Tweaked 2.6.29 kernel source for the Pulse

[Guest AntonioPT]

A few days ago, I discovered DroidWall, a iptables-based firewall for Android. I installed it but it gave me an error about not having netfilter owner enabled. I searched a bit and found out that a kernel .config setting had to be enabled (CONFIG_NETFILTER_XT_MATCH_OWNER). But I had no previous Android kernel compilation experience! Well, I decided to learn.

After an hour or so of reading tutorials, documentation, and forum topics, I finally compiled and packed my first Android kernel! It was truly a joy to see my phone boot after flashing the boot.img with fastboot :) I could finally use DroidWall!

After this successful build, I decided to post the source on my GitHub repo. I also posted detailed instructions on how to build and pack the kernel.

This slightly tweaked kernel currently only includes the NETFILTER setting enabled on .config and overclock to 710MHz, but I intend to port BFS to our kernel in order to increase the performance. I will probably also include several other tweaks and modifications, all seeking to improve performance and functionality.

Well, enough with the chit-chat, moving on to the source and the boot.img now :D

You can access my GitHub repo here. I posted instructions on how to build, pack into a boot.img and flash the kernel into your phone in the wiki. They are very easy to follow, take a look ;)

You can download a prebuilt boot.img from here.

If there's enough demand I'll also post an update.zip for easy kernel flashing through recovery.

If you have any questions, suggestions, patches or fixes, feel free to contact me, either by PM, email or by replying to this post.

[Guest Richard_Arkless]

Wow well done, mind if I include this in the aio rom?

I think it would be great to include ext3 and 4 support to add a little bit extra performance to dtapp2sd

If not no problem ill try and do it myself

Edited December 21, 2010 by Richard_Arkless

[Guest Ellia]

Wow well done, mind if I include this in the aio rom?

I think it would be great to include ext3 and 4 support to add a little bit extra performance to dtapp2sd

If not no problem ill try and do it myself

Are you sure that ext4 will increase the speed? I thought/heard (related by the file access?) it's not faster with our requirements.

[Guest Richard_Arkless]

Are you sure that ext4 will increase the speed? I thought/heard (related by the file access?) it's not faster with our requirements.

There will be a speed increase but the life expectancy of the microsd will decrease but really they cost pennies these days for a large amount of storage

but ssd drives are starting to be mainstream so undoubtedly ext4 is most likely being improved to increase the life of it so I dont think there will be much of a life difference in the end

Edited December 21, 2010 by Richard_Arkless

[Guest AntonioPT]

Wow well done, mind if I include this in the aio rom?

I think it would be great to include ext3 and 4 support to add a little bit extra performance to dtapp2sd

If not no problem ill try and do it myself

Thanks :)

Go ahead, include it if you want.

Yes, I will add EXT3/4 support either this evening or tomorrow.

I will also fix the phone's serial number not appearing in adb/fastboot.

Edited December 21, 2010 by AntonioPT

[Guest twrock]

You can download a prebuilt boot.img from here.

If there's enough demand I'll also post an update.zip for easy kernel flashing through recovery.

Congrats on your first kernel build!

(I wonder if I can use this 710 kernel or if I will have the same issues as with Starkos'.)

Wow, with all this new stuff showing up, I'm tempted to take a perfectly good system, trash it, and start over..... just for the fun of it. :)

To be honest, I've had a couple of apparently random reboots this week, so a full redo might be just what the doctor ordered.

Edit (completely OT): Any chance in all of your "learning" you've come across some reference on how to set "GSM only" for the radio in a rom? I can do it through "Phone info" manually, but I want to pre-set it in the rom.

Edited December 21, 2010 by twrock

[Guest Ellia]

Can you add or enabled Cisco VPN support? Tun support has to be enabled for this in the kernel.

[Guest anegin]

AntonioPT, can you try to add the "vocpcm" driver to kernel from HTC devices ("arch/arm/mach-msm/qdsp5_comp/vocpcm.c")

It let's to record speech from line directly in call time.

