DeprecatedPorting

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All the Android code can be downloaded from the `phablet-dev-bootstrap` tool provided by the `phablet-tools` package installed in the previous step: You can check out the source code using the repo and git tools already familiar to Android ROM developers, as
described here

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/AndroidDevel

Alternately, all the Android code can be downloaded using the `phablet-dev-bootstrap` tool provided by the `phablet-tools` package installed in the previous step. This tool is a Python wrapper around repo and used to also check out bzr repositories before all code was managed by repo and git. For the purposes of getting the source code for development it is no longer needed.
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Warning /!\ Ubuntu Touch is no longer maintained as a core product by Canonical. However, the Ubports community are continuing development.

Work in Progress

Attention: this tutorial is still a work in progress, as we keep changing and adding more requirements for the 13.10 release. For any question or issue, please get in contact via #ubuntu-touch.

TODO

Android:

  • Describe how to customize the boot.img, to be compatible with the partition table of the ported device

Ubuntu:

  • How to contribute/add the device specific udev rules to the lxc-android-config package

Porting Notes

Please add your notes here.

Troubleshooting (janimo)

  • The device is in a bootloop or hangs on boot not showing up with adb shell: boot into recovery mode and adb pull /proc/last_kmsg to check the previous dmesg. Do not power off the device between the hang and booting into recovery as that likely leads to losing the ramconsole contents . Make sure you have proper permissions in the ramdisk and /init can start. Make sure you have a valid console=... argument on the kernel command line.
  • The device boots but no graphics shell shows up: Debug via adb shell. You can look in /var/log/syslog for general system logs in ubuntu, /home/phablet/.cache/upstart/ for user session logs and run /system/bin/logcat -d to dump the Android logs. Reasons for unity not starting:
    • sensormanager has not started in Android (many Waiting for sensormanager... messages in logcat). Start it manually by running android-chroot and inside that Android shell run sensormanager. This is the symptom of an elusive bug that needs fixing.
    • EGL errors in the logs, likely the permissions on the GPU related device nodes are not allowing regular user access (see below for udev rules setup)

w-flo's Notes

These are random notes that I have sent to the mailing list about my experiences with porting flipped Ubuntu Touch to the Desire Z. Someone who is better at writing could probably incorporate them into the guide at the correct place. They might be useful while the porting guide is being updated.

  • There are apparently two different approaches for mounting the flipped images, and it seems like my port uses the old-style approach.
  • The android_build repository on phablet.ubuntu.com has all the required changes to create the android zip file. It downloads files for a generic initramfs and puts them in "out/target/product/devicename/ubuntu-root". I think that changes to those files are not automatically put back into the ramdisk. (I've added an additional step to repack the ramdisk after changing the ubuntu-root/ dir contents.) That ramdisk is then used to create boot.img instead of the cyanogenmod ramdisk (which is used for android-boot.img).
  • The "scripts/touch" file in the ramdisk needs to figure out the data partititon's device file name (like /dev/foo). It might fail for your device and cause the boot process to fail. I've hard-coded the device path for the Desire Z for now, maybe we can set this in the device config at build time later.
  • If the initramfs script has problems finding the data partition, then /usr/lib/lxc-android-config/update-fstab could have problems too.
  • /etc/init/lxc-android-boot.conf might be interesting as well.
  • The Ubuntu rootfs needs a udev rules file for your device. Check the /usr/lib/lxc-android-config/70-*.rules files as an example. You can create that file by looking at the ueventd*.rc files for your device from canogenmod and transforming the /dev/ settings to udev syntax.

