Ostebaronen.dk

So I tried out the OpenEclair 1.2.1 ROM, which runs on the Dream and Magic HTC devices, yesterday. It was quite exciting trying out a 2.1 ROM on my phone, since it has so many new features and stuff that I wanted to try out. Though I must say, it was a pain in the ***!
It is a cool initiative, but the ROM is just too slow for my likings everything was so choppy, pulling up the drawer and what not was forcing the hardware to its knees, the first 30 minutes the ROM was super slow and I decided not to mess with it anymore.

Though I have to say, I liked the animated backgrounds a lot, it is fun to have interactive stuff in the background without even starting a new application, and you can have all kinds of stuff going on there, either for show or for real use, like the VU meter and so on.

I guess I just have to get a new phone soon, I’d just wish that an operator in Denmark was selling one of these lovely Nexus One devices. I guess I will either have to wait or get it from abroad.

I just discovered Issuu for Android through the Android Market, which is a pretty nice place to read magazines, newspapers, articles and lots and lots of other publications on your computer or your mobile phone. They have recently released a client for Android and a client for iPhone will soon be available for download.
The page and app are really easy to use, you have easy access to a lot of stuff and it is read easily through the browser. You can zoom and see pictures, subscribe to publications, rate stuff and lots and lots of other cool stuff. It is really recommended!

Scan the barcode to go to the application download for android.

Click on image for bigger version

I made a small script just to test the syntax highlighting plug-in I installed for Wordpress. So here it goes:

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#!/bin/bash
# Scipt that installs a batch of apk files on an Android device,
# through the adb tool from Android SDK.
adbPath="/home/tomasz/android/android-sdk/tools/adb"
 
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
        echo "usage: `basename $0` foldername"
        exit 1
fi
 
for f in $( ls "$1" );
do
        $adbPath install "$f"
done

The script is very simple and installs apk files in a folder through adb (Android Debug Bridge). This of course requires the Android SDK and a some kind of a Linux distribution.

I have made a script for pushing files and folders through adb to the SDcard of an Android device. This can be used in combination with nautilus for right-clicking on folders to push it.

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#!/bin/bash
# Script for pushing files and folders through adb.
# Can also be used without nautilus.
# Feel free to edit and distribute as much as you want.
 
# if you want dialogs set dialog_enable=1 else dialog_enable=0
dialog_enable=1
 
# Write the entire path to adb here
adbPath="/home/tomasz/AndroidSDK/tools/adb"
 
function dialogs {
        if [ $dialog_enable = 1 ]; then
                if [ -e "/usr/bin/gdialog" ]; then
                        gdialog --title "adb push" --msgbox "$1" 200 200
                elif [ -e "/usr/bin/Xdialog" ]; then
                        Xdialog --title "adb push" --msgbox "$1" 0 0
                else
                        echo "No dialog program present"
                fi
        fi
}
 
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then    # If arguments not equal 1, complain!
        echo "Usage - $0 file"
        echo "or - $0 directory"
        exit 1
fi
 
if [ -d "$1" ]; then
        $adbPath shell mkdir "/sdcard/`basename "$1"`"  # Create the directory on SDcard
        $adbPath push "$1" "/sdcard/`basename "$1"`"    # Push files in the folder to folder on SDcard  
        dialogs "Folder $1 was pushed"
elif [ -e "$1" ]; then
        $adbPath push "$1" /sdcard/    # Push single file to SDcard
        dialogs "$1 was pushed"
else
        echo "Gurumeditation!"    # Oops!
fi

Download the script by using this link: http://ostebaronen.dk/android/adbpush.sh

In order to have it in your right-click menu in Nautilus place the script in: ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/ and run chmod u+x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/. Now you should see the script in your right click menu under scripts in Nautilus.

Awesome, I got it working. My own compiled Linux Kernel from CyanogenMod’s repository. It boots and wlan does also work. Great success!

The process of doing so is pretty straight forward. I followed a post, by a guy called bcrook at XDA-developers had made to help some other person, with slight modifications.

This guide requires you to run a Linux based system, since the compilers are made for this system. You might as well have some luck with Cygwin, but I wouldn’t count on it.

So here is what I did to get it working.

1. First get the android source and build it. You will need JDK, curl and git and probably also some other tools to get this working.
   curl http://android.git.kernel.org/repo >~/bin/repo
chmod a+x ~/bin/repo
mkdir <Android source dir> && cd <Android source dir>
repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git

   When it is done build it.
make
2. Now we have the tools and compilers ready so we just need to add them to our PATH.
export PATH=$PATH:~/<Android source dir>/prebuilt/linux-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-4.4.0/bin

3. Grab the CyanogenMod kernel from his GIT repo. Make sure to get the correct branch or you will see a lot of errors while compiling!
   git clone git://github.com/cyanogen/cm-kernel.git
git branch -r
git checkout --track -b cm-2.6.29-bfs origin/android-2.6.29-bfs
4. Now get a configuration for the kernel. You can pull an existing one from you phone, it is found in /proc/config.gz or you can use your own. This needs to be put in your cm-kernel dir, where you will se a lot of folders and such.
   zcat config.gz > ~/cm-kernel/.config
5. Apply any patches to the kernel now.
6. Build it! This is done easily it is here the PATH we exported earlier comes in handy.
   cd ~/cm-kernel
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi-
   Wait for it to get done. The built kernel will be in arch/arm/boot/zImage
7. Now we just need to build the wlan.ko module, so we can get some WiFi on our phone.cd <Android source dir>/system/wlan/ti/sta_dk_4_0_4_32
make KERNEL_DIR="<kernel source dir>" ARCH=arm
   The kernel is now built!

Last thing to do is to pack it into a boot.img instructions can be found on android-dl’s Wiki.