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Posts: 158 | Thanked: 340 times | Joined on Jul 2010 @ middle of nowhere
#61
FROM NEWBIE TO POWER USER

This is the promised guide for every new user, or those who come back to n900 (like me) and don't remember exactly what to do first



PART I - Cleaning the memory and set the defaults

1 - download flasher 3.5 from here: http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/....5_2.5.2.2.zip
2 - download Latest Vanilla version of the eMMC content for Nokia N900 and PR 1.3 FIASCO image from here: http://skeiron.org/tablets-dev/nokia_N900/
3 - install flasher 3.5 and put the two image files (vanilla and fiasco) in C:\Program Files\maemo\flasher-3.5
4 - launch flasher 3.5 and paste the following line:
PHP Code:
flasher-3.5.exe -F RX-51_2009SE_10.2010.13-2.VANILLA_PR_EMMC_MR0_ARM.bin -
hit enter. "Suitable device not found waiting" should appear.
5 - now with n900 turned off connect the cable while holding "u" key of the phone pressed - the flashing process should start. When complete DO NOT TURN ON THE PHONE, or you'll have to repeat this step, but remove the battery for 2 seconds. Now put battery back in the phone, without power it on.
6 - in flasher 3.5 paste this
PHP Code:
flasher-3.5.exe -F RX-51_2009SE_20.2010.36-2_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin --
hit enter. The same "suitable device..." should appear again.
7 - plug the usb cable while holding "u" key of the phone pressed. When finished the phone should start itself. First start take some time, but if everithing went fine you'll have a fresh n900.

This part is recommended especially if you bought a second-hand unit, to be sure you have cleared all data of the first user.

PART II - increasing app memory

1 - First go to hildon app manager (HAM) - application catalogues - press new and add this catalogs:
PHP Code:
Catalogue nameExtras-Devel
Web address
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel/
Distributionfremantle
Components
free non-free
Disabled
NO 
PHP Code:
Catalogue nameextras
Web address
http://repository.maemo.org/extras/
Distributionfremantle
Components
free non-free
Disabled
NO 
PHP Code:
Catalogue nameExtras-Testing
Web address
http://repository.maemo.org/extras-testing/
Distributionfremantle
Components
free non-free
Disabled
NO 
2 - i recommend to dowload faster application manager (FAM) becase it is alot faster than the built in HAM
3 - now install (either from FAM or HAM if you chosed to stay with it) backupmenu. This will also install fanoush bootmenu.
4 - go to your PC and download Gparted from here: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php Download whatever you want to use (live cd, usb image, etc). I chosed live cd and burned it to a cd.
A usefull link if you have never use gparted before: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Gparted
5 - after created gparted live cd (or usb stick), put it in your pc, restart it, and boot your pc from cd (or usb) to gparted.
6 - once gparted is running on pc, restart n900 with keyboard opened. Bootmenu should appear. Select backupmenu from there, and connect usb cable and press "w" on the phone (that's mass memory read-write). In gparted select Gparted- refresh drives
7 - click the right corner (where /dev/hda is), and select your n900. It should appear with 3 partitions: a 27 gb Vfat partition (that's MyDocs where all music, photos, videos are stored), 2gb EXT3 partition (that's for applications and games), 768 mb swap partiton (leave that alone) and 64mb unpartitioned space (also leave it alone)
8 - right click on the 27 gb Vfat partiton and select resize. Now you do the math that is the best for you. I removed 8 gb from it- thats 19653 mb left- becase i want 10 gb EXT3 partiton for apps, games and android.
9 - now right-click the 2gb ext3- select resize and simply drag with the mouse on the unpartitioned space left from the first partition.
10 - check (twice) if everithing is ok becase hitting the apply button means the "Point of no returning" wait to complete - it will take a while.
11 - when done disconnect usb cable and restart the phone. Now check if everithing went fine by going to setting-memory.
*Note- If you think you can survive with 2gb app memory you don't have to do this