You can create that file by invoking the following command while Ubuntu Touch is booted

adb shell cat /var/lib/lxc/android/rootfs/ueventd*.rc|grep ^/dev|sed -e 's/^\/dev\///'|awk '{printf "ACTION==\"add\", KERNEL==\"%s\", OWNER=\"%s\", GROUP=\"%s\", MODE=\"%s\"\n",$1,$3,$4,$2}' | sed -e 's/\r//'

Not all device node permissions may be covered by this. In particular if you have no graphics coming up and get EGL related errors in logcat, make sure you add a line allowing non-root rw access to the GPU device node. For OMAP/SGX devices the line is something like

ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="pvrsrvkm", OWNER="root", GROUP="root", MODE="0666"
  • There are some requirements for the kernel config. For example, I had boot failures before I enabled CONFIG_VT=y and CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y.
  • It's a good idea to check output of dmesg and /system/bin/logcat, and the contents of various log files in /var/log/upstart if there are problems.

Touch Developer Preview - Porting Guide 2.0

We want to port Ubuntu Touch to all kinds of devices. If you have experience in porting code to Android devices or are generally knowledgeable in terms of porting, working with the Kernel and other core bits and pieces of a distribution, this might be interesting to you.

Check out the list of devices to see what's currently being worked on.

Disclaimer

"Touch Developer Preview for Ubuntu" is released for free non-commercial use. It is provided without warranty, even the implied warranty of merchantability, satisfaction or fitness for a particular use. See the licence included with each program for details.

Some licences may grant additional rights; this notice shall not limit your rights under each program's licence. Licences for each program are available in the usr/share/doc directory. Source code for Ubuntu can be downloaded from archive.ubuntu.com. Ubuntu, the Ubuntu logo and Canonical are registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

"Touch Preview for Ubuntu" is released for limited use due to the inclusion of binary hardware support files. The original components and licenses can be found at:

https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/drivers

Differences with the Porting Guide 1.0

In the original porting guide, we had Android as the main OS, having Ubuntu separated in a container. We had that as our first solution as it's easier to just boot Android and bootstrap Ubuntu once Android is up and running (which was a base requirement for Touch). This architecture was traditionally called 'unflipped', and it's part of the raring and first saucy images we produced.

As we continued developing the platform, more issues we found with such architecture, making it harder to improve the quality for the Ubuntu side (ueventd x udev, full control of the services, upgradability of the compat layer, etc). So to be able to further improve the Touch images, we decided to flip the systems, making Ubuntu as the main host, and separating Android in a container, getting us to what we call 'flipped' images.

This is the main change for the Porting Guide 2.0, and at the following topics you'll learn everything that's needed to port Ubuntu Touch to what we call 'flipped'-like images.

General

To rapidly support a wide range of devices, our architecture reuses some of the drivers and hardware enablement available for Android.

As a consequence, at the current images you'll find some of the Android services running at the device, separated in a lxc container, providing all the basic services needed for Ubuntu to run fully accelerated (media, graphics, modem, etc).

For quick reference, these are the current components used from Android:

  • Linux Kernel (stock Android kernel provided by the vendor, with a few changes to support some extra features needed by Ubuntu, such as Apparmor)
  • OpenGL ES2.0 HAL and drivers
  • Media (stagefright) HAL, to re-use the hardware video decoders
  • RILD for modem support

As Ubuntu is running as the main host on top of an Android kernel and the communication between the Android services and HAL happens via Binder, Sockets and libhybris.

Other than the very basic services (needed to re-use the binary blobs already available), the rest is just pure Ubuntu goodness Smile :-)

Building the Ubuntu packages

We expect the Ubuntu Touch packages won't need changes for new devices; the usual processes for contributing to Ubuntu apply, such as the SponsorshipProcess.

Either way, you'll need the Ubuntu preinstalled image besides the one you're going to build with the instructions below. You can find the Ubuntu preinstalled images here.

Building the Android pieces

You can find all the needed Android git repositories at http://phablet.ubuntu.com/gitweb. This is basically a mirror of CyanogenMod 10.1, but containing only the needed low level services used by Android (e.g. no Dalvik at all).

