Running android on Dom U. on ARM Cubieboard2.

Running android on Dom U. on ARM Cubieboard2.

[anshul makkar]

Hi,

I have been able to setup Linux running on Dom 0 and DomU on my ARM
Cubieboard 2.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, my aim is to run 2 simultaneous images of
Android : 1 in Dom 0  and other in Dom U.

When I google ,what I see is the only presentation from Samsung
showing two Android's running simultaneously. But no other open source
contribution which can help me to proceed further. for eg.
contributions to paravitualized drivers which will help to run Android
on Dom U.

On CubieBoard2 I have a stock Android which I am able to run in Dom 0.
Now I want to understand, is it possible to run unmodified Android on
Dom U (full virtualization) or it will require patching
(par-virtualization). Is there any links or resources in this
direction, which I may be missing.

Also found this line in one of the Stefano's presentation :" Android
is based on the Linux kernel ○ Jelly Bean uses Linux 3.4, when it
updates to 3.7 will get Xen on ARM support out of the box . So it
means, I should not need much of an effort to use/port Android on Dom
U (no new drivers will be needed for PV drivers for network, block,
console, etc.)
. Is my understanding right here ?

Sorry for this basic question, but just want to understand whether
from this point I am on my own or still there are some resources which
I may be missing which can help me to progress further. Want to
utilize in best possible manner whatever is already available and then
contribute from there on.

-- 
Thanks
Anshul Makkar
www.justkernel.com
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Just-Kernel-3033180

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Re: Running android on Dom U. on ARM Cubieboard2.

[anshul makkar]

Android is basically a GUI/middle layer over and above Linux kernel
with some additional, android specific, kernel level patches.

Most of the latest androids run on Linux kernel version 3.4 while Xen
support for ARM was made upstream from v 3.7.

So to run Xen on Android, I will need to port android specific changes
to kernel v3.7 or later.

Got the clarity after reading further. Sorry for making noise with my
query which could have been answered with further more exploration.

On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 12:54 PM, anshul makkar <anshulmakkar@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been able to setup Linux running on Dom 0 and DomU on my ARM
> Cubieboard 2.
>
> Now, as I mentioned earlier, my aim is to run 2 simultaneous images of
> Android : 1 in Dom 0  and other in Dom U.
>
> When I google ,what I see is the only presentation from Samsung
> showing two Android's running simultaneously. But no other open source
> contribution which can help me to proceed further. for eg.
> contributions to paravitualized drivers which will help to run Android
> on Dom U.
>
> On CubieBoard2 I have a stock Android which I am able to run in Dom 0.
> Now I want to understand, is it possible to run unmodified Android on
> Dom U (full virtualization) or it will require patching
> (par-virtualization). Is there any links or resources in this
> direction, which I may be missing.
>
> Also found this line in one of the Stefano's presentation :" Android
> is based on the Linux kernel ○ Jelly Bean uses Linux 3.4, when it
> updates to 3.7 will get Xen on ARM support out of the box . So it
> means, I should not need much of an effort to use/port Android on Dom
> U (no new drivers will be needed for PV drivers for network, block,
> console, etc.)
> . Is my understanding right here ?
>
> Sorry for this basic question, but just want to understand whether
> from this point I am on my own or still there are some resources which
> I may be missing which can help me to progress further. Want to
> utilize in best possible manner whatever is already available and then
> contribute from there on.
>
> --
> Thanks
> Anshul Makkar
> www.justkernel.com
> http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Just-Kernel-3033180



-- 
Thanks
Anshul Makkar
www.justkernel.com
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Just-Kernel-3033180

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Re: Running android on Dom U. on ARM Cubieboard2.

[Dario Faggioli]

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On mer, 2014-08-20 at 10:52 +0200, anshul makkar wrote:
> Android is basically a GUI/middle layer over and above Linux kernel
> with some additional, android specific, kernel level patches.
> 
> Most of the latest androids run on Linux kernel version 3.4 while Xen
> support for ARM was made upstream from v 3.7.
> 
> So to run Xen on Android, I will need to port android specific changes
> to kernel v3.7 or later.
>
If your final goal is a SAMSUNG-alike dual android system, I think
you'll run into userspace/toolstack issues also.