PART III Kernel power and u-boot

1 - assumig you do this after memory repartition- go to HAM or better FAM and uninstall backupmenu
2 - install rootsh and filebox from HAM or FAM
3 - this time you'll have to install FAM becase HAM does not properly install Pali's latest kernel power v52
4 - install u-boot with kernel 2.6.28-omap1
5 - install linux kernel for power user v52, linux kernel for power user boot image for u-boot and linux kernel for power user settings and oveclock
6 - go to x-term and type
PHP Code:
u-boot-update-bootmenu 
7 - restart the phone with opened keboard. u-boot should appear with kernel power v52 as the second item. select it
*Note- if uboot menu does not update, although everithing went ok, and bootmenu.scr and bootmenu.img.d are in MyDocs, You might want to format mass memory with pc and then retype the above command in x-term.(that was my case and i didn't know what to do, the u-boot menu simply did not update and i could not boot into kernel power v52, i just accidentaly discovered that this is the solution)
9 - go to x-term and type
PHP Code:
uname -
if everithing was ok it should appear 2.6.28.10-power52
Here are more info about u-boot: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=81613
*Note- Multiboot support for kernel power v52 was finally dropped - that is a good thing becase multiboot writes data everytime it is used to internal memory- and like any other memory, the n900's memory have a limited number of writes

PART IV nitdroid

!!BEFORE INSTALLING NITDROID INSTALL MAEMO CSSU AND CSSU TESTING OTHERWISE WIFI, BLUETOOTH, BATTERY METER WILL NOT WORK ON ANDROID !!

1 - assuming you do this after u-boot instalation, download N12_UMay from here: http://downloads.nitdroid.com/e-yes/ an the nitdroid kernel 7 rc7 also from there
2 - download the files from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8vj...OE0/edit?pli=1 and copy all the downloaded files to n900's mass memory (MyDocs)
3 - open filebox go to settings and thick "enable root access" and "show hidden files and folders"
4 - go to /etc folder and create a new folder named "multiboot.d" (it is necessary for nitdroid kernel to be properly installed).
5 - open x-term type "root" and all of these commands one at a time, pressing enter after each and wait for everyone to complete it's task
PHP Code:
cd /home/user/MyDocs
bzip2 
-d N12_UMay.tar.bz2
cd 
/home
mkdir 
/and
cd /
mount /home /and
cd /and
tar xvf /home/user/MyDocs/N12_UMay.tar
dpkg 
-/home/user/MyDocs/nitdroid-kernel-2.6.28-07_7-rc7_armel.deb 
after that close x-term
6 - now copy with filebox the "50-cm900.item" file to /etc/bootmenu.d/
7 - copy "Uimage" and "init.nokia.rc" files to /home, confirm replace for "init.nokia.rc"
8 - copy "init_subsys" to /home/system/maemo/bin/ confirm replace
9 - go to x-term and type
PHP Code:
u-boot-update-bootmenu 
10 - reboot with keboard opened and select the CM900 item. First boot of android will take a while, also if you can't get pass the "touch android to begin" screen, reboot the phone and select CM900 item again.
*Note- the "50-cm900.item" file from here is modified by me, for my memory configuration (10gb ext3 and 19gb MyDocs). If you choosed another config when partitioned the memory, edit that file with notepad to suit your configuration.
*Note 2- If you migrate from multiboot to u-boot simply uninstall multiboot, install uboot, copy the files from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8vj...OE0/edit?pli=1 to the specified folders, make sure multiboot.d folder remained in /etc, if not create one, and install nitdroid kernel 7 rc7. Also don't forget to update u-boot-bootmenu - That was the brief tutorial "how to move from multiboot to uboot" that a member requested.

PART V a walk in the park

Once you are done with all this you can say the hardest parts are over - enjoy your n900 and install form FAM or (not so good) HAM whatever apps you need- simply just select them and install them, and whatever you cannot find in the maemo side- swich to android and you'll definately find them in google play.