For any Android related project at our git server, you'll find a branch named phablet-saucy. This branch contains a static known git HEAD and the required changes needed for Ubuntu, including our custom Android manifest.

Set up your development environment

To support a wide range of devices, we decided to use CyanogenMod as a base for the Android system. You could safely use AOSP, as we don't use a lot of the customizations and improvements done at the App/Java side, but it's easier with CyanogenMod due the scripts and build procedures available for it.

Everything we take from Android is just C/C++, so you'll notice that your Android build environment will be way smaller than when comparing to the traditional Android builds.

For development you can run any 64-bit Desktop version of Ubuntu between 12.04 LTS and 13.10.

It's not strictly necessary, but it's helpful to install ccache. (http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html#ccache in the general Android Setup guide should help with this.)

Additional packages which are used to build the host tools:

$ sudo apt-get install git gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \
  zip bzr curl libc6-dev libncurses5-dev:i386 x11proto-core-dev \
  libx11-dev:i386 libreadline6-dev:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 \
  libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 ubuntu-dev-tools tofrodos \
  python-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc zlib1g-dev:i386 schedtool bsdiff

Additionally, to build the Android pieces, you will need a Java 6 JDK installed:

$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk

Using the OpenJDK will generate a warning, but the build still will proceed. Attempting to use OpenJDK version 7 will cause the build to fail.

You'll also need to set up the tools PPA. This will also install the repo tool, used to sync the Android repositories. Learn more about the repo tool.

You can check out the source code using the repo and git tools already familiar to Android ROM developers, as described here

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/AndroidDevel

Alternately, all the Android code can be downloaded using the phablet-dev-bootstrap tool provided by the phablet-tools package installed in the previous step. This tool is a Python wrapper around repo and used to also check out bzr repositories before all code was managed by repo and git. For the purposes of getting the source code for development it is no longer needed.

To get the code setup run:

  • phablet-dev-bootstrap [target_directory]

If for some reason the sync ends midway, you can continue the sync with the -c switch, so the command would be:

  • phablet-dev-bootstrap -c [target_directory]

Alternatively, if you are just building an image for an already supported device, you can specify the -v switch:

  • phablet-dev-bootstrap -v [device codenames] [target_directory]

The phablet-dev-bootstrap command will automatically use the repo tool with the Ubuntu Touch Preview custom manifest to download all the git repositories and needed data. Be aware that this step takes a long time and requires at least 15GB (plus 2-3GB for the binary output).

Enabling a new device

As we're using CyanogenMod, we can easily take advantage of all the devices that are officially supported there.

You can find codenames and devices by looking at http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Devices

Automatic

If your device is already supported by CyanogenMod, you can use the same repositories available at github, and get them automatically by calling breakfast, like:

  • breakfast codename

Then breakfast will automatically set up your device specific repos at the local manifest file .repo/local_manifests/roomservice.xml.

Then to download all extra repositories, run the following command from the root directory:

  • repo sync

Manual

From the individual device wiki page, grab the git repositories that are specific to your device, and update your local .repo/local_manifests/roomservice.xml file including them, such as:

Kernel Device specific

As a result you should have something like:

  • kernel/[manufacturer]/[codename]
    device/[manufacturer]/[codename]

Where: [manufacturer] is the manufacturer for codename [codename] is the product's codename.

It is possible that this structure is not followed as is the case for the Galaxy Nexus line from Samsung, where the codename is their base for the Galaxy's tuna.

Also, depending on the device, other dependencies might be required in addition to device and kernel specific directories. Be sure to check the file cm.dependencies available on your CM device specific repository (e.g. https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_device_samsung_p3110/blob/cm-10.1/cm.dependencies), and include them all in your local manifest. As we’re using CyanogenMod branches on github, we should specify for each entry remote="github" and revision="refs/heads/cm-10.1".