(Now we can record speech only with micropohone and the opponent voice is very quiet.)

[Guest AntonioPT]

Any chance in all of your "learning" you've come across some reference on how to set "GSM only" for the radio in a rom? I can do it through "Phone info" manually, but I want to pre-set it in the rom.

I have not, sorry :) But I'll let you know if I find something along the way.

Can you add or enabled Cisco VPN support? Tun support has to be enabled for this in the kernel.

I enabled it and the kernel is now compiling. In a few minutes you should be able to download the new boot.img for testing.

AntonioPT, can you try to add the "vocpcm" driver to kernel from HTC devices ("arch/arm/mach-msm/qdsp5_comp/vocpcm.c")

It let's to record speech from line directly in call time.

(Now we can record speech only with micropohone and the opponent voice is very quiet.)

There's no "qdsp5_comp" folder on the kernel source, but I added it on the "qdsp5_7200A" folder.

I'm going to compile the kernel to see if it works. I'll let you know in a few minutes.

Edited December 21, 2010 by AntonioPT

[Guest Richard_Arkless]

Hi I tried to download the prebuilt kernel and put it in a update.zip but it gives me an error when I try and flash it in clockwork, am I doing something wrong, the error is at the "write_raw_image PACKAGE:boot.img BOOT:" bit

edit the previous one you built flashes fine

Edited December 21, 2010 by Richard_Arkless

[Guest 4nders]

Would android wifi tether for root work with this kernel?

I have a eye fi card for my camera, and it wont work with barnacle for some reason, but its reported to be working with wifi-tether for root. And wifi-tether for root requires a kernel wich supports netfilter.

Any chance someone could try it out?

[Guest AntonioPT]

Would android wifi tether for root work with this kernel?

I have a eye fi card for my camera, and it wont work with barnacle for some reason, but its reported to be working with wifi-tether for root. And wifi-tether for root requires a kernel wich supports netfilter.

Any chance someone could try it out?

I don't have an EyeFi card, but you can try it out yourself...

If there's a specific setting you want me to enable in order to make your card work, let me know.

[Guest AntonioPT]

There's no "qdsp5_comp" folder on the kernel source, but I added it on the "qdsp5_7200A" folder.

Well, it doesn't work (at least for me, feel free to try it out)... I'll do a little research to see if I can find some info on how to make it work.

Can you add or enabled Cisco VPN support? Tun support has to be enabled for this in the kernel.

The latest prebuilt kernel has now tun support built in (no module needed). Try it out and let me know.

Edited December 21, 2010 by AntonioPT

[Guest Richard_Arkless]

Well, it doesn't work (at least for me, feel free to try it out)... I'll do a little research to see if I can find some info on how to make it work.

The latest prebuilt kernel has now tun support built in (no module needed). Try it out and let me know.

I just tried it out got "writing 'boot'... FAILED (remote: flash write failure)" in fastboot

[Guest Nielzs]

Update.zip would be great!

[Guest Epic-Emodude]

A few days ago, I discovered DroidWall, a iptables-based firewall for Android. I installed it but it gave me an error about not having netfilter owner enabled. I searched a bit and found out that a kernel .config setting had to be enabled (CONFIG_NETFILTER_XT_MATCH_OWNER). But I had no previous Android kernel compilation experience! Well, I decided to learn.

After an hour or so of reading tutorials, documentation, and forum topics, I finally compiled and packed my first Android kernel! It was truly a joy to see my phone boot after flashing the boot.img with fastboot :) I could finally use DroidWall!

After this successful build, I decided to post the source on my GitHub repo. I also posted detailed instructions on how to build and pack the kernel.

This slightly tweaked kernel currently only includes the NETFILTER setting enabled on .config and overclock to 710MHz, but I intend to port BFS to our kernel in order to increase the performance. I will probably also include several other tweaks and modifications, all seeking to improve performance and functionality.

