This page explains how to customize an image-based update image and contains the status of various hacks needed to make it work (and a path to get them to be non-hacks).

Installation

The Customized images are installed simply by passing a channel name to phablet-flash. There are currently 4 supported customization channels:

To install, simply plug in a phone and run

phablet-flash ubuntu-system --channel <one-of-the-above-channel-names>

The Customization Tarball

Builds

Making changes to the tarball

Our main branch of customizations lives in:

bzr branch lp:savilerow

After merging a change, a new tarball is automatically generated by jenkins, and can be downloaded here:

Building the tarball locally

Any merges going through are required to be tested, which requires building the tarball manually. To build the tarball, simply cd into the savilerow root and run

tar Jcvf ../custom.tar.xz system/

and then follow the installation instructions for unsigned images.

How Customization Works

This section explains the contents of the customization tarball.

Copying into ~phablet

Any file in /system/custom/home is copied wholesale into /home/<user>. This is done in the initrd. The contents of the tarball should be owned by root:root for this to work.

Files copied

Copying is done only once, and is controlled by the presence of /home/<user>/.customized. If you want it to happen again, then remove that file.

This copying is done by an initrd script called "touch". The code is in lp:initramfs-tools-ubuntu-touch

Hooks in ubuntu-touch-customization-hooks

The ubuntu-touch-customization-hooks package (referred to as the hooks package) is a main Ubuntu package which provides upstart jobs that the customization bundle uses. The code is hosted at lp:ubuntu-touch-customization-hooks.

Jobs

Customizing Settings with dconf

Before reading this section, you should be familiar with dconf databases, keys, and locks

dconf is the most common way to change settings for an Ubuntu image. In order to customize a setting, you will need to change the key file. If you want the setting to be read-only you will need to add a lock file. The layout of these files is as follows:

When the phone boots, dconf update is run to update the customdb, however, because we have to copy the files from dconf_source to the writable folder of dconf, we only do this once. If you want dconf update to run again, then you need to remove /custom/etc/dconf/.updated and reboot. You can also run it manually by following the pre-session.d job that runs dconf update (see below).

Updated dconf keys

schema

key

Info

New default

org.gnome.desktop.background

picture-uri

desktop background

file:///custom/usr/share/backgrounds/EEWallpaper.pbg

com.ubuntu.touch.sound

incoming-call-sound

the ringtone

/custom/usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/t-mobile.ogg

com.ubuntu.touch.sound

incoming-message-sound

SMS notification sound

/custom/usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/t-mobile.ogg

com.canonical.unity.launcher

favorites

launcher icons

['application://dialer-app.desktop', 'application://messaging-app.desktop', 'application://address-book-app.desktop', 'application:///home/phablet/.local/share/applications/webbrowser-app.desktop', 'application://gallery-app.desktop', 'application://camera-app.desktop', 'application://ubuntu-system-settings.desktop']

com.canonical.unity.dash

scopes

scopes shown, and their order

['applications.scope', 'mockmusicmaster.scope', 'home.scope', 'mockvideosmaster.scope']

com.canonical.unity.lenses

disabled-scopes

list of disabled scopes

'recipepuppy.scope'

com.canonical.UserMetrics

theme

usermetrics theme

'custom'

wallpapers/etc

For files that need to be added to the image, it was decided to mirror the ubuntu filesystem layout as much as possible. These files live in /system/custom/usr

Demo infographics

For example infographics, we drop a binary called demometrics into /custom/infographic. Along with this we drop a data.txt file which contains the strings that demometrics needs to use. An upstart job is dropped into /home/phablet/.cache/upstart and that job runs demometrics /custom/infographic/data.txt. A random value between 2 and MAX is selected for each day and each category. The format of the data file is as follows

category:N <something>:No something today:MAX

Testing

Infographic data is stored in /var/lib/usermetrics/usermetrics4.db. If you plan on testing it, you need to remove this file after making changes so that new data is loaded.

Custom Click Apps

The click apps included in the bundle are already preinstalled to /custom/click. That means they don't need to be installed or registered when the tarball is unpacked. To add a click app to the tarball, the easiest way to do so is to the following:

adb push /home/phablet/whatever.click
adb shell
cd /home/phablet
click install --root=/custom/click --all-users --force-missing-framework <click-name>.click
click register --all-users <click-name> <click-version>
tar zcvf custom-click.tgz /custom/click
exit
adb pull /home/phablet/custom-click.tgz
tar -C /path/to/savilerow/system/custom zxvf custom-click.tgz

To Do

Touch/Customization (last edited 2014-07-02 18:52:17 by 21-219-114-200)