In the end you should have something similar to the following (for HTC DNA):

  • $ cat .repo/local_manifests/roomservice.xml
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <manifest>
      <project name="CM10DNA/android_device_htc_dlx" path="device/htc/dlx" remote="github" revision="cm-10.1" />
      <project name="CM10DNA/android_kernel_htc_dlx" path="kernel/htc/dlx-3.4" remote="github" revision="cm-10.1" />
      <project name="CM10DNA/android_vendor_htc_dlx" path="vendor/htc/dlx" remote="github" revision="cm-10.1" />
      <project name="CyanogenMod/android_device_htc_msm8960-common" path="device/htc/msm8960-common" remote="github" revision="cm-10.1" />
    </manifest>

Remember that the above is just an example, it might not even reflect the same repos that are available at the gihub project, as that is updated quite frequently.

Then to download all extra repositories, run the following command from the root directory:

  • repo sync

Retrieving the proprietary blobs from Android

Ubuntu Touch Preview uses some pre-compiled binary drivers from the Android layer for rapid enablement of devices. These are referred to as binary or proprietary blobs, as their source code is not available for the build, and are included in binary form.

As we're using CyanogenMod 10.1 as the base for our Android part, the easier way to retrieve working binary blobs (drivers, etc) is by flashing a working CM 10.1 based image. Here is an example of the list of binary blob files included in the image for the `galaxysmtd` device.

Ubuntu Tip: you can alternatively extract these binaries from the image (which is essentially a .zip file containing, amongst others, these binary files), but flashing it first helps as you can see if CM is working properly in the device.

To download CyanogenMod 10.1 go to http://get.cm/.

Once you have your CyanogenMod 10.1 based rom running at your device, run the following command to extract all the needed data:

  • $ cd device/[manufacturer]/[codename]
    $ ./extract-files.sh

This command should copy the needed files to vendor/[manufacturer]/[codename].

Device changes

Audio

You need to write UCM mixer files and UCM is lacking good documentation, but it's the closest we have to a standard for setting up mixers on embedded devices right now.

To get a two-minute crash course in UCM and how it's used in Ubuntu Touch - start by having a look in /usr/share/alsa/ucm/apq8064-tabla-snd-card/ directory (shipped with alsa-lib). You'll need to create a similar directory for your device. You'll find the right directory name if you look in /proc/asound/cards.

Second, look at apq8064-tabla-snd-card.conf. Rename and copy into your own UCM directory. If you're making a tablet image (that can't make voice calls), you can remove the VoiceCall part (and the corresponding file).

Third, look at the HiFi file. This is where all fun happens. Notice the device names, which are hardcoded into telepathy-ofono and need to match: "Speaker", "Earpiece" and "Headphone" for playback, plus "Handset" and "Headset" for recording.

Fourth, if you need voice calls, also look at the VoiceCall file. Btw, the verb names "HiFi" and "VoiceCall" also need to match.) This is largely empty, because the mixer setup is handled by the Audio HAL, but there is a twist here that took a while to get right: For PulseAudio's UCM to work, it needs to open a PCM device. However, at the time where UCM tests this, the voice call is not yet set up. So, you might need to set up the mixer just a little, so that the PCM can open. (On desktops, PCM can always open, regardless of mixer state. This is not always true on embedded devices, that are using ASoC.) It's a bonus if you can find a PCM that actually plays back audio, because then you can get notification sounds while on the phone.

suid

The default fstab for the new device will have its /data partition mounted with nosuid, which needs to be removed, as certain Ubuntu applications/daemons require the use of setuid. The path to fstab is:

  • device/[manufacturer]/[codename]/fstab.[codename]

If you don’t find any files there, grep for “nosuid”.