That is all you need to do to have a perfect nokia n900

*Note- I will not be responsable if you destroy your phone

All credit goes to the users who innitially created those programs (u-boot, kernel power, nitdroid) and the guides. I simply gathered all the info, tested on my phone, add a few instructions here and there and bundle all into one post


Last edited by ryu1; 2013-05-22 at 11:28.
 

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#62
That is for the software side. As soon as i'll find someone with a decent camera i will post some pictures with the hardware modifications that i did on my n900
 

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#63
Originally Posted by ryu1 View Post
FROM NEWBIE TO POWER USER

This is the promised guide for every new user, or those who come back to n900 (like me) and don't remember exactly what to do first
I'm one of those "who came back to N900 and don't remember exactly what to do first". Nice guide!

EDIT:

Friend, just an update, I think there were some intricate details in the procedure that needed to be documented. I'll go ahead and write a Wiki article for U-boot and how to set it up to work with Backupmenu. Some of the other posts that I reviewed were:

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=915 (this post attempted to boot Backupmenu when you have U-boot by saving some files in "MyDocs" to help automate the process or integrate Backupmenu processes to U-Boot)

and

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=701 (this one closely resembles your steps but covers some more details, but still I found some minor things lacking and needed a bit of re-write to be better understood and to be more descriptive).

My motivation to write a Wiki article stems from my first article which is Ubiboot (for Nokia N9)...also, I wanted to have some documentation that I can always go back to in case I forget (just like with the N900 which I stopped using for quite some time but started using it again).

Last edited by topet2k12001; 2013-07-03 at 07:03.
 

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DA5's Avatar
Posts: 70 | Thanked: 338 times | Joined on Jan 2013
#64
One thing about that guide, it would be better for the eMMC if the partitioning is done during the flash rather than after with GParted. How to do that is described here: http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Joerg_rw/tools

For example to get a 10GB /home you could do this to your Vanilla eMMC bin (the file from step 4 of the guide):
Code:
sed -e "s/size = 2048/size =10240/" path/to/*VANILLA*.bin >patched-VANILLA.bin
Then do step 4 with patched-VANILLA.bin.

There's a reason GParted takes so long, and that's because it's doing a lot of writes to the eMMC.
 

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#65
Originally Posted by DA5 View Post
Code:
sed -e "s/size = 2048/size =10240/" path/to/*VANILLA*.bin >patched-VANILLA.bin
I do not have a linux machine... So if I type this in N900 xterminal will it work?
 
pichlo's Avatar
Posts: 6,445 | Thanked: 20,981 times | Joined on Sep 2012 @ UK
#66
Originally Posted by shabr View Post
I do not have a linux machine... So if I type this in N900 xterminal will it work?
Yes. But it may take a couple of minutes to complete. And you need enough space on your phone for the patched copy of the image.
__________________
Русский военный корабль, иди нахуй!
 

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Posts: 158 | Thanked: 340 times | Joined on Jul 2010 @ middle of nowhere
#67
Originally Posted by shabr View Post
I do not have a linux machine... So if I type this in N900 xterminal will it work?
Well, you could download any linux distro and make a live usb stick and boot from it, without installing it on pc
 

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Posts: 207 | Thanked: 967 times | Joined on Apr 2014 @ Madrid, Spain
#68
Originally Posted by ryu1 View Post
FROM NEWBIE TO POWER USER
Hi!

I've followed your guide to install nitdroid+u-boot from scratch.
The basis seem OK, since the kernel boots, and the console "A N D R O I D" message is displayed, so it seems that it correctly finds android's root filesystem.

However, it never completes booting up, and after a while (less than a minute), the N900 reboots itself.

Do you have any idea on this?

Thank you!
 
mp107's Avatar
Posts: 166 | Thanked: 454 times | Joined on Apr 2015 @ Poland
#69
For information purposes:
The method from post #61 seems to not work with NITDroid N14 dev snapshot.

It starts booting, we can see the "ANDROID" booting logo (with flashes of Terminal look) but on some moment the device shuts down.
 
