SlackwareOnMt6582Tablet
Specifications of the Tablet PC which was used here
Processor : Arm Cortex A7, 1.3 GHz dual core.
: ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v7l),
Hardware : MT8312
SOC : mt6582.
Memory : 512MB RAM
Storage : 4GB Built in storage.
Micro SD : Slot for upto 32GB
Display : 7" WVGA 800x480
OS : Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
GPU : Mali?
Rooting the Tablet PC
I used Framaroot-1.9.3.apk to root the device.
Installing Linux - Slackware 14.1 - sort of.
With the problem of not having kernel source for the SOC, and no no bootloader unlock possible yet, next best option was to use a chroot environment.
So far, command line mode works fine. Here is the description of how Slackware was installed on to external micro SD Card. Was able to do some basic tests on the frame buffer display. Since there is no VTs available was not able to test Xorg, though could get Mali module compiled and loaded. More details below.
Preparing SD Card on host computer
Use fdisk to create one or two partitions, one for ext4 and other ( optional ) swap partition. Once these are created, assuming the device on host is /dev/sdc,
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc1 sync eject sdc eject -t sdc mkdir slack mount /dev/sdc1 slack cd slack mkdir sl cd sl
If you don't have Slackware installation files, Get Slackware Arm first.
mkdir slackware14.1
cd slackware14.1
(cd /path..to../slackware14.1 ; tar cfz - *) | (tar xfz - )
initrd-kirkwood.cpio contains the setup program, but since I couldn't boot with custom initrd, sdc1 /sl area is prepared to have the installation files.
cpio -id < initrd-kirkwood.cpio sync umount slack Now that the sd card is ready for installation: eject sdc
and plug it into the device. Once that is done,
chroot to installer:
Now plug the card in tablet pc, boot, from host computer,
adb shell su cd /data/local/tmp mkdir slackware mount /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 slackware cd slackware/sl export PATH=/data/local/tmp/bin:$PATH mountpoint proc || mount -t proc none proc/ mountpoint sys || mount -t sysfs sys sys/ mountpoint dev || mount -o bind /dev dev/ export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/lib/setup:$PATH pushd /dev ln -s /dev/block/mmc1blk* . popd chroot . /bin/bash mount -t ext4 /dev/mmcblk1p1 mnt
Running setup
Install Slackware onto mmcblk1p1, from pre mounted directory, sdc1 : /slackware14.1/slackware
setup Proceed and select /dev/mmcblk1p1 as target, no format For source, select pre mounted directory option, /slackware14.1/slackware
Complete installation, and configuration
Once the complete installation is done,
umount proc umount sys umount dev sync cd ../.. umount slackware
Getting into installed Slackware:
mount /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 slackware
cd slackware
mountpoint proc || mount -t proc none proc/
mountpoint sys || mount -t sysfs sys sys/
mountpoint dev || mount -o bind /dev dev/
export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/lib/setup:$PATH
chroot . /bin/bash
From here you can do "normal" Slackware activities, sort of. Main things that were lacking in my case were VTs (ttys). Compiling programs and running programs that require no X windows worked fine. I ran couple of frame buffer tests too.
Testing the framebuffer
For these tests, I stopped android "SurfaceFlinger" and freed up /dev/graphics/fb0. by running "stop" command. Before running stop, make sure that the display is on ( not blank ). For these tests, I had two terminals up on the host PC with one of them running just adb shell with su, and other running chrooted slackware shell. SurfaceFlinger was stopped from su shell, and tests from Slackware shell. Please not Slackware shell is also running as user root.
adb shell su stop
Now the display goes blank, with backlight on.
Get one of these tests. fbtest or Paint-pixels-to-screen- via-linux-framebuffer or qtopiacore-testingframebuffer All these tests worked on the Tablet. Transfer the tests to tablet using adb push command.
from Slackware shell, running under adb shell:
gcc fbtest.c ./a.out
once done, go back to android su shell from adb, and:
start
After few seconds android display will be back on.
Failed test of running an Xorg session
Getting Mali driver for Xorg
All these compilations are done under the chrooted Slackware environment on the Tablet PC, using gcc
gcc version 4.8.2 (GCC) ( arm-slackware-linux-gnueabi-gcc )
Open Source Mali-200/300/400/450 GPU Kernel Dev Open Source Mali GPUs Linux EXA/DRI2 and X11 Display Drivers
Get DX910-SW-99003-r4p1-01rel0 or choose another version
Once downloaded, and adb pushed to tablet:
tar xf DX910-SW-99003-r4p1-01rel0.tgz cd DX910-SW-99003-r4p1-01rel0/x11/xf86-video-mali-0.0.1 ./autogen.sh in src/Makefile: # mali_drv_la_LDFLAGS = -module -avoid-version -L$(MALI_DDK)/lib -lMali -lUMP -lpthread for now. mali_drv_la_LDFLAGS = -module -avoid-version -L$(MALI_DDK)/lib -lUMP -lpthread
also get ump
make and install
Once make/install is done for both,
cp src/.libs/mali_drv.* /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/ ldconfig
Run Xorg
And run startx, which fails with the following error.