Example:

  •    1 device/samsung/p3100$ git diff
       2 diff --git a/fstab.espresso b/fstab.espresso
       3 index 47a3ffc..ddbc9a7 100644
       4 --- a/fstab.espresso
       5 +++ b/fstab.espresso
       6 @@ -6,5 +6,5 @@
       7 
       8  /dev/block/platform/omap/omap_hsmmc.1/by-name/FACTORYFS        /system                 ext4    ro,barrier=1                                                                            wait
       9  /dev/block/platform/omap/omap_hsmmc.1/by-name/EFS              /efs                    ext4    nosuid,nodev,barrier=1                                                                  wait,check
      10 -/dev/block/platform/omap/omap_hsmmc.1/by-name/DATAFS           /data                   ext4    noatime,nosuid,nodev,barrier=1,discard,noauto_da_alloc,journal_async_commit             wait,check,encryptable=footer
      11 +/dev/block/platform/omap/omap_hsmmc.1/by-name/DATAFS           /data                   ext4    noatime,nodev,barrier=1,discard,noauto_da_alloc,journal_async_commit                    wait,check,encryptable=footer
      12  /dev/block/platform/omap/omap_hsmmc.1/by-name/CACHE            /cache                  ext4    noatime,nosuid,nodev,barrier=1,discard,noauto_da_alloc,journal_async_commit             wait,check
    

Kernel

As a requirement from the Ubuntu userspace, we need to add a few extra kernel configs that are usually not enabled by default for Android.

Config

You can find your kernel config at kernel/[manufacturer]/[codename]/arch/arm/configs/ cyanogenmod_[codename]_defconfig. Please double check that it is indeed the default config file name in device/[manufacturer]/[codename]/*.mk (look for the TARGET_KERNEL_CONFIG variable).

Extra configs that need to be added

  • CONFIG_SYSVIPC=y
    CONFIG_NAMESPACES=y
    CONFIG_UTS_NS=y
    CONFIG_IPC_NS=y
    CONFIG_USER_NS=y
    CONFIG_PID_NS=y
    CONFIG_NET_NS=y
    CONFIG_DEVTMPFS=y
    CONFIG_DEVTMPFS_MOUNT=y
    CONFIG_DEVPTS_MULTIPLE_INSTANCES=y
    CONFIG_FSNOTIFY=y
    CONFIG_DNOTIFY=y
    CONFIG_INOTIFY_USER=y
    CONFIG_FANOTIFY=y
    CONFIG_FANOTIFY_ACCESS_PERMISSIONS=y
    CONFIG_SWAP=y
    # CONFIG_ANDROID_PARANOID_NETWORK is not set
    CONFIG_VT=y
    CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y.

Reasons:

  • *_NS to enable support for containers

  • SWAP because we're still using a swap file by default

  • Without paranoid_network disabled, the browser won't work correctly

For debugging while hardware bringup you may also want to enable

CONFIG_PANIC_TIMEOUT=5 CONFIG_ANDROID_RAM_CONSOLE=y

The Ubuntu boot image and initramfs may not work at first so these two help read /proc/last_kmsg in case of a boot loop due to a kernel panic from the recovery image - which should work already, being more or less standard Android based.

Patches

The patch that was needed when Ubuntu was running inside container is no longer needed in the flipped model where Android is in an LXC container.

TODO: Describe the additional kernel patches missing here.

AppArmor

AppArmor is an integral part of Ubuntu Touch and is required to use click packages. Currently you are able to use Ubuntu Touch without enabling AppArmor, but you will not be able to use click packages and the port will not be complete without backporting the AppArmor v3 patchset to older kernels. AppArmor has been backported to the following kernels in the Ubuntu archive already:

Documentation on how to backport the AppArmor v3 patchset to older kernels can be found here.

