GRUB4Android

Getting Started

To get started with GRUB4Android, you'll need to get familiar with Git and Repo.

To initialize your local repository using the GRUB4Android trees, use a command like this:

repo init -u git://github.com/grub4android/manifest.git -b master

Then to sync up:

repo sync

Initializing a Build Environment

Installing required packages (Ubuntu 14.04) 64-bit

$ sudo apt-get install git-core gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \
  zip curl zlib1g-dev libc6-dev lib32ncurses5-dev \
  x11proto-core-dev libx11-dev lib32z-dev \
  libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 tofrodos python-markdown \
  libxml2-utils xsltproc autoconf grub-common qemu-user cmake vim-common \
  realpath

Installing required packages (Ubuntu 12.04) 32-bit

$ sudo apt-get install git gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \
  zip curl libc6-dev libncurses5-dev:i386 x11proto-core-dev \
  libx11-dev:i386 libreadline6-dev:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 \
  libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 tofrodos \
  python-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc zlib1g-dev:i386 \
  autoconf grub-common qemu-user cmake vim-common realpath
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libGL.so

Building

Build everything with make. GNU make can handle parallel tasks with a -jN argument, and it's common to use a number of tasks N that's between 1 and 2 times the number of hardware threads on the computer being used for the build. E.g. on a dual-E5520 machine (2 CPUs, 4 cores per CPU, 2 threads per core), the fastest builds are made with commands between make -j16 and make -j3

$ make -j4 DEVICENAME

check the build repository for a list of supported devices.

Installation

LK: Xiaomi Mi2(s)(c) 'aries' and Xiaomi Redmi 1s 'armani'

The file "out/DEVICENAME/lk/build-*/emmc_appsboot.mbn" needs to be flashed to the aboot partition

$ fastboot flash aboot emmc_appsboot.mbn

Please note that a faulty LK softbricks the device. You shouldn't flash it if you don't know how to recover it.

LK: all other devices

The resulting file "out/DEVICENAME/lkboot.img" needs to be flashed on the boot or recovery partition of the device.

$ fastboot flash boot lkboot.img

GRUB

The GRUB filesystem "out/DEVICENAME/grub/grub_rootfs"needs to be installed on the device defined in the device's makefile. Usually this is /data/media/boot or /sdcard/boot. Afterwards you need to change the permissions of the files for security reasons.

$ chmod -R 0644 ../boot

Debugging

LK support several commands. Just type "fastboot oem help" to get a list. Also you can build a sideload image of GRUB which boots GRUB with fastboot enabled.

$ make DEVICENAME grub_sideload_image
$ fastboot boot out/DEVICENAME/grub/grub_sideload.img