Paul's Superboot(Root) mod + (Smaller Font & Bigger Screen) + HOWTO Repack

[Guest AcerDroid]

Sorry for the english but this is really helpful!!

I've repacked Paul's superboot cuz I think it maybe useful to others. This is Paul's image that I just tweaked removing the last line in the /default.prop.

Heres what:

smaller fonts (real desktop scale, ro.sf.lcd_density=160, 120 is too small and stretched)

bigger screens

browse the internet like on desktop (less horizontal scrollbars, no more image stretchings, less zooming)

and more!!

Poorly written apps will suffer small screen bug like ebuddy, dxtop, etc. (i dunno others)

Home app has a bug when you try to switch between workspaces/desktops that will cause it to close, you can try other home like OpenHome or others

Browser, Android Market, GMail, GTalk, and other apps has more space and works really great!!!

if you like smaller keyboard, this is for you

some apps are confirmed to be faster because my setup makes images/icons on UIs to not stretch because the scales is native (desktop scale)

Just download Paul's superboot then overwrite the liquid.superboot.img attached here:

liquid.superboot.zip

I recommend you to do: "fastboot-linux -i 0x0502 boot liquid.superboot.img" to try it then if you want it permanently, run install superboot

Comparison of old Liquid to my new setup

You can see more apps because of smaller fonts

Browsing the Market is really cool!

The keyboard is smaller but still easy to use for me

Real desktop experience, no more horizontal scrolling, no stretched images, faster scrolling

Portrait keyboard offers bigger screen on your apps

HOW I DID IT

I followed every thing and used perlscripts (unpack-repack) here http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?titl...ack_Boot_Images

I also used behnaam's mkbootimg http://romraid.com/behnaam/liquid/mkbootimg

Unpack*.pl the superboot image (liquid.superboot.img)

edit what you want on the ramdisk folder

Edit the repack*.pl then append "--base 0x20000000" to mkbootimg

repack.pl the kernel and ramdisk folder

Using Hex editor (bless or ghex) Copy the first 12 bytes from the original liquid.superboot.img and paste it on your new boot image and it should look like "ANDROID!pk!"

Boot it and have fun :)

Now I am expecting Apps on SD or Boot from SD modding here, If you succeed, let me know ;) I want it also!

Also you may look here if you want cheap but durable capacitive stylus like mine http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...e=STRK:MEWNX:IT

I also ordered USB OTG mini to female USB adapter so I can plug my keyboard whenever someone already enabled USB Host mode in Liquid http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...e=STRK:MEWNX:IT

Edited December 31, 2009 by AcerDroid

[Guest goa200]

while it does look nice it screws up so many apps and keyboard apps it just aint worth it tbh.

nice work though

[Guest lucian785]

Nice work! Can you upload a video for a little demo?

[Guest AcerDroid]

ya i am willing to demo the uses however i dont have any device to record one except my liquid so sorry :)

[Guest Ogglord]

It's very easy to test, I just tried it without flashing ofc. It was nice, perhaps too small sometimes but much more screen space. Icon spacing needs to be smaller. And scandinavian keyboard rendered far too small, most native apps worked except youtube player. 50% of the games was played in ~half the screen. And so on, but still nice to test.

edit: nice work btw

Edited December 31, 2009 by Ogglord

[Guest AcerDroid]

It's very easy to test, I just tried it without flashing ofc. It was nice, perhaps too small sometimes but much more screen space. Icon spacing needs to be smaller. And scandinavian keyboard rendered far too small, most native apps worked except youtube player. 50% of the games was played in ~half the screen. And so on, but still nice to test.

edit: nice work btw

thanks :)

[Guest liquid_it]

Now I am expecting Apps on SD or Boot from SD modding here, If you succeed, let me know :) I want it also!

Ok, I started looking how to move apps to sd.

I'm going to share here what I'm doing, maybe someone more skilled will help!

After partitioning the sd with a primary fat partition and another primary ext2 partition (512Mb large), I was able to mount on /data/apps2 (a folder I made) and copy in it all apps from /data/apps, using busybox port for android.