In fact, as long as you have Linux as Dom0 and Android as a guest, then
fine: you can build libxc, libxl and xl (or some other toolstack) for
Linux and just use it from your Linux Dom0, as everyone using Xen does.

But if Dom0 has to be Android, the toolstack needs to be built
for/within Android's userspace, which I don't think is something that
has been done before.

Actually, this is something I always wanted to try, but never got the
time to do so. Ian seems (from this message [1]) to at least have
glanced at it also, but probably nothing more than that (Ian?).

During the last Xen Hackathon, I chatted about this with Srinivas, but I
never really followed up. So, Srinivas, here we are: do you have any
help/instructions/pointers that you can share with us? :-)

I know (because you told me yourself) that the toolstack you use in the
dual-android tablet you demoed in Edinburgh and Brussels is *not* the
upstream Xen one (i.e., it's not xl), but probably some indication on
how you build your stuff can help us figure out how to build ours! :-D

Thanks and Regards,
Dario

[1] http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2014-04/msg00268.html

-- 
<<This happens because I choose it to happen!>> (Raistlin Majere)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dario Faggioli, Ph.D, http://about.me/dario.faggioli
Senior Software Engineer, Citrix Systems R&D Ltd., Cambridge (UK)


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Re: Running android on Dom U. on ARM Cubieboard2.

[anshul makkar]

Hi Dario,

Exactly, I am working on SAMSUNG-alike dual android system.

Yeah, thanks for sharing the information. I had not given thoughts
about these problems and was thinking of Android on Dom0 as well as
DomU.

It will be really helpful if Srinivas and Ian can throw some lights on
the questions raised..

Thanks
Anshul Makkar
www.justkernel.com

On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 4:16 PM, Dario Faggioli
<dario.faggioli@citrix.com> wrote:
> On mer, 2014-08-20 at 10:52 +0200, anshul makkar wrote:
>> Android is basically a GUI/middle layer over and above Linux kernel
>> with some additional, android specific, kernel level patches.
>>
>> Most of the latest androids run on Linux kernel version 3.4 while Xen
>> support for ARM was made upstream from v 3.7.
>>
>> So to run Xen on Android, I will need to port android specific changes
>> to kernel v3.7 or later.
>>
> If your final goal is a SAMSUNG-alike dual android system, I think
> you'll run into userspace/toolstack issues also.
>
> In fact, as long as you have Linux as Dom0 and Android as a guest, then
> fine: you can build libxc, libxl and xl (or some other toolstack) for
> Linux and just use it from your Linux Dom0, as everyone using Xen does.
>
> But if Dom0 has to be Android, the toolstack needs to be built
> for/within Android's userspace, which I don't think is something that
> has been done before.
>
> Actually, this is something I always wanted to try, but never got the
> time to do so. Ian seems (from this message [1]) to at least have
> glanced at it also, but probably nothing more than that (Ian?).
>
> During the last Xen Hackathon, I chatted about this with Srinivas, but I
> never really followed up. So, Srinivas, here we are: do you have any
> help/instructions/pointers that you can share with us? :-)
>
> I know (because you told me yourself) that the toolstack you use in the
> dual-android tablet you demoed in Edinburgh and Brussels is *not* the
> upstream Xen one (i.e., it's not xl), but probably some indication on
> how you build your stuff can help us figure out how to build ours! :-D
>
> Thanks and Regards,
> Dario
>
> [1] http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2014-04/msg00268.html
>
> --
> <<This happens because I choose it to happen!>> (Raistlin Majere)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Dario Faggioli, Ph.D, http://about.me/dario.faggioli
> Senior Software Engineer, Citrix Systems R&D Ltd., Cambridge (UK)
>

Re: Running android on Dom U. on ARM Cubieboard2.

[Ian Campbell]

On Wed, 2014-08-20 at 17:00 +0200, anshul makkar wrote:

Please can you not top post, it makes threads rather hard to follow.

