Hardware hacking this puppy, input?

[Guest kwenteen]

Just looking at buying a 32gb card to give this a try. I am running Steve's V1.1.1 froyo - so I guess I may have to go back to 2.1 to get this to work...

Does anyone one know whether a boot.img will be made for Steve's build? or would your boot.img possibly work as is? Sadly no experience of creating a boot.img, would anyone who has experience in doing this (Stephen Davidson & others?) create an amended boot.img based on Steves build.

This would be an amazing combination - and substantially better than anything else that is available on the market ;-)

Here's hoping that there will be a boot.img soon ;-)

Bob

Hello, what the boot.img is doing is to prevent automount of /cache and /data, because the system cannot recognize big card/big partition, I haven't exactly understood... but you can easily try the boot.img on 2.2 by yourself, with the original card. If everything works, that means that the .img is compatible with 2.2 ! Don't forget to add the scripts in /system/bin, that will mount manually the two partitions. If it doesn't, you"ll just have to put back your original boot.img on your device... I'd say it's not too risky ! :-)

And at least we'll be fixed on the compatibility between the boot.img from stephen davidson and the 1.1.1 from stephen hyde !

boujou bien !

K.

[Guest boboskins]

Hello, what the boot.img is doing is to prevent automount of /cache and /data, because the system cannot recognize big card/big partition, I haven't exactly understood... but you can easily try the boot.img on 2.2 by yourself, with the original card. If everything works, that means that the .img is compatible with 2.2 ! Don't forget to add the scripts in /system/bin, that will mount manually the two partitions. If it doesn't, you"ll just have to put back your original boot.img on your device... I'd say it's not too risky ! :-)

And at least we'll be fixed on the compatibility between the boot.img from stephen davidson and the 1.1.1 from stephen hyde !

boujou bien !

K.

After a quick IM to DJSteve, I have learned that the froyo build.img is significantly changed from 2.1 so I cannot use the current modded build.img files. However, providing we can find out what the changes are that were made to the 2.1 build.img, it should be fairly simple to include these into the froyo equivalent.

I tried to IM Steve Davidson but no reply as yet. Kwenteen (or anyone else) - do you know what changes where made to the build.img?

Bob

Edited November 1, 2010 by boboskins

[Guest kwenteen]

After a quick IM to DJSteve, I have learned that the froyo build.img is significantly changed from 2.1 so I cannot use the current modded build.img files. However, providing we can find out what the changes are that were made to the 2.1 build.img, it should be fairly simple to include these into the froyo equivalent.

I tried to IM Steve Davidson but no reply as yet. Kwenteen (or anyone else) - do you know what changes where made to the build.img?

Bob

In Theory, more or less... :)

It's all about disabling the autodetect of the internal SDcard, because the soft cannot deal with bigger memory than 2GB cards... (just tried that with the test tools when booting while pushing the camera button, it failed the test for internal sd card...)

And it's adding somewhere a little script to automatically launch, at the very good moment of the booting sequence, the script in /usr/bin/ that manually mount our /data and /cache partitions...

and that's it !

(can someone confirm, I am just writting what I thought having read...) :)

I still haven't tried 2.2, But I confirm that 2x 32 GB µSD really rocks !, This and the meridian player, its really great, almost all of my music on my phone...

I am really happy with it !

btw, the internal µSD is recognized to have a 28,4 GB partition (plus the /DATA and /Cache partitions), and the external µSD a 29,7 GB FAT32 partition... is this normal, for 32GB labeled µSD cards ?

cheers

[Guest boboskins]

I am hoping to do the mod sometime soon (hopefully at the weekend). Stephen (Davidson) has confirmed he has been working on a 2.2 build.img and has one with the automount removed. Turns out he worked with DJSteve to get the froyo build.img working - so I definitely owe him a big thanks.

I will update once I have some progress.

B

In Theory, more or less... :)

It's all about disabling the autodetect of the internal SDcard, because the soft cannot deal with bigger memory than 2GB cards... (just tried that with the test tools when booting while pushing the camera button, it failed the test for internal sd card...)

And it's adding somewhere a little script to automatically launch, at the very good moment of the booting sequence, the script in /usr/bin/ that manually mount our /data and /cache partitions...

and that's it !

(can someone confirm, I am just writting what I thought having read...) :)

I still haven't tried 2.2, But I confirm that 2x 32 GB µSD really rocks !, This and the meridian player, its really great, almost all of my music on my phone...