[ 9131.458] (II) LoadModule: "mali" [ 9131.461] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/mali_drv.so [ 9131.461] (II) Module mali: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 9131.462] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 0.4.2 [ 9131.462] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 9131.462] (II) MALI: driver for Mali Framebuffer: mali [ 9131.462] (EE) Fatal server error: [ 9131.462] (EE) xf86OpenConsole: Cannot open /dev/tty0 (No such file or direct ory) [ 9131.463] (EE) [ 9131.463] (EE)
Compiling and getting Xfbdev running! - Partially
Finally I found that the X VT requirement can be removed. In the first test, No keyboard and mouse, but startx opens a nice fluxbox window. I can set DISPLAY=:0, and run xterm and other applications from adb shell onto the X windows running on LCD. Here is what I did:
Procedure:
Get xorg-server-1.12.2 and required files from : http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/X11R7.7/
Apply patch to hw/kdrive/linux/linux.c ( As first step, basically make most of the functions just empty, so that no tty open etc are done.) Refer to the patch at the end.
configure:
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/local/sw/share/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/local/sw/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/sw/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH export PATH=/opt/local/sw/bin:$PATH # autoreconf --force -v --install || exit 1 ./configure --prefix=/opt/local/sw --enable-kdrive --enable-kdrive-evdev --disab le-aiglx --disable-glx --disable-dri --disable-dri2 --disable-libdrm --disable-r ecord --with-xkb-path=/opt/local/sw/share/X11/xkb --with-xkb-output=/var/lib/xkb --with-xkb-bin-directory=/opt/local/sw/bin --with-default-xkb-rules=xorg --with -default-xkb-model=pc104 --with-default-xkb-layout=us --disable-xorg --enable-x nest --disable-dmx --disable-xquartz --disable-xwin --disable-xephyr --enable-co nfig-udev --enable-tslib LDFLAGS=-L/opt/local/sw/lib CFLAGS=-I/opt/local/sw/incl ude make -j 3 make install
Also install xkeyboard-config-2.11.
Once it is installed:
cd /opt/local/sw/share/X11/xkb/rules/
ln -s base /opt/local/sw/share/X11/xkb/rules/base xorg
If this is not done, you will get error:
XKB: Failed to compile keymap
Once installed, run X:
Makesure the display is on.
Stop Surfaceflinger from adb shell ( as root ):
stop
If "stop" step is not done, X will show up, but as soon as the screen is touched,
it will disappear.
From Slackware shell ( as root ), run:
startx -- /opt/local/sw/bin/Xfbdev -fb /dev/graphics/fb0
Once done, restart Surfaceflinger from adb shell ( as root ):
start
See the frame grab with scrot
x.png x2.png
/hw/kdrive/linux/linux.c patch:
--- linux.c.org 2012-05-17 22:39:03.000000000 +0530
+++ linux.c 2014-09-03 08:29:11.000000000 +0530
@@ -65,6 +65,7 @@
static void
LinuxCheckChown(char *file)
{
+#ifdef GV
struct stat st;
__uid_t u;
__gid_t g;
@@ -75,11 +76,13 @@
g = getgid();
if (st.st_uid != u || st.st_gid != g)
chown(file, u, g);
+#endif
}
static int
LinuxInit(void)
{
+#ifdef GV
int fd = -1;
char vtname[11];
struct vt_stat vts;
@@ -127,13 +130,14 @@
if (ioctl(LinuxConsoleFd, VT_GETSTATE, &vts) == 0) {
activeVT = vts.v_active;
}
-
+#endif
return 1;
}
static void
LinuxSetSwitchMode(int mode)
{
+#ifdef GV
struct sigaction act;
struct vt_mode VT;
@@ -164,6 +168,7 @@
if (ioctl(LinuxConsoleFd, VT_SETMODE, &VT) < 0) {
FatalError("LinuxInit: VT_SETMODE failed\n");
}
+#endif
}
static void
@@ -176,6 +181,7 @@
static void
LinuxApmWakeup(pointer blockData, int result, pointer pReadmask)
{
+#ifdef GV
fd_set *readmask = (fd_set *) pReadmask;
if (result > 0 && LinuxApmFd >= 0 && FD_ISSET(LinuxApmFd, readmask)) {
@@ -213,6 +219,7 @@
ioctl(LinuxApmFd, cmd, 0);
}
}
+#endif
}
#ifdef FNONBLOCK
@@ -224,6 +231,7 @@
static void
LinuxEnable(void)
{
+#ifdef GV
if (enabled)
return;
if (kdSwitchPending) {
@@ -257,12 +265,14 @@
if (ioctl(LinuxConsoleFd, KDSETMODE, KD_GRAPHICS) < 0) {
FatalError("LinuxInit: KDSETMODE KD_GRAPHICS failed\n");
}
+#endif
enabled = TRUE;
}
static void
LinuxDisable(void)
{
+#ifdef GV
ioctl(LinuxConsoleFd, KDSETMODE, KD_TEXT); /* Back to text mode ... */
if (kdSwitchPending) {
kdSwitchPending = FALSE;
@@ -275,11 +285,13 @@
close(LinuxApmFd);
LinuxApmFd = -1;
}
+#endif
}
static void
LinuxFini(void)
{
+#ifdef GV
struct vt_mode VT;
struct vt_stat vts;
int fd;
@@ -327,6 +339,7 @@
close(fd);
}
return;
+#endif
}
void
@@ -352,9 +365,11 @@
static void
LinuxBell(int volume, int pitch, int duration)
{
+#ifdef GV
if (volume && pitch)
ioctl(LinuxConsoleFd, KDMKTONE, ((1193190 / pitch) & 0xffff) |
(((unsigned long) duration * volume / 50) << 16));
+#endif
}
KdOsFuncs LinuxFuncs = {