[...]
> > But if Dom0 has to be Android, the toolstack needs to be built
> > for/within Android's userspace, which I don't think is something that
> > has been done before.
> >
> > Actually, this is something I always wanted to try, but never got the
> > time to do so. Ian seems (from this message [1]) to at least have
> > glanced at it also, but probably nothing more than that (Ian?).

I poked at it a bit, but ultimately building C code as part of AOSP
(e.g.to build the Xen tools and their deps) seems to be a massive pain
in the ars^wneck. You effectively need a complete parallel Android.mk
build system.

I messed around for a bit getting libfdt and yajl to build in that
context based on some github repos I found, but that was all, I never
managed to figure out how to even start building something more complex
like the Xen tools without rewriting the build system (there was some
other roadblock tool, but I can't remember what it was)

FWIW my "Android.txt" from my scratch dir is below, no warranty etc. I
expect it is mostly useless as a starting point.

Obviously I'd love it if someone else could figure this stuff out ;-)

Ian.
----

http://gerdmestdagh.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/android-native-library-howto/
https://thenewcircle.com/s/post/1044/remixing_android

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5856383/how-do-i-compile-simple-native-code-using-android-mk
---------------------------------------------------------------------
AOSP
---------------------------------------------------------------------
https://source.android.com/

curl http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > bin/repo
export PATH=$(pwd)/bin:$PATH
mkdir working
cd working
repo init -u https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest
repo sync

export USE_CCACHE=1
export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA7=y
export PS1="[aosp] $PS1"

lunch aosp_arm-eng
nice make -j4 EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA7=y

NEW LIBRARIES:
libfdt
------
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/dtc/dtc.git external/dtc
https://github.com/sonyxperiadev/mkqcdtbootimg/blob/master/libfdt/Android.mk

Android.mk is included automatically by the build system.
LOCAL_PATH:= $(call my-dir)

include $(CLEAR_VARS)
LOCAL_SRC_FILES := \
	libfdt/fdt.c \
	libfdt/fdt_ro.c \
	libfdt/fdt_wip.c \
	libfdt/fdt_sw.c \
	libfdt/fdt_rw.c \
	libfdt/fdt_strerror.c \
	libfdt/fdt_empty_tree.c
LOCAL_C_INCLUDES := $(LOCAL_PATH)/libfdt
LOCAL_COPY_HEADERS := libfdt/fdt.h libfdt/libfdt.h libfdt/libfdt_env.h
LOCAL_MODULE := libfdt

include $(BUILD_SHARED_LIBRARY)

List libfdt in build/target/product/runtime_common.mk

libyajl
-------
http://lloyd.github.io/yajl/
https://github.com/stubma/WiEngine/blob/master/jni/yajl/Android.mk

git clone git://github.com/lloyd/yajl external/yajl

---------------------------------------------------------------------
NDK
---------------------------------------------------------------------
https://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

wget http://dl.google.com/android/ndk/android-ndk-r9d-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
tar xaf android-ndk-r9d-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 

Re: Running android on Dom U. on ARM Cubieboard2.

[Dario Faggioli]

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On mer, 2014-08-20 at 18:26 +0100, Ian Campbell wrote:

> I poked at it a bit, but ultimately building C code as part of AOSP
> (e.g.to build the Xen tools and their deps) seems to be a massive pain
> in the ars^wneck. 
>
Indeed!

> FWIW my "Android.txt" from my scratch dir is below, no warranty etc. I
> expect it is mostly useless as a starting point.
> 
Thanks for this!

> Obviously I'd love it if someone else could figure this stuff out ;-)
>
Me too. That is why I copied Srinivas, as, as I said, I'm quite sure
they have experience of building at least "a" (not xl, though) Xen
toolstack inside Android. :-)

I've also asked a friend of mine, which is the hell of an Android
expert. Let's see if he'd like to chime in...

Regards,
Dario

-- 
<<This happens because I choose it to happen!>> (Raistlin Majere)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dario Faggioli, Ph.D, http://about.me/dario.faggioli
Senior Software Engineer, Citrix Systems R&D Ltd., Cambridge (UK)


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