Once the AppArmor patchset is working, you will likely need to add hardware-specific AppArmor rules for your device. You'll know this is the case if when running an application it shows an AppArmor denial in /var/log/syslog (tail -f /var/log/syslog | grep DENIED is very handy when troubleshooting policy). To make this easier, packages can drop AppArmor snippets into /usr/share/apparmor/hardware/. An entry for graphics hardware will almost certainly be required for click packages to work on the device. As of Ubuntu 13.10, policy consults the following directories:

  • /usr/share/apparmor/hardware/graphics.d: specific graphics hardware access. Used by the templates

  • /usr/share/apparmor/hardware/audio.d: specific audio hardware access. Used by the audio policy group (due to the use of pulseaudio, this may not be needed for your device)

Though any package can ship the policy, it makes sense for lxc-android-config to ship it since it also ships the udev rules. For example, if porting the HTC Desire Z (vision), you might ship the following:

$ cat /usr/share/apparmor/hardware/graphics.d/htc-desire-z-vision
  # HTC Desire Z (vision)
  /dev/kgsl-2d0 rw,
  /dev/genlock rw,
  /sys/devices/system/soc/soc0/id r,

Typically you specify the path to the device followed by 'r' for read access or 'rw' for read and write access. Simple globs and AARE (AppArmor regular expressions) are also possible. See man apparmor.d for details. When developing your policy, be sure to run sudo aa-clickhook -f before running your app to regenerate the policy. Please see DebuggingApparmor for more information on how to debug AppArmor policy.

You can test that AppArmor is functioning correctly by:

  • viewing the output of the aa-status command

  • manually installing a click app doesn't show any AppArmor errors (sudo click install --force-missing-framework --user=$USER ./foo.click)

  • launching the manually installed click application works
  • when running, the click application is confined as seen with aa-status. Eg (be sure there are two entries-- the first is that the profile is loaded and the second shows a particular pid is running under this profile):

    $ sudo aa-status|grep hello-world
       ar.com.beuno.hello-world_hello-world_0.1
       ar.com.beuno.hello-world_hello-world_0.1 (24622)
  • install/launch hello-world from the Ubuntu appstore and launch it via 'Installed applications'. It should run and aa-status should show it is confined

  • launch the twitter webapp via 'Installed applications' (preinstalled on the device, otherwise get from the Ubuntu appstore). It should run and aa-status should show it is confined

While porting, it might be useful to disable AppArmor:

  • system-wide: boot with apparmor=0
  • click: adjust the desktop file for the click package in ~/.local/share/applications/<click>.desktop to not use aa-exec and/or adjust /usr/share/upstart/sessions/application-click.conf to not use 'apparmor switch'

IMPORTANT: disabling AppArmor for click packages in this manner means that you are disabling important security protections and allowing untrusted, unreviewed arbitrary code to run on your system. While this may be fine while developing the port, it is not enough to finish the port.

Build changes

main.mk

The main build file needs to be checked if updates are required to it to support new drivers or parts of the build not used before, it's path is: build/core/main.mk

The part of interest are the subdirs included in the build and if special treatment for devices need to be made, i.e.; make sure the new vendor subdirs are added.

This will eventually not be needed.

Brightness indicator

Due to the incorrect default permission at the sys brightness file, a change is needed to allow any user to change the display brightness. We need to chmod it to the proper permissions.

You can usually find the permission settings needed at the device init file, which is usually available under device/[manufacturer]/[codename]/init.[codename].rc.

The changes should look like the following:

  •    1 device/samsung/p3100$ git diff
       2 diff --git a/init.espresso.rc b/init.espresso.rc
       3 index cae5772..4e7df71 100755
       4 --- a/init.espresso.rc
       5 +++ b/init.espresso.rc
       6 @@ -224,6 +224,7 @@ on post-fs-data
       7 
       8  #Change permission for backlight and lcd
       9         chown system system /sys/class/backlight/panel/brightness
      10 +       chmod 0666 /sys/class/backlight/panel/brightness
      11         chown system radio /sys/class/lcd/panel/lcd_type
      12         chown system radio /sys/class/lcd/panel/lcd_power
    

The image

Building the image

Example for the mako target.