I am really happy with it !

btw, the internal µSD is recognized to have a 28,4 GB partition (plus the /DATA and /Cache partitions), and the external µSD a 29,7 GB FAT32 partition... is this normal, for 32GB labeled µSD cards ?

cheers

[Guest kwenteen]

I adapted and translated your tuto in french, Stephen Davidson, I hope you don't mind, and redirected people on this thread for further details !

http://forum.frandroid.com/topic/20825-qua...337#entry519337

and

http://streak.forumgratuit.fr/tutos-f4/a-c...e-32go-t609.htm

Thank you again !

Stephen Davidson told me that the Froyo's version from DJSteeve already mount manually the /DATA and /CACHE partitions...

So we don't need anymore to modify the boot.img... All that is left, is to mount the internal extra partition so it can be user accessible... That's it !

YAY !

Edited November 23, 2010 by kwenteen

[Guest DeathOfAllThings]

I won't pretend to understand a lot of this thread... but I saw this in an article on engadget about the nexus s and 2.3... wondering if this could make adding a larger micro SD card to the inner slot of the streak and utilizing the space any easier... or perhaps it won't help at all... you guys are the experts. ;) Unfortunately, there's no real information behind it, just a quick quote.

"However, Android 2.3 creates a partition which replicates a mounted SD card, and the company has streamlined the process of copying apps to that space using a simple checkbox."

http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/07/google-nexus-s-preview/

The part about creating a partition that replicates a mounted SD card seemed pretty interesting, since that seemed like what you guys wanted to do. My hope is it will allow this mod to work for those of us with significantly less experience at some point in the future...

Edited December 7, 2010 by DeathOfAllThings

[Guest Stephen Hyde]

still likely to need to edit the boot img due to fact its dells mount/factory reset binary that has problems

[Guest adzman808]

i know sweet fa about this... but reading into it, i rather got the impress that if the internal sd card was swapped then (after apparently much mucking about) the resulting larger partition could only be written to via adb

but i may be (aka almost certainly) wrong

[Guest kwenteen]

What I understood from the link you put, is that there is no real ext sdcard, and that they emulated one from a partition of the innersd. But it is as always, there is still not 2 different SDcards useraccessible... in android, that is still not possible... maybe in other devices with extsd, the same mod with 2.3 will work, and then give the ability to detect 2 sdcards ?

[Guest dacho]

could one just copy complete original card onto a new card keeping everything the same? What I would like to do is just to get a 4gb class 10 card and swap it, because I don't really need any more space but would like to improve performance if possible.

[Guest kwenteen]

unfortunately, it's more or less the same problem with a 4 or a 32 Gb... fdiskcmd is the problem, as it still can't detect card bigger than 2Gb... so if you put a card bigger than 2 Gb, you'll have to put a slightly modified boot.img.

the only drawback, is that you won't be able to factory reset automatically after that... but rather empty by yourself the different partition if you want a fresh start :)

That's it !

if you are still gonna do it, maybe you can start by a clean dump of your innersd into the new one, then swap, boot with a normal boot.img, and if it works directly (meaning when booted you still have your app showing with settings), you don't need to change the boot, and your card is recognized by fdiskcmd.

If it doesn't work (android looks like a fresh install, buggy) then you have to fastboot a new boot.img, and it will work !

Boujou Bien,

K.

BTW, If you are interested, here is the modified boot.img for 1.5.1 DJ_Steve version...

boot151manualmountdevraimarcher.img

This allow you to have a new partition mounted automatically in /intsd, with the very last release of our new tech god, mister DJ_Steve... :)

This is only for those that are already under at least 1.1.1 version, or official 2.2... as you won't need to factory reset...

Remember that this mod disable for now this factory reset !

how to :

you just have to replace the boot.img contained in the update.zip file by this one, and use your habitual method to update !

then you have to link the newly created /intsd folder, that contains the user accessible innersd partition, to the /sdcard/anywhereyouwant so it can be scanned by the media scan.

For this, I'm using GScript Lite, creating a new script inside it, with the command :

mount -o bind /intsd /mnt/sdcard/anywhereyouwant

then, I use the Rescan Media app, that force the rescan of the sdcard for media, adding what's inside the innersd to it... That's it !

As I love to update regularly, I will upload a new special boot.img adapted for big µSD for every new version that comes out !