Well, enough with the chit-chat, moving on to the source and the boot.img now :D

You can access my GitHub repo here. I posted instructions on how to build, pack into a boot.img and flash the kernel into your phone in the wiki. They are very easy to follow, take a look ;)

You can download a prebuilt boot.img from here.

If there's enough demand I'll also post an update.zip for easy kernel flashing through recovery.

If you have any questions, suggestions, patches or fixes, feel free to contact me, either by PM, email or by replying to this post.

With your new found kerneling skills, do you think you could port the .34 or .35 kernel to the pulse? Would be great if you coulf, and would save TOM G some work =)

[Guest pk0102]

Thanks for your great work. But it failed to be flashed through the fastboot command

[Guest Daz555]

Wow well done, mind if I include this in the aio rom?

I think it would be great to include ext3 and 4 support to add a little bit extra performance to dtapp2sd

If not no problem ill try and do it myself

Not a big fan of running with journalling file systems on memory cards. EXT2 all the way for me.

[Guest spanner44]

With your new found kerneling skills, do you think you could port the .34 or .35 kernel to the pulse? Would be great if you coulf, and would save TOM G some work =)

+1, couldn't agree more, if you could help in porting over the newer Kernals to the pulse then this would certainly extend our Life of our Pulse

[Guest Richard_Arkless]

Not a big fan of running with journalling file systems on memory cards. EXT2 all the way for me.

Well its there if someone wants to run it

[Guest AntonioPT]

With your new found kerneling skills, do you think you could port the .34 or .35 kernel to the pulse? Would be great if you coulf, and would save TOM G some work =)

I could probably help testing, tweaking .config and making small changes in the actual kernel source (applying patches, drivers and such) but my skills just aren't enough to port an entire kernel. But if Tom wants help, I would be more than glad to help him out :)

Thanks for your great work. But it failed to be flashed through the fastboot command

I think that I know what's the problem...

The boot.img currently is ~2.54 MB, and I think the BOOT partition on the Pulse is only 2.5 MB (anyone please confirm this).

I have a U8230 so that's why it flashed fine on my phone.

I'll move tun support into a module to shrink the kernel.

[Guest anegin]

The boot.img currently is ~2.54 MB, and I think the BOOT partition on the Pulse is only 2.5 MB (anyone please confirm this).

I have a U8230 so that's why it flashed fine on my phone.

On U8220 (Pulse) and old U8230 models the boot partition is only 20 pages x 131 072 bytes = 2 621 440 bytes.

On newest U8230 the boot partition is 40 pages x 131 072 bytes = 5 242 880 bytes.

We can see these sizes in fastboot screen (in pages) or with terminal typing cat /proc/mtd (in bytes)

Edited December 22, 2010 by anegin

[Guest AntonioPT]

On U8220 (Pulse) and old U8230 models the boot partition is only 20 pages x 131 072 bytes = 2 621 440 bytes.

On newest U8230 the boot partition is 40 pages x 131 072 bytes = 5 242 880 bytes.

We can see these sizes in fastboot screen (in pages) or with terminal typing cat /proc/mtd (in bytes)

Thanks, I really needed that info ;)

Even after moving tun support into a module, the kernel still slightly exceeds that value.

This sucks, because I have to limit what I can put/enable in the kernel in order to fit that tiny value :)

[Guest Ellia]

Any chance that a newer kernel could be smaller? Tom get a newer one to boot, maybe your skills are good enough for hacking it to a usable kernel :).

I think we have no chance to change the partition table?

[Guest AntonioPT]

Any chance that a newer kernel could be smaller? Tom get a newer one to boot, maybe your skills are good enough for hacking it to a usable kernel :).

I think we have no chance to change the partition table?

VERY GOOD NEWS! I've got the kernel (boot.img) down to 2177024 bytes (~2,08 MB)!

I'm going to flash it on my phone, hope it works ;)

EDIT: bootloop :D

Edited December 22, 2010 by AntonioPT