Arnova 10 G2 fully rooted firmware development topic (v1.1) - Forum

Latest product reviews
ARCHOS 50 Diamond
ARCHOS GamePad2
ARCHOS Smartphones
ARCHOS TV Connect
ARCHOS 101 XS

A A A

Arnova 10 G2 fully rooted firmware development topic (v1.1)

Page: 1 2 3

finless

Stanton, Ca

Contributor

Forum Posts: 604

Member Since:
2011/12/10

Offline

Thanks Received: 2

2011/12/21 - 23:25

Hi folks! As some of you have possibly been following I had a lot of fun and frustration in getting the Arnova 10 G2 ROM fully rooted. The previous ROM was nice and all but had memory issues, WiFi issues, etc. I think you will like this one. 459mb of system memory! Thats double the stock Arnova FW.

THIS IS ONLY FOR THE ARNOVA 10 G2!!!

WARNING - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! Do not complain to me or the admin of this site of you brick your Arnova! You have been warned!

IN MY OPINION - This is a beta test ROM. SInce I am the only one that has used it thus far it obviously needs testing. I have not noticed any issues with it thus far but I have not done a lot with it yet.

OK so what this firmware is and is not:

1) It is the Arnova STOCK firmware and all that has been done to it is 100% rooted and I added a splash screen to identify it on boot up. I also removed some of the Arnova supplied apps. This includes applib! You can install those back if you like. This is so you have a clean empty system you can build up as you see fit.

2) It has no Market or anything extra on it. Again, I felt this is the best way as people can then put whatever they want on it rather than apps some like and others do not. Since it is fully rooted you should be able to install just about any market you want. However if your new to this I suggest you use Arctools which can be downloaded from this site.

OK feel free to let me know what you think and how it works for you. Later I can add other things and make a more custom ROM. Grab me while you can and while I am still enjoying the hobby of doing this hacking. If anyone wants a custom boot splash screen let me know. I made scripts to make those and can do it easy. Just make your graphic in 1024x600 resolution. Oh and please allow me to put my signature on the graphic if you don't mind.

OK here is the link. I do not know how long I can leave this up as if the server gets pounded I will have to pull it. Hopefully someone can host this. I honeslty prefer a clean host not one of those web sites with pop-ups and timers, etc. God I hate those! Maybe Admin will host it if he likes it.

http://www.helifreakswag.com/arnova10g2_full_root_rom.zip

P.S. Admin, I put something special in this build for you. 🙂

Bob

admin

Forum Posts: 5878

Member Since:
2010/09/11

Offline

Thanks Received: 3168

2011/12/21 - 23:32

Great stuff finless ! Smile

I'll give it a try tonight when I am done with Arctools modifications for a rootless Market install.

If tests with your version are fine and there is positive feedback from other users in this forum, I'll make an article about this firmware.

I have already hosted a copy of your firmware here:

http://www.arctablet.com/assets/firmware/Arnova10G2/arnova10g2_full_root_rom.zip

Thanks again for all your efforts, happy to see you made it.

Keep up the good work.

If you like our web site, applications and firmwares, feel free to support our site. Donations are used to pay the bills for our server hosting costs, development tools and purchase new tablets to support.

finless

Stanton, Ca

Contributor

Forum Posts: 604

Member Since:
2011/12/10

Offline

Thanks Received: 2

2011/12/21 - 23:43

Admin, I seriously was about to give up on trying anymore yesterday. It was not until your post about the parameter file and then p1ceus talking about the T760 ROM that got me to look in another direction. Turned out all my efforts were fine it was just how I was updating the Arnova! I may continue to work on making a update.img but that may be futile until we can understand the RK29's boot.img footer and how to recreate it.

As you know I was a total n00b a week ago 😉 I had to take a crash course in Linux and by no means do I even yet know what the heck I am doing half the time 😉 I had not used unix since about 1984. Then learning the Andorid RK29 architecture was also a huge learning experience by trial and error as I have never had an Android device before. I started from scratch with no knowledge. Now I think I am at the dangerous level 😉 I would say it was fun but I was about ready to toss in the towel there for a minute 🙂

Anyway please let me know how it goes for you.

Bob

finless

Stanton, Ca

Contributor

Forum Posts: 604

Member Since:
2011/12/10

Offline

Thanks Received: 2

2011/12/21 - 23:59

By the way.... Credits and props to some people and groups that for sure helped me.

Wendal and his tools, experience, and documenting his approaches. His posts about rooting other RK29 tablets etc was HUGELY helpful. Thank you Wendal!

Information on the web by many contributors! While this information is spread out all over the place and is hard to sift through, it gave a wealth of information for those that take the time to read for days 😉 Specifically:

XDA-developers.com

Slatedroid.com

One guy on slatedroid I have to thank is Aiah. He gave some code examples of how to unpack boot.img and repack it. Due to the RK29's new img format this was essential in doing the mods needed to make /system writeable.

And thanks to many other that helped along the way!

Bob

daft

Contributor

Forum Posts: 64

Member Since:
2011/11/22

Offline

2011/12/22 - 00:34

Thanks. I wonder if it provides a benefit of running faster or booting faster because you wouldn't have to push apps to sdcard. In fact maybe you could force apps that want to go there back to system memory.

