Dual boot with sdhc kernel

[Halftux]

I made an experimentel sdhc kernel with the 4GB patch from muromec. Maybe someone wonna try this kernel so I uploaded it here. Now I will explain how I use this kernel. The sdhc kernel has some disadvantages thats why I use it with dualboot. There is no camera support and no storage mode also small sd cards doesn't work.

1. Format the new 4gb card.

Prepare your 4gb sdhc card I did it with gparted:
Choose device (/dev/sda) dev could be different.
If it is mounted unmount with right click.
Make a new partition use full space.
Format to fat32
Thats it.

2. Copy old card to new card.

Now you can copy the whole contents from your old card to the new 4gb card.

3. Prepare the old card for dualboot.

The TRANSFLASH card needs to be partitioned into two partitions: one small FAT/EXT2 partition, and one EXT2 partition used as root file system.
I'll assume that the block device of the TRANSFLASH card is called /dev/sda. Replace this with the correct device on your system.

* Create partitions, for example a 20MB /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 using the rest, open shell and do:
(Since we don't realy need a root partition for sdhc kernel you can put any root you want. If you wonna try tomtom with maps I recommend >900MB)

fdisk /dev/sda
n
p
<default>
1
+20M
n
p
2
<default>
<default>
w

* Create file systems, a VFAT on /dev/sda1 and EXT2 on /dev/sda2 (If you wonna try out TOMTOM use EXT3):

mkdosfs /dev/sda1 (for VFAT)
mke2fs /dev/sda2 (for EXT2)
mkfs.ext3 -j /dev/sda2 (for EXT3)

Make on the vfat system a folder boot and in this folder create a menu.lst and place zImage_sdhc and other kernels there.
You will also find a menu.lst in dualboot attachment. Prepared with following entries.

Motorola original
A780 sdhc
A780 OpenEZX
TOMTOM

on the ext2 you can place a root file system you want to use with openezx kernel or place on the ext3 the nice tomtom root fs.

4. Now we prepare the phone for dualboot.

Your phone has no sim and no sd card now we wanna flash it is not important but I like it this way.
Make sure that the battery is nearly full. These steps are for magic-boot-option that you can use the phone without sd card.

For more detailed steps go to openezx:
Dual Boot GEN1 - OpenEZX

press camera and jogdial(scrollwheel) button while power on. (Blue bootloader screen)
connect with usb

./boot_usb setflag usb
./boot_usb gen-blob 0
./boot_usb read 0x20000 917504 backup-of-kernel-partition
dd bs=917500 count=1 if=backup-of-kernel-partition of=kernel-with-no-extra-bytes
cat magic-boot-from-flash kernel-with-no-extra-bytes > kernel-to-be-flashed-to-0x40000
ls -l kernel-to-be-flashed-to-0x40000

# If the result is bigger than 917504 bytes, then don't flash it! You made a big mistake somewhere!

./boot_usb flash 0x20000 gen-blob
wait until it is finished
./boot_usb flash 0x40000 kernel-to-be-flashed-to-0x40000
./boot_usb off

If you only flashed gen-blob you can rename/copy your kernel backup to /boot/default on vfat.

Place the small sd card in your phone.
Pull down the jogdial(scrollwheel) while power on.
Menu should come choose A780 sdhc wait until boot is finished.
Remove sd card and put the 4gb sdhc card in. Wait some seconds for recognizing the inserted card.
Now you have a big card in your old phone. And the realy good thing is you dont need to remove the battery when you want to change the sd card

Now I need to find a way to patch the kernel to get a working camera.
Mass storage mode will not work if you put a sd card after boot.
It could work if you flash the sdhc kernel direct to phone but I think the kernel needs an improvement with mass storage mode.
The only guy who tried it had a bricked A780 for half a day. So I cant tell if this will work.
If something goes wrong and the A780 want start you can try to press down the jogdial and camera button while you put the battery in and make a full flash for recover it.

This also will work if you have only Windows and no Linux. You need to use the flashkit and telnet. But then you can only flash gen-blob and you will need everytime a sd card for booting.

Thx to muromec's patch and the openezx team for the necessary dualboot binaries and tutorial.

[shantanu]

awesome work dude

[swifty]

Amazing!

[atulgoswami21]

Oh NO i cant believe that........

Splendid work dear.

[atulgoswami21]

Could u give us a guide for window user.....

[Halftux]

Thanks to all in this thread for your kind comments.

Could u give us a guide for window user.....

I could but I avoid to post a tutorial which I never performed. If you need help or ideas you can pm me.

I will give you a list what you need:
gparted= partition magic / paragon partition maker
dd= dd for windows
cat= type or copy /b
or look for gnuwin32
and finally for flashing use phonetools
You can also flash with flashkit but only full mtd and no address so a magic boot isnt possible with flashkit maybe it could be done if you are clever with hex edit.
Before you start make a backup from your phone and still there is a chance to brick your phone.

Maybe I will perform my thoughts and write a tutorial for windows in the future.

[Debu_013]

Can the same be done on E6?

[kundancool]

Can the same be done on E6?

yes.....

but don't try this on your E6