  • . build/envsetup.sh
    brunch mako

Sourcing the envsetup.sh file adds brunch and other functions useful when working with the Android source tree and building from scratch. See http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Envsetup_help

Calling brunch with no arguments will present a list of valid target names and you can pick one. That list prefixes each target with cm_ that is unnecessary when specifying it on the command line.

At the end of the build process a zip file will be generated in out/target/product/<codename>, that you can deploy to the phone through recovery.

  • adb push out/target/product/<codename>/*.zip /sdcard/autodeploy.zip
    adb reboot recovery

Debugging

Initrd

If you encounter initrd issues while booting you can add to your kernel boot arguments the following line "break=top" or replace "top" with another of the stages below.

 top
modules
premount
mount
mountroot
bottom

This will open a adb shell and pause execution of the initrd so you can look around. Unlike break normal behavior on dekstop you cannot resume execution by exiting the adb shell.

Also you can add the  debug  word to the kernel boot argument this will save a log in /run/ with the progress of the initrd booting.

Working in the environment

Networking

The simplest solution given that you have a UI available is to use the networking indicator on the device. The network indicator currently supports basic Wi-Fi connections only ( eg. No security, WEP, WPA Personal ).

An alternate means of configuring networking is via the phablet-network-setup tool which is part of the phablet-tools package. This script can be used to copy an active Network Manager system settings file from an Ubuntu Desktop ( >= 12.04 LTS ) to the device. It also has some extra options which cause the tool to install network-related packages such as iw and openssh-server.

Copying files to the phone

Prerequisites:

This is required if you are not working from the Android source tree, as fastboot and adb should be built as part of system build for the host part, they should be in your path and located here:

  • out/host/linux-x86/bin/

If not installing a personal build, make sure you have ppa:phablet-team added, if not

  • add-apt-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools

Then make sure to install adb and fastboot. You can do so by installing the following packages:

  • apt-get install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

To get packages to your phone's chroot execute the following from your desktop:

  • adb root
    adb push [filename|directory name] [ubuntu path]

Then to access these files on the phone follow the shell section below

Screen Pixel Ratio

We have 2 important variables that define the pixel ratio behaviour of the system and the applications, ie. how they visually scale. Look at /usr/bin/ubuntu-session for GRID_UNIT_PX and QTWEBKIT_DPR.

When adding the correct pixel ratio for a new port, first use the method below to calculate the desired DPR, and create a device specific config file which ubuntu-session can load at run time.

The number of pixels per grid unit (GRID_UNIT_PX) is specific to each device. Its goal is to make the user interface of the system and the applications of the same perceived size regardless of the device they are displayed on. It is primarily dependent on the pixel density of the device’s screen and the distance to the screen the user is at. That second value cannot be automatically detected and is based on heuristics. We assume that tablets and laptops are the same distance and that they are held at 1.235 times the distance phones tend to be held at.

A reference device has been chosen from which we derive the pixels per grid unit for all other devices. The reference device is a laptop with a 120 ppi screen and the pixels per grid unit is set to 8 px/gu.

Device

Form Factor

Resolution

Density

Pixels / grid unit

‘Normal’ Density Laptops

Desktop

*

96-150

8 px/gu

‘High’ Density Laptops

Desktop

*

150-250

16 px/gu

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Phone

1280x720

316 ppi

18 px/gu

LG Nexus 4

Phone

1280x768

320 ppi

18 px/gu

Samsung Nexus 10

Tablet

2560×1600

299 ppi

20 px/gu

Asus Nexus 7

Tablet

1280x800

216 ppi

12 px/gu

Asus Transformer

Tablet

1280x800

149 ppi

10 px/gu

There is no way for the system to dynamically identify the correct pixel ratio for the device, which as a side effect things might be bigger/smaller than expected. For each device you will have to visually verify the quality of the result and adjust the number if necessary. If unsure, send screenshots and screen specifications of the device to the Canonical design team.