From looking at the code, are there any other enhancements that look easy for somebody to work on? I guess we have a workaround for the missing lock screen, but maybe there is some other low hanging fruit?

finless

Stanton, Ca

Contributor

Forum Posts: 604

Member Since:
2011/12/10

Offline

Thanks Received: 2

2011/12/22 - 00:57

Yes I am going to start playing more and more I think. I would like to see accounts and contacts working as well as location services over WiFi. In my time pouring through config files I spotted a few things that I took notes to go back and look at later. Also how about overclock? When this tablet first was announced it said 1.5ghz. So it might be there. I saw some build.prop and other config files while tearing through other roms that showed how to adjust cpu speed. I might play with that some too.

FYI if you want screen lock look at the GO Launcher widget which provides a screen lock.

FYI if you have installed this rom yet, have you noticed after the first boot how quickly it boots after that? WOA baby!

Bob

Jakeup96

Member

Forum Posts: 16

Member Since:
2011/11/27

Offline

2011/12/22 - 01:08

Thanks Bob, I'll try this out as soon as I get a chance. Now if only we had a bootable recovery and could make nandroid backups and flash zipped Roms I'd be 100% satisfied with my G2.

finless

Stanton, Ca

Contributor

Forum Posts: 604

Member Since:
2011/12/10

Offline

Thanks Received: 2

2011/12/22 - 01:16

Actually a few times while messing around I got the recovery menu. I could scroll through the menu using volume up and down but could not select anything. However with the way the RK29 flash tools work I am not sure it is needed? I can flash just say boot.img and change the splash screen or something for instance. So it's pretty damn robust on recovery. FYI if you want to go into recovery mode fast? Just use the RKAndroid tool and flash the loader.bin or boot.img. It will be fast and reboot into recovery mode.

As for backups and what not, hmmmm.... I will have to look at doing that too. Since you are fully rooted now it's possible I think. You can use the tools but they are a pain. Maybe a scripted tool. Stuff I am interested in for sure so maybe later I will look at this.

Bob

Jakeup96

Member

Forum Posts: 16

Member Since:
2011/11/27

Offline

2011/12/22 - 01:16

In order to overclock wouldn't we need a custom kernel? Granted I'm no dev but i've never had a device where the stock kernel could be overcooked. Also, my tablet gets mighty hot playing Angry Birds or Shadow Gun, think overclocking is safe?

finless said

Yes I am going to start playing more and more I think. I would like to see accounts and contacts working as well as location services over WiFi. In my time pouring through config files I spotted a few things that I took notes to go back and look at later. Also how about overclock? When this tablet first was announced it said 1.5ghz. So it might be there. I saw some build.prop and other config files while tearing through other roms that showed how to adjust cpu speed. I might play with that some too.

FYI if you want screen lock look at the GO Launcher widget which provides a screen lock.

FYI if you have installed this rom yet, have you noticed after the first boot how quickly it boots after that? WOA baby!

Bob

finless

Stanton, Ca

Contributor

Forum Posts: 604

Member Since:
2011/12/10

Offline

Thanks Received: 2

2011/12/22 - 01:28

OMG is this thing faster! I am now installing stuff and messing around. It is CLEAR that an ext3 file system vs cramfs is clearly faster! Maybe having some extra memory for the system helps too. All I got to say is Holy moly!

Bob

dwl99

Active Member

Forum Posts: 29

Member Since:
2011/12/20

Offline

2011/12/22 - 08:07

Would it be possible to flash contacts.apk, calendar.apk and calendarprovider.apk using this approach? The lack of these apps is a bit of a pain. Trying to install them from system/app just results in a parsing error.

MBJ

Member

Forum Posts: 14

Member Since:
2011/12/21

Offline

2011/12/22 - 16:39

What a coincidence. I was going to start asking about improving boot times.

2 questions:

1) Is there a written procedure for installing this?

2) Is there a recommended backup procedure for my current setup? It is finally working the way I want for now, but I'd love a faster bootup. This is essentially my wife's new Nook reader, but I don't think she's going to like having to wait so long every time she wants to read, so I'd really like to give this a try.

finless

Stanton, Ca

Contributor

Forum Posts: 604

Member Since:
2011/12/10

Offline

Thanks Received: 2

2011/12/22 - 16:48

I typed up the install instructions. They are in the zip file and are called README FIRST.txt

Bob

daft

Contributor

Forum Posts: 64

Member Since:
2011/11/22

Offline

2011/12/22 - 17:42

MBJ said

I don't think she's going to like having to wait so long every time she wants to read, so I'd really like to give this a try.

Just leave it eternally in sleep mode. I reboot maybe twice a week. Sometimes use a wifi widget to flip that off during sleep.

MBJ

Member

Forum Posts: 14

Member Since:
2011/12/21

Offline

2011/12/22 - 19:49

If it comes down to that, I guess I'll have to. Nonetheless, I'd like a faster boot-up and more app space. Folks are beta-testing finless's new firmware right now, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Page: 1 2 3