Tag: XDANDROID

Small Eclair rootfs Update

Last week, phhusson modified the rootfs init scripts for eclair (and eclairhero) to load the RIL library (libhtcgeneric-ril) from rootfs instead of what is packed in system.sqsh. This solves a minor problem with updating the RIL: there would have to be a new system.sqsh for each RIL update. That’s a problem for users, developers and servers alike. Users would have to spend time and bandwidth downloading a whole new Android bundle for a change to one little library. Developers would have to spend time repacking system.sqsh for that one little change and uploading it to the disto server. The server would spend tons and tons (and I mean tons… upwards of 75GB in the first 24 hours of release) of bandwidth hosting that new bundle.

I’ve started up a build service for libhtcgeneric-ril which occurs entirely on a backend. This means that the products of the build service aren’t directly accessible to users like the rootfs and initramfs builds are. Instead, this one builds a new libhtcgeneric-ril, commits and pushes it to the eclair-rootfs repo, and then the rootfs build service will eventually spit out a new build with the updated libhtcgeneric-ril. End-users can download the roughly-6MB file from the build service and update just the rootfs for the RIL changes.

There’s no fancy frontend or snazzy filesystem images for this one, sorry. You can check out the libhtcgeneric-ril repository on Gitorious, though. Thanks for reading!

Another Eclair Build Service: initramfs

That’s right, we have yet another automated method of breaking Android on your WinMo phones! In the same spirit as the rootfs build service, we’ve got the nice, new initramfs build service. See the original post about why we needed the rootfs build service for the exact same reasons behind this build service.

Continue reading “Another Eclair Build Service: initramfs”

XDANDROID Eclair, now with Bluetooth

Today I pushed a commit to enable bluetooth in the Eclair rootfs repository. The build service has already assembled an image, so you can grab it and give it a shot. This currently only works for devices with Texas Instruments bluetooth, such as Raphael and Diamond. It does not yet work with Rhodium, which uses a Broadcom chipset.

The commit was a simple few-liner to the Eclair init.rc to add an Android service which handles pairing and connecting to other Bluetooth devices. The Bluetooth chip in the phone was working already (and enabled in Donut), so it was just the Android userspace service which was missing.

As it is now, the bluetooth device appears to inhibit deep sleep for the phone, which in turn causes noticeable power drain. This will be something to take a look at down the road to see if deep sleep can be enabled with bluetooth on. It’s probably a low-priority issue at this point, since bluetooth is not essential, and users who do wish to use it can enable and disable it manually.

Eclair rootfs Build Service Moved (to subdomain)

Just a quick update: the XDANDROID Eclair rootfs Build Service has moved to a subdomain on the same server. It’s a better solution than sticking it in a userdir. Previous links will be redirected to the new location, so you don’t need to do anything.

Also, for the record: I cannot guarantee that the oldest builds in that list will remain for any specific amount of time. As the server continues to build from the git repository, those images will pile up and I’ll probably have to clean some out eventually.

As one final aside, I’d like to plug the VPS provider I use to run this build service (and all the other services the machine hosts): Linode. It’s a very popular and extremely high-quality host. The prices are reasonable, the staff are friendly and almost always available, and they have near-perfect reliability. If you need a host and one of their datacenters (Fremont, Dallas, Atlanta, New Jersey, or London) is a good location for you, check them out.

Thanks.