Posts: 190 | Thanked: 206 times | Joined on Jan 2010 @ Accra,Ghana
#70
Originally Posted by ryu1 View Post
FROM NEWBIE TO POWER USER


PART III Kernel power and u-boot

1 - assumig you do this after memory repartition- go to HAM or better FAM and uninstall backupmenu
2 - install rootsh and filebox from HAM or FAM
3 - this time you'll have to install FAM becase HAM does not properly install Pali's latest kernel power v52
4 - install u-boot with kernel 2.6.28-omap1
5 - install linux kernel for power user v52, linux kernel for power user boot image for u-boot and linux kernel for power user settings and oveclock
6 - go to x-term and type
PHP Code:
u-boot-update-bootmenu 
7 - restart the phone with opened keboard. u-boot should appear with kernel power v52 as the second item. select it
*Note- if uboot menu does not update, although everithing went ok, and bootmenu.scr and bootmenu.img.d are in MyDocs, You might want to format mass memory with pc and then retype the above command in x-term.(that was my case and i didn't know what to do, the u-boot menu simply did not update and i could not boot into kernel power v52, i just accidentaly discovered that this is the solution)
9 - go to x-term and type
PHP Code:
uname -
if everithing was ok it should appear 2.6.28.10-power52
Here are more info about u-boot: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=81613
*Note- Multiboot support for kernel power v52 was finally dropped - that is a good thing becase multiboot writes data everytime it is used to internal memory- and like any other memory, the n900's memory have a limited number of writes

PART IV nitdroid

!!BEFORE INSTALLING NITDROID INSTALL MAEMO CSSU AND CSSU TESTING OTHERWISE WIFI, BLUETOOTH, BATTERY METER WILL NOT WORK ON ANDROID !!

1 - assuming you do this after u-boot instalation, download N12_UMay from here: http://downloads.nitdroid.com/e-yes/ an the nitdroid kernel 7 rc7 also from there
2 - download the files from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8vj...OE0/edit?pli=1 and copy all the downloaded files to n900's mass memory (MyDocs)
3 - open filebox go to settings and thick "enable root access" and "show hidden files and folders"
4 - go to /etc folder and create a new folder named "multiboot.d" (it is necessary for nitdroid kernel to be properly installed).
5 - open x-term type "root" and all of these commands one at a time, pressing enter after each and wait for everyone to complete it's task
PHP Code:
cd /home/user/MyDocs
bzip2 
-d N12_UMay.tar.bz2
cd 
/home
mkdir 
/and
cd /
mount /home /and
cd /and
tar xvf /home/user/MyDocs/N12_UMay.tar
dpkg 
-/home/user/MyDocs/nitdroid-kernel-2.6.28-07_7-rc7_armel.deb 
after that close x-term
6 - now copy with filebox the "50-cm900.item" file to /etc/bootmenu.d/
7 - copy "Uimage" and "init.nokia.rc" files to /home, confirm replace for "init.nokia.rc"
8 - copy "init_subsys" to /home/system/maemo/bin/ confirm replace
9 - go to x-term and type
PHP Code:
u-boot-update-bootmenu 
10 - reboot with keboard opened and select the CM900 item. First boot of android will take a while, also if you can't get pass the "touch android to begin" screen, reboot the phone and select CM900 item again.
*Note- the "50-cm900.item" file from here is modified by me, for my memory configuration (10gb ext3 and 19gb MyDocs). If you choosed another config when partitioned the memory, edit that file with notepad to suit your configuration.
*Note 2- If you migrate from multiboot to u-boot simply uninstall multiboot, install uboot, copy the files from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8vj...OE0/edit?pli=1 to the specified folders, make sure multiboot.d folder remained in /etc, if not create one, and install nitdroid kernel 7 rc7. Also don't forget to update u-boot-bootmenu - That was the brief tutorial "how to move from multiboot to uboot" that a member requested.



[/I][/B]
just bumping this to show that this still works after all these years and successfully installed NITDROID with ubiboot for those who want to know. of course now kernel-power is now version 53. Thanks ryu1.
 

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