If you guys are interested by it of course !!

Enjoy !!

Edited December 16, 2010 by kwenteen

[Guest Adam Mallinson]

Any news on a boot.img for the Official Dell 2.2 version?

[Guest dacho]

@kwenteen

Thank you very much for such an in-depth explanation. I really don't want to loose the ability to factory reset but most importantly i don't want to mess with the boot.img because I am kind of an "impulse flasher" I'd like to flash new releases as soon as they are available. So with that being said are there any faster 2Gb cards that will do the trick? I guess another question is that is there any real benefit as far as performance goes on swapping the cards? Thanks

Edited December 17, 2010 by dacho

[Guest NoDoze]

This may sound silly and crazy...but with equal internal and external sd cards...could one RAID 0 the SD cards...? mdadm...? LOL! Droooolll....

[Guest kwenteen]

Any news on a boot.img for the Official Dell 2.2 version?

thanks to smoku and stephen, I have the beautiful tools to make the boot.img myself... if you are interested for the boot of 2.2 official, pm me !

boujou bien,

K.

edit : I already did it, as the official 2.2 rom it is the best way to start a fresh install : superbootcachedatacourt.img

I'm using it with the original 2.2 released by DJ_Steve : http://android.modaco.com/content/dell-str...royo-untouched/

but of course, you must fastboot flash the boot.img I provided, and you can use the last amss.mbn file from DJ_Steve, instead of the original one...

if it works, you can then upgrade to 1.5.1 directly, simply by replacing the boot.img in the update.1.5.1.zip by the one I uploaded 2 msgs up... Don't forget to rename it boot.img of course... :)

Edited December 17, 2010 by kwenteen

[Guest kwenteen]

@kwenteen

Thank you very much for such an in-depth explanation. I really don't want to loose the ability to factory reset but most importantly i don't want to mess with the boot.img because I am kind of an "impulse flasher" I'd like to flash new releases as soon as they are available. So with that being said are there any faster 2Gb cards that will do the trick? I guess another question is that is there any real benefit as far as performance goes on swapping the cards? Thanks

I not very aware about speedy sdcard, maybe there is some class 10 2 Gb sd cards available ?

But from what I understood of the new speedmod from 1.5.1 version, it is mounting a second part in the extsd, and using it as a something something, that makes the device much more speedy !

(sorry I haven't read it carefully, I think it was about mounting a loop of something... :) )

boujou bien,

K

[Guest Adam Mallinson]

thanks to smoku and stephen, I have the beautiful tools to make the boot.img myself... if you are interested for the boot of 2.2 official, pm me !

boujou bien,

K.

edit : I already did it, as the official 2.2 rom it is the best way to start a fresh install : superbootcachedatacourt.img

I'm using it with the original 2.2 released by DJ_Steve : http://android.modaco.com/content/dell-str...royo-untouched/

but of course, you must fastboot flash the boot.img I provided, and you can use the last amss.mbn file from DJ_Steve, instead of the original one...

if it works, you can then upgrade to 1.5.1 directly, simply by replacing the boot.img in the update.1.5.1.zip by the one I uploaded 2 msgs up... Don't forget to rename it boot.img of course... :)

Well i am wanting to stay with the official 2.2 rom rather than move to a custom ROM, so which of your instructions would i follow to do that? I am already on the official 2.2 ROM from Dell

[Guest kwenteen]

Well i am wanting to stay with the official 2.2 rom rather than move to a custom ROM, so which of your instructions would i follow to do that? I am already on the official 2.2 ROM from Dell

So you "just" want to switch your µSD right ?

then you will have to follow what stephen davidson wrote, to prepare your new sd, once it is done, just exchange with your innersd, boot in flashboot mod, flash the boot.img I put in the post above, you should have a working system, with a /intsd folder which is you new user accessible space from your innersd. If you want it more accessible, just create a script, using for exemple gscript lite, to bind /intsd to whatever folder (empty) in your /sdcard/.

