantum
#2 - it is not in my package, it is in original firmware. And the answer to this question is in your #3: because it does not work.

[kwantum]

Originally Posted by rupor

kwantum
#2 - it is not in my package, it is in original firmware. And the answer to this question is in your #3: because it does not work.

Haha, fair enough
I already use aCalender instead, that works fine.

Any other thoughts on #1?

[rupor]

Nope - I know it behaves like that sometimes, I've seen it myself. It is not always like that though. On both of my devices it properly calculates sizes

[kwantum]

Originally Posted by rupor

Nope - I know it behaves like that sometimes, I've seen it myself. It is not always like that though. On both of my devices it properly calculates sizes

Okay, thanks anyway
When I figure something out, I will post it here.

[e-ink]

Thank you a lot for your work rupor!

Can you please explain the boot process of your rescue image? Does it rely on any data on the system disk (like bootloader, kernel, header files, partition (table) etc... OR does it get directly booted by the BIOS?
In what ways does it make use of / is different from stock recovery?

In other words, can I completely wipe the system disk (including MBR and partition table) and still be able to access it by booting the rescue image from SDCard?

Further there is 25MB unpartitioned free space at the beginning of the disk. Is there any important data written on?

Last but not least. Although reading your translated russian post I couldn't find out what the EbookDownloader package on AMR is good for!???

[rupor]

@e-ink

What BIOS? What stock recovery? I feel lost...

My recovery image is not a complete boot image, it contains Linux ramdisk and nothing else - Sony PRS-T1 hardware wired to boot from what you call system disk (probably inappropriately). And that cannot be changed (to the best of my knowledge) without opening device and using soldering iron. So if you completely wipe device out you have pretty brick. The only way to recover would be to use hardware tools to reload flash memory.

What unpartitioned free space? I guess what you see is defined by how you are looking - if you are looking from Windows tools in most cases you would not see true picture...

EBookDownloader package allows downloading files like APK or ZIP via stock web browser in the absence of programs which are declaring that they are ready to process those files. This is just the way Android works. If you are not going to download such files - you do not need EBookDownloader. It is easy to uninstall...

[e-ink]

Here is the fdisk output of my system disk (the flash memory including the partitions). I called it system disk in contrast to the external SDCard.

Originally Posted by fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 1958 MB, 1958739968 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 59776 cylinders, total 3825664 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 51200 71679 10240 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 71680 92159 10240 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 92160 866687 387264 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 866688 3825663 1479488 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 92176 124991 16408 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 125008 403583 139288 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 403600 424127 10264 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 424144 506111 40984 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 506128 604479 49176 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 604496 866687 131096 83 Linux

The first partition starts at sector 51200, which means there is ~51200*512b = 25MB unallocated space at the start of the disk. See also the attached screenshot of gparted for better illustration (link). So I was wondering if that area contains any sensitive data?

Please correct me if I'm wrong with the following assumptions:
My understanding of booting up linux is that the BIOS (lets call it flash ROM) loads the boot manger which loads a ramdisk with the kernel which mounts the filesystem.

uboot talks about the stock recovery here: link
So if I understand this right, pressing HOME+Menu while powering up loads the stock rescue kernel which then looks for an image (your rescue) to load from the scard!???

Going by their names, it seems like Partition 1 [RECOVERY] and Partition 2 [DIAG] might contain crucial data for booting a rescue system!?



Basically I just wanna find out which data on the flash disk should not be touched in order to be still able to boot into rescue to apply a backup.
Thats why I'm interested in how the early system start works (in particular the rescue boot)
Sorry, I feel like derailing your thread. If it is misplaced, I might just open another thread.

[rupor]

How about this:

cat /sys/module/rawdatatable/parameters/partition_param
Recovery Rootfs                 :1:0x00a00000
Diag                            :2:0x00a00000
READER                          :4:0x5a4d8000
fonts                           :5:0x01000000
dictionaries                    :6:0x08800000
SETTING                         :7:0x00a00000
preload                         :8:0x02800000
data                            :9:0x03000000
system                          :10:0x08000000

cat /sys/module/rawdatatable/parameters/rawdata_param
MBR                             :0x00000000:0x00000400
uBoot                           :0x00000400:0x000bfc00
Boot Env                        :0x000c0000:0x00020000
Reserved1                       :0x000e0000:0x00020000
Normal Kernel                   :0x00100000:0x00400000
Normal Rootfs                   :0x00500000:0x00100000
Recovery Kernel                 :0x00600000:0x00400000
Reserved2                       :0x00a00000:0x00500000
Normal Boot Env                 :0x00f00000:0x00020000
Recovery Boot Env               :0x00f20000:0x00020000
Raw Data Table                  :0x00f40000:0x00020000
Info                            :0x00f60000:0x00020000
Id                              :0x00f80000:0x00020000
Reserved3                       :0x00fa0000:0x00060000
Boot Image                      :0x01000000:0x00100000
Waveform                        :0x01100000:0x00200000
LOG                             :0x01300000:0x00500000

My guess would be that you should not touch first 3 partittions and anything before...

There is no BIOS - at all and you could read u-boot and Android documentation if you would like to know an exact boot sequence. I believe it is prety standard Android partitioning...

[e-ink]

Thanks rupor, that's interesting information. So it looks like the first 24 MB of the leading unpartitioned space is actually allocated by raw data.

[parper]

@Rupor First of all thank you for your work !
I just installed it, but there is a problem: I cannot find Total commander, so I am not able to install apk's
Can you please give me a hint .

[idle]

Originally Posted by parper

@Rupor First of all thank you for your work !
I just installed it, but there is a problem: I cannot find Total commander, so I am not able to install apk's
Can you please give me a hint .

The Home screen has now three pages instead of two. The third contains some applications, including Total Commander.

[parper]

Thank you. Any way I dont have Total commander installed.

In minimal-root\minimal-root\sdcard\updates\data\app
I have found the apk files. which did NOT include Total commander. I will add some apk's to this directory and will try to install Minimal root again...
Any idea if this will work ?

[idle]

Originally Posted by parper

Thank you. Any way I dont have Total commander installed.

In minimal-root\minimal-root\sdcard\updates\data\app
I have found the apk files. which did NOT include Total commander. I will add some apk's to this directory and will try to install Minimal root again...
Any idea if this will work ?

I'm afraid it won't - there should be a file elsewhere in the root which contains checksums for the apk's, so you'd need to add a checksum there too to make it work. But I'm only guessing here.