To create your device specific configuration, first identify the ro.product.device android property used by your device (check the /system/build.prop file from your port or from the original Android image). Then with the desired DPR, create a file at /etc/ubuntu-session.d adding your custom GRID_UNIT_PX and QTWEBKIT_DPR variables, also specifying the default form factor you want, such as:

$ cat /etc/ubuntu-session.d/manta.conf
GRID_UNIT_PX=20
QTWEBKIT_DPR=2.5
FORM_FACTOR="tablet"

Shell

To obtain a chroot shell run these command from your desktop

adb root
adb shell
ubuntu_chroot shell

If you see a prompt that looks like this you are successfully connected to the phone's chroot shell.

root@localhost:/#

Files that were copied into /data/ubuntu above will show up in this root level directory. Packages can be installed using dpkg -i, or apt-get install.

SSH

Although this shell can be used to access the Ubuntu file system in the chroot, for any serious debugging it’s advised that you install openssh-server and use an ssh client to access the container. This is due to the fact that the Ubuntu container uses its own PID namespace.

Learn how to connect over SSH >

You can use adb port forwarding to easily connect to the container via SSH over USB. To do so, run the following commands:

  • adb forward tcp:8888 tcp:22
    ssh phablet@localhost -p 8888

phablet User Session

In order work with applications in the user session, it's necessary to run su - phablet after entering the chroot.

Shutdown of phone

Currently the power button does not work with recent kernels, so one of the following options must be run:

  • remove the battery and replace it
  • run "reboot -p" from the adb shell
    adb root
    adb shell reboot -p

Ubuntu pieces

The Ubuntu container is put together using Ubuntu packages, which either come from the official Ubuntu archive or a personal package archive (PPA). The Ubuntu Development guide will tell you more about modifying source packages and submitting them to Ubuntu for inclusion.

If you follow the following articles you should have a better idea of how to fix bugs in Ubuntu and which tools to use:

Images are currently built in the Canonical data center and they are based on saucy.

When setting up pbuilder in "Getting Set Up", you might want to use something like this:

pbuilder-dist saucy armhf create

to set up a builder on a foreign (non-armhf) architecture. To build a source package, you would then use something along the lines of:

pbuilder-dist saucy armhf build happyhello_0.1.dsc

This creates a native build chroot using qemu-arm-static; some programs may fail in this environment. It is also possible to cross-build some packages, which is still somewhat experimental but can be used at least for many core packages; see CrossBuilding for details.

The article to fix a bug in Ubuntu and the tutorial also cover how to get a fix sponsored into Ubuntu.

Contributing back

Images can be published on cdimages.ubuntu.com, if they can be built reliably and automatically and all the bits and pieces are redistributable. The images are currently built from an internal Jenkins instance and are manually copied to cdimages.ubuntu.com. In the next few days, we'll be working on moving away from this internal instance and fully automate the build process.

If you have any questions about the images or would like to get images added, ask us on the mailing list.

patches

Anything you patch needs to be signed off and have a patch created for which needs to be submitted to ubuntu-phone@lists.launchpad.net

If it’s directly related to the supported devices it will be accepted after review. Patches are accepted for all components. If a device is enabled it does not mean it will be part of the nightlies.

Patches will be reviewed by Sergio Schvezov and Ricardo Salveti (rsalveti) until the gerrit instance is in place.

Let us know as well in case you'd like a git repository that is part of CM to be available at phablet.ubuntu.com. Currently we just added the minimal needed for the Nexus family, but that might change depending on the device used.

Merge requests

At any point time if you find a bug and have a fix don’t hesitate to create an MR against the specific branch.

The project list lives under the phablet umbrella, looking at the list there you can find your project and review the code and or provide fixes at your discretion

Suggested further reading

Getting in touch

If you got lost somewhere, you found a bug or need some help, we're happy to help you. Ubuntu Touch is put together by a community of many, who are eager to work together on this.

Simply:

Touch/DeprecatedPorting (last edited 2014-11-20 12:57:21 by popey)