That's it !

remember, by doing this, you loose factory reset, and your new space is accessible only via ADB.... :)

[Guest Us3Less]

Guys , I have a question . Sorry if it has been asked before as I got zero knowledge on ubuntu or linux . Currently , I have 2 Streak . 1 died on me , internal memory card failure . Now , can i get a replacement , a 2G card and copy and paste everything over from the working streak's internal sd ? I do not need the additional partition in it , just wanna make it as simple as possible for me to do as the nearest DELL to service a Streak is in another country , 400km away . Thanks for the feedback

[Guest kwenteen]

Guys , I have a question . Sorry if it has been asked before as I got zero knowledge on ubuntu or linux . Currently , I have 2 Streak . 1 died on me , internal memory card failure . Now , can i get a replacement , a 2G card and copy and paste everything over from the working streak's internal sd ? I do not need the additional partition in it , just wanna make it as simple as possible for me to do as the nearest DELL to service a Streak is in another country , 400km away . Thanks for the feedback

Yep, A simple tranfert should do the trick... remember that is not as simple as drag and drop, as you need to create 2 different partitions, so you can use the first part written by stephen davidson, for preparing your new sd card...

if you are using a good old 2GB cards, you should be fine without the boot.img mod !

Boujou bien,

K.

[Guest brokenpixel]

Guys , I have a question . Sorry if it has been asked before as I got zero knowledge on ubuntu or linux . Currently , I have 2 Streak . 1 died on me , internal memory card failure . Now , can i get a replacement , a 2G card and copy and paste everything over from the working streak's internal sd ? I do not need the additional partition in it , just wanna make it as simple as possible for me to do as the nearest DELL to service a Streak is in another country , 400km away . Thanks for the feedback

My internal SD went bad also, what I did instead of kwenteen's way was install new microSD, load up a nandroid backup and then I reinstalled from zero. Going back to stock o2 2.1 and crawl all the way up to 1.1.1 which is what I use ;)

What you can do is this.

Make a nandroid backup of your working streak , on the dead streak (after memory replacement) load up your nandroid backup, I would recommend to install a stock rom first, better if its an early 2.1, then you can take your own route from there either go stock Dell or Steve's 1.5.1 or any version of your preference.

Hope it helps in some way.

Good luck and post your results :)

[Guest kwenteen]

My internal SD went bad also, what I did instead of kwenteen's way was install new microSD, load up a nandroid backup and then I reinstalled from zero. Going back to stock o2 2.1 and crawl all the way up to 1.1.1 which is what I use ;)

What you can do is this.

Make a nandroid backup of your working streak , on the dead streak (after memory replacement) load up your nandroid backup, I would recommend to install a stock rom first, better if its an early 2.1, then you can take your own route from there either go stock Dell or Steve's 1.5.1 or any version of your preference.

Hope it helps in some way.

Good luck and post your results :)

D'oh !

You're right brokenpixel !

of course your way is way easier ! :D ;)

the factory reset will automagically format your fresh innersd the way it should be... This only work with 2GB memory thus... I think you can even just switch off your broken streak, exchange your dead sd for a brand new one, then go to factory menu (push button power while simultaneously pushing + and - of volume rocker) then do factory reset !

[Guest Us3Less]

D'oh !

You're right brokenpixel !

of course your way is way easier ! :) ;)

the factory reset will automagically format your fresh innersd the way it should be... This only work with 2GB memory thus... I think you can even just switch off your broken streak, exchange your dead sd for a brand new one, then go to factory menu (push button power while simultaneously pushing + and - of volume rocker) then do factory reset !

I tried my noob luck and manage to get it running using QDLtools ..... Of course I'm using back a 2G card yet at least it can boot . Thanks for the help guys ...... :D

[Guest brokenpixel]

D'oh !

You're right brokenpixel !

of course your way is way easier ! ;) :D

the factory reset will automagically format your fresh innersd the way it should be... This only work with 2GB memory thus... I think you can even just switch off your broken streak, exchange your dead sd for a brand new one, then go to factory menu (push button power while simultaneously pushing + and - of volume rocker) then do factory reset !

Yes I was thinking on different ROM's in their own SD hehe and then mod the streak so the inner SD card is user accesible, but then I woke up of bed :)

[Guest kwenteen]

Oï,

If anyone interested, here's the 153 modified boot.img so it will automagically mount your innersd in /intsd.

boot.img

I was wondering, does anyone knows how-to modify correctly the init.streak.post_boot.sh ?

I dumbly tried to insert :

toolbox mount -o bind /intsd /mnt/sdcard/intsd

but no luck, still no auto-mount ... I know, pushing 2 buttons more at startup doesn't kill me for manual mounting via gscript lite, but I'd love to have a more polished solution !

Boujou Bien,

K.