💾 Archived View for mstdn.design › logs › 2021-03-07-pinephone-custom.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
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March 3, 2021
I had planned on building a new, customized kernel for my pine64 Pine Phone because,
the kernel that came with the Mobian OS that I'm running, didn't have the more
primitive mouse drivers installed. When I say primitive mouse drivers, I mean the
drivers that allow one to use one's mouse in the console to do basic copying and
pasting. Copying and pasting in the console is essential, because without it one
will be doing copious amounts of typing, instead.
I started by downloading the kernel sources for the Pine Phone, from the phone
itself. My was to copy the contents of the SD card and run it in a chroot and
build the kernel within that environment. I had a few setbacks doing that so I
decided to build the pine phone's kernel on my Raspberry Pi 4B. First, if this
was going to work I had to make sure that both machines were binary compatible,
meaning that if I compiled a program on my Pi, would it run on the pine phone
with little or no fuss. Turns out They're very compatible, which gave me the
confidence to attempt this. Since I use Debian and the pine phone is running
Mobian which is essentially, Debian too, after I configured the kernel, instead
of issuing the make command, I used the make bindeb-pkg option, which will
basically, build me a Debian kernel complete with the .deb extension and should
easily install on the phone, using the package manager apt or in this case dpkg.
As I'm writing this, the kernel is being built. It will probably last an hour or
two since I'm actually building it on a Raspberry Pi and those CPU's aren't the
most powerful or the most fast. However, The kernel build process isn't placing
any stress on the system. So far only 1.32G out of 8G is being used and there
isn't any evidence that the system is being taxed in any way. The temperature is
a little high though, around 41.381 °C/106.485 °F, totally acceptable, in my
estimation.
The real test will be if the kernel is any good, that's the ultimate, desired
goal. We never give up, so if there are any obstacles we'll do some more
reading and eventually, progress will be made. However, I'm hopeful that this
may actually work and I'll post the results right here as they progress.
Well I had a few kernel errors, so I had to alter the kernel configuration file
and restart the build process. I have no doubt that further interruptions will
occur. One thing is for certain, I must create newer chroot environments on my
faster computers and build the kernels there, because the build process, on the
Raspberry Pi, though mild on resources and hardly noticeable, takes quite a while
even with 8G of RAM. I think I know why though. It seems that the kernels in the
Pine Phones are all built with debugging information included, which will ultimately
make for larger kernels and larger kernels take a longer time to build. Well now, a
bit of good news now, I've successfully built the kernel and after I take a walk to
the grocer and a little extra for exercise, I'll come back and see if this kernel
will actually work. I'll make sure that the old kernel is all backed up just in case.
Wish me luck. Wow, that kernel was three-quarters of Gigabyte, well unless I'm
mad, it's 778M, no wonder it took four hours to build. However, my build included
two kernel image files one weighing in at 778M the other at 47M, kernel headers
and another named, linux-libc-dev_5.10.13-rt24-1_arm64.deb. The command I used
was, make bindeb-pkg, if I had used make deb-pkg there would be a sources file
reflecting the sources that I used to build this particular kernel. I'm going
to install the smaller kernel image file, for obvious reasons, I'll let the
developers install the big one. However before I install it I'm going to take
it apart and look at the configuration file to make sure that the drivers I want,
are included.
How does one take a .deb file apart you ask? Well it's simple, what I do is, this,
I place the file in a directory that I call foo and within foo, I execute the
command ar -x and split the .deb file into all it's components which are usually
other compressed files, usually decompressed by using the tar command. Go ahead,
try it, if you like. Especially if you're a Debian user, or any derivative, if
this is your first time hearing or reading this try it for yourself. You may or
may not wish to read the man pages or the ar command but it's not really necessary
in this case. Just put your .deb file into an empty directory and issue the command
ar -x whateverdebfile.deb and see what happens. There should be three new files
plus your original .deb file in the directory now. One called control.tar.xz,
data.tar.xz, debian-binary and your source .deb file.
Well my Pine Phone hated that kernel and it would not boot. I just realized that I
could have saved myself loads of time by installing the headers for the kernel
already installed and compile the modules for them there. It's been a long time,
maybe two years ago, since I did this sort of thing on a regular basis and I have
so much useless information in my head that I can't remember them all. Okay I'll
attempt to recover this machine and find another way to get this pine phone, this
computer, to bend to my will. So far so good, I'm not sure what went wrong with
the kernel build if anything, I'm puzzled as to why the kernel was rejected by the
device. Perhaps I need to go to the Mobian project page and see if they have their
own tool kit for building kernels. Anyhow, we're up and running again, like it
never happened. I'll just apt remove that failed kernel and go to plan B, which is
download the headers and build the mouse modules I need. My memory is a little fuzzy
on how I've done this in the past but I'll fail a few times before I get it right.
March 09, 2021
I've reconsidered, for the moment, if this next method fails, then I'll go back to
plan B. If plan B is still the same, what plan nomenclature is this? I think I'll
call this plan plan A one. Plan A one, is the native building of the kernel on
the Pine Phone itself. Yes, I know it's mad but how is one to learn if one never
does things worthy of learning? I don't expect it to work but what exactly do I
have to lose? I'm going to do that next and if I fail, I'll document it and then
I'll make the missing modules using the kernel headers located in /usr/src. Well
I've done it and it's just begun. I've commenced the building of the Pine Phone
kernel, on the phone itself, not many resources are being use which is a good
thing, although, I'm afraid this could take several hours. However, I've used the
kernel configuration file of the smaller kernel so I suspect it will not take as
long as the last kernel I made earlier.
Another failure I'm afraid. There must be a special tool kit that the developers
use to build kernels for Pine Phones and I need to seek it out. It took almost 24
hours to build those kernels on the Pine Phone, totally, unacceptable. I guess
it's plan B then. Plan B is building the mouse modules using the kernel headers.
First I'll have to refresh my memory on how that's done. I swear, I've forgotten
so many things, that it's a good thing, I've started writing down, much of what I
do now. Luckily all I have to do is take out the SD card and make some edits.
Pretty much what I did yesterday. I knew, that I could have tried a quicker solution,
namely plan B, however, I had to see if a natively built kernel would work. Now, I
have my answer and I no longer have to guess. Well off I go then, I'll keep
this page well documented and let my progress be known.
March 11, 2021
Finally, it's a success. All the methods I used were absolute failures, so I
announced an appeal on the fediverse asking anyone who knew the correct procedure
to compile pine-phone kernels to drop me a clue and someone actually did. Mobian
@mobian@fosstodon.org, gave me a most valuable resource via a link to where the
repository for the Pine Phone kernels we being held captive. There were even some
great instructions on how to get on. The entire kernel build too about twenty
minutes, unbelievable. Especially since my methods were taking up the better part
of this week, I am elated at the progress and success that occurs when all the
tools are on hand. I'm a firm believer, that if I have the correct tools, I can
get any job done. Anyway, I don't see why I should keep the knowledge that @mobian
gave me, to my self here is the link to the Pine Phone's kernel sources right here.
free and open source software, because once I have a clear instruction set and
the right tools I can customize my computing environment. So, now sadly this seems
to be the end of this specific topic on Pine Phones, since we have successfully
completed our tasks. I'm sure there will be other things which I'd like to improve
about my Pine Phone experience and I'll gladly document those events when they arise.
Thanks for all those who helped making this happen and thanks for all who took
time out of their busy schedules to read my rantings. The End.