Once checked the copy was successful I put my sd back on the liquid and renamed apps to apps_old (with every single app running crashing ;) B) B) ), renamed apps2 to apps, and mounted again ext2 partition to /data/apps, and..

..everything worked!

Now I'm going to modify init.rc to mount the ext2 partition (with the apps I copied in it) on /data/apps on boot, and create the new boot.img with the modified init.rc..

Any suggestion?

Am I missing anything?

Edited December 31, 2009 by liquid_it

[Guest behnaam]

So my mkbootimg worked? :) Good work!

[Guest liquid_it]

So my mkbootimg worked? :) Good work!

Still didn't made boot.img, there's something wrong in what I did: every app that was autostarted seems to crash when I go back to the old app directory on internal mem. (i.e.: unmounting the sd from app, removing app and renaming app_old back to app)

The only wy I found to fix it is to reinstall those apps, not so bad, but not even the "cleanest" way to hack my phone.. ;)

[Guest AcerDroid]

yup behnaam :) thanx for that, wow liquid_it keep goin ;) i will continue my modding after going back to my pc, i now start feeling my acer liquid desktop functionality. our family is waiting for new year, happy new year to all!!

[Guest AcerDroid]

Still didn't made boot.img, there's something wrong in what I did: every app that was autostarted seems to crash when I go back to the old app directory on internal mem. (i.e.: unmounting the sd from app, removing app and renaming app_old back to app)

The only wy I found to fix it is to reinstall those apps, not so bad, but not even the "cleanest" way to hack my phone.. B)

wow did it work after all? i cant wait to get it working on mine too :) maybe im going to concentrate on how we can boot from sd so porting android 2.1 roms from other devices will be easy. after i discover how to boot from sd, ill post it here and i expect alot from you guys that we can enable multitouch in liquid ;)

[Guest TheNano]

wow did it work after all? i cant wait to get it working on mine too :) maybe im going to concentrate on how we can boot from sd so porting android 2.1 roms from other devices will be easy. after i discover how to boot from sd, ill post it here and i expect alot from you guys that we can enable multitouch in liquid ;)

it should be easy , make a yaffs partition on the sd, use the recovery image we have to unyaffs system.img into that , change the rc_script in one boot.img so it mounts the right disk as system (maybe make other parations for data ... chache etc.) and then it should just work! another approach is chrooting into sd paritions from the rc script. now fastboot boot the image to boot from sd

These are just IDEAS , not testet

[Guest blc]

I apologize for a bit of offtopic, but I have rooted my phone with Paul's superboot. Can I get the same result by adding "ro.sf.lcd_density=160" to build.prop (or perhaps some other .prop)?

[Guest liquid_it]

wow did it work after all? i cant wait to get it working on mine too :) maybe im going to concentrate on how we can boot from sd so porting android 2.1 roms from other devices will be easy. after i discover how to boot from sd, ill post it here and i expect alot from you guys that we can enable multitouch in liquid ;)

Yeah, it worked indeed, I have just to find out which is the problem with those apps: it looks like crash happens only on marke-installed apps.

[Guest AcerDroid]

I apologize for a bit of offtopic, but I have rooted my phone with Paul's superboot. Can I get the same result by adding "ro.sf.lcd_density=160" to build.prop (or perhaps some other .prop)?

nope, that is the first method i tried first, i tried editing several props but no luck, you must do it in /default.prop

wow, im gonna try that thenano and i will post it here

nice liquid_it, but i think i will do boot from sd first and try motorola milestone rom to get the multitouch

Edited December 31, 2009 by AcerDroid

[Guest liquid_it]

nice liquid_it, but i think i will do boot from sd first and try motorola milestone rom to get the multitouch

Great! :)

[Guest behnaam]

Ok guys gonna get drunk tonight and work hungover tomorrow on getting moto droids recovery img on the Liquid. It has some interesting features that could be handy on Liquid.

[Guest AcerDroid]

Ok guys gonna get drunk tonight and work hungover tomorrow on getting moto droids recovery img on the Liquid. It has some interesting features that could be handy on Liquid.

good luck :)

[Guest liquid_it]

Ok guys gonna get drunk tonight

I bet I won't flash your first release.. :) ;) B)

[Guest luthepa1]

Ok this method still does not work for me. :-(

If perform all the same steps as AcerDroid does in his post. But the result for me is that when using fastboot-linux to boot the img with the phone in bootloader mode it still reports invalid boot image.

fastboot-linux -i 0x0502 boot ./newsuperboot.img

comes back with;

downloading 'boot.img'... OKAY

booting... FAILED (remote: invalid boot image)

I performed all the unpacking, editing, repacking, and hex editing under a emulated i386 Ubuntu Karmic 9.1 in VirtualBox. I then copy this back to my host sytem which is Ubuntu Karmic 9.1 64bit and peform the fastboot-linux commands to boot the new image. My host system is what I use to perform all my nand flashing like the original superboot.img for rooting. Never had any probs there. I am also using the base address and modded mkbootimg binary.

Any ideas? I am still interested to know Pauls method for how he made the liquid.superboot.img.

[Guest AcerDroid]

Ok this method still does not work for me. :-(

If perform all the same steps as AcerDroid does in his post. But the result for me is that when using fastboot-linux to boot the img with the phone in bootloader mode it still reports invalid boot image.

fastboot-linux -i 0x0502 boot ./newsuperboot.img

comes back with;

downloading 'boot.img'... OKAY

booting... FAILED (remote: invalid boot image)

I performed all the unpacking, editing, repacking, and hex editing under a emulated i386 Ubuntu Karmic 9.1 in VirtualBox. I then copy this back to my host sytem which is Ubuntu Karmic 9.1 64bit and peform the fastboot-linux commands to boot the new image. My host system is what I use to perform all my nand flashing like the original superboot.img for rooting. Never had any probs there. I am also using the base address and modded mkbootimg binary.

Any ideas? I am still interested to know Pauls method for how he made the liquid.superboot.img.

you forgot to copy the first 12 bytes :) read the instructions again

[Guest luthepa1]

you forgot to copy the first 12 bytes :) read the instructions again

I did copy the first 12 bytes ;) Like I said I followed your first post instructions so my boot.img had this

ANDROID!pk! or 41 4E 44 52 4F 49 44 21 70 6B 21 00

I dont know... I must be making a silly mistake somewhere

[Guest luthepa1]

OK some what SUCCESS!!!

I still can not test a boot.img out (using the boot command) to see how it performs, which I am finding strange. Not sure if anyone knows why? Here is what I execute and get in return;

fastboot-linux -i 0x0502 boot ./newboot.img

downloading 'boot.img'... OKAY

booting... FAILED (remote: invalid boot image)

If I issue the same command on Paul's superboot.img or AcerDroid's image they will boot (without flashing just using boot command).

OK now here is the strange but good news for me. Using the same boot.img I repacked that failed above when issuing the boot command, if I instead flash it to the boot partition it is successful! And reboot the phone and all works and I can see the modifications I made.

fastboot-linux -i 0x0502 flash boot ./newboot.img

sending 'boot' (2338 KB)... OKAY

writing 'boot'... OKAY

fastboot-linux -i 0x0502 reboot = SUCCESS!

Can anyone make sense of this?

[Guest AcerDroid]

hmm that's strange ;) but at least you can now join the repacking party :) i also dunno why that happens to you, im so sorry

[Guest luthepa1]

Well it looks like me not being able to execute the boot option and having to flash my repacked images is perhaps to do with the original boot.img itself (which is the superboot.img). I am going to try now with a nandroid backup image.

I say this because I just downloaded the HTC passion ROM (is this the nexus one rom?) and unpacked its boot.img. I then made some comparison editing along side the superboot.img. I then repacked a new boot.img with the liquid.superboot kernel and the passion ramdisk. Then using this mashed up boot.img that I repacked, I could issues the fastboot-linux -i 0x0502 boot acerpassion.img and it booted!!! This is the first time the boot command has worked for me.

As for the custom boot.img it makes it to the home screen/unlock screen. But when I press any of the navigation buttons (e.g. home, menu, back, search) it crashed back to the blue ANDROID logo and boots back to the lock screen. So this is hopeful but much editing to do. But at least now I have an idea about why I am not able to issue the boot command. :)