Siyah kernel - Dummies Guide

[Hawker]

Flashed stock ICS via Odin (I9100XWLP4), flashed CF-Root v5.4 LP3 via Odin. Then flashed old bootloader and sucessfully used my USB jig to get rid of yellow triangle and reset flash counter. Flashed Siyah 3.0.1 via CWM.

All good so far, but now I must go to bed !!

I'm slightly confused when it comes to the old bootloader. Does it require a different old bootloader for ICS, or will the GB old one do the job?

 

[dynomot]

I'm slightly confused when it comes to the old bootloader. Does it require a different old bootloader for ICS, or will the GB old one do the job?

The old GB one worked a treat.

 

[ironass]

The changelog for the next Siyah release, v3.1beta1, looks very interesting:-

SiyahKernel for SGS2 | "One kernel to rule them all"

 

[Kie]

Yes, dual booting is back! Almost!

 

[ironass]

Siyah kernel v3.1 beta1 is up!

"Changelog:

touchscreen sensitivity tweaks
sio fifo_batch=1
set default usb mode to mass_storage for MIUI ROMs.
disabled smooth scaling for interactive based governors (lulzactive and interactive)
prevented tick sound after reboots or in download/recovery modes
Dual-booting
For now, you will only have one additional option available in CWM Touch Recovery and that is cloning your primary ROM as secondary.

If you want to have another ROM as secondary ROM, follow these steps:

Make a nandroid backup of your existing ROM
wipe everything and install the other ROM
Boot the ROM and make customizations. Don

 

[iT0mm0]

just updated to the latest and am going to sit tight before i try this dualbooting

 

[Kie]

I skipped Siyah v3.1 beta 1 because Siyah v3.1 beta 2 is out!!

Changelog (from da site
- fixed high memory usage
- fixed booting Samsung ROMs as the second ROM
- no need to fix CWM Manager backup issue. If you use any action in CWM Manager it will only boot to recovery because CWM Touch Recovery only works for the primary ROM. The commands are created in secondary ROM’s cache partition if you use CWM Manager in the second ROM, therefore they will be ineffective in the recovery mode.
- re-enabled CGROUP_TIMER_SLACK and SCHED_AUTOGROUP
- reapplied ondemandx patch (I forgot to put it back in v3.0 release. it should be the reason of having more battery drain with 3.0 than 3.0rc2)

Looks like I'm back on ondemandx!

Edit1: I still only have the ondemand option, no ondemandx.

Edit2: And Siyah 3.1 beta 3 is right around the corner!

Changelog up to now:

- fixed move2sd problem in CM9 and AO(S|K)P ROMs
- mounted sdcard with utf8 (should fix some chinese or cryllic chars not being displayed correctly)
- I recommend you to use move2sd feature only on the primary rom because there are lots of details which is really hard to explain here.

Edit3: Siyah 3.1 beta 3 is out! lol gokhan's churning them out today!

 

[hippityhop]

I was on Siyah 3.1b3 and it's very good. However, flashed the new 3.1rc1 and the laggy scrolling came back, so I switched back to 3.1b3.

Will be waiting for 3.1rc2.

 

[ironass]

Siyah kernel v3.1rc2 is up!

"Changelog:

removed 1600MHz and 100MHz steps
merged with cm9 sources (some patches for at&t version and lots of cleanups/rewrites. thanks to teamhacksung and Entropy512)
updated the build script a little to fix the module loading issues (which is, by the way, the main root of wifi toggling issues)"

 

[Hawker]

rc3 is now up


Changelog:

* new feature: BLN without Wakelock (BLNWW). Disabled by default. You have to enable it using ExTweaks app.
* default I/O scheduler is set to CFQ.for default profile.
* CIFS is now built-in, no longer a module, to save space
* Superuser.apk, su, CWMManager.apk and ntfs-3g files are moved to the end of the kernel and won’t be decompressed unless they are needed to speed up the boot time.
* samsung recovery binaries and some unnecessary files moved to the end of the kernel image to eliminate unnecessary decompression. those will be decompressed only when you boot into recovery, which will make the booting process faster.
* we are now back to gzip compression after moving unnecessary binaries to payload part.

 

[Forbidden 403]

SiyahKernel v3.1rc4 is up...

Changelog:

• checked all freq and voltage interfaces and found no problem. make sure you remove boot settings and reapply after flashing rc2 or newer because the number of frequency steps has changed. we do not have 8 steps anymore, we have 6 steps. you have to update your init.d scripts or reapply boot settings accordingly. Just in case, I have added parsing 8-step freq settings and discard first and last settings and apply 6 in the middle.
• added progress bar to cloning process.
• new feature: swap primary and secondary ROMs. It takes about twice the time of a cloning process. This will help you to update your second ROM until I finish flashing zips to second ROM.
• updated smooth_scaling defaults to new step level. (smooth_target=1, smooth_offset=2, smooth_step=2)
• added available space checks to cloning and swapping ROMs.
• updated to linux 3.0.28
• BLN: fixed cm9 ROMs having touch lights off after BLN notification

(can't post links as this is my first post )

Flashing now....

 

[Kie]

Glad to see we're all being nice and taking turns

Also flashing RC4. Can't believe it's only been 3 days since I flashed beta 3!

 

[Forbidden 403]

Update by Gokhanmoral on his website.
SiyahKernel v3.1rc4

REUPLOADED ON 16th April. Please redownload.

Modified changelog:

• checked all freq and voltage interfaces and found no problem. make sure you remove boot settings and reapply after flashing rc2 or newer because the number of frequency steps has changed. we do not have 8 steps anymore, we have 6 steps. you have to update your init.d scripts or reapply boot settings accordingly. Just in case, I have added parsing 8-step freq settings and discard first and last settings and apply 6 in the middle.
• added progress bar to cloning process.
• new feature: swap primary and secondary ROMs. It takes about twice the time of a cloning process. This will help you to update your second ROM until I finish flashing zips to second ROM.
• updated smooth_scaling defaults to new step level. (smooth_target=1, smooth_offset=2, smooth_step=2)
• added available space checks to cloning and swapping ROMs.
• updated to linux 3.0.28
• BLN: fixed cm9 ROMs having touch lights off after BLN notification
• create /sdcard/.nobootlogo if you don’t want to see the boot logo on startup
• reverted throttling levels back to stock levels. your device will be cooler on load but this may affect benchmark scores if the temperature is high. run your benchmarks in a fridge
• disabled CONFIG_SCHED_AUTOGROUP
• fixed underclocking still uses 1200MHz
• fixed performance governor always locking to 1200MHz
• used GB kernel’s touch sensitivity values which nobody was complaining about…

The part in italics is same as the last changelog of rc4 the last 6 points are the reason for a redownload.

Redownloading..

 

[Forbidden 403]

Well here is the review of the old rc4 (while my slow slow net downloads the 16th April updated version)

• No FC issues faced
• No wifi issues
• Smooth animations, no lag
• Cannot comment on the battery backup as I was tinkering with it throughout the weekend
• Good performance
• All settings on Siyah defaults

All in all one of the best kernels yet, after 48hrs of use that is.
Let's see what the updated version does.

 

[Kie]

Siyah v3.1 RC5 is out!

A small update, changelog below (from da site):

- fixed blnww problem
- rebased on update4 sources (no upstream updates)

This will go nicely with my new AndyX

 

[Forbidden 403]

Siyah v3.1 RC5 is out!

This will go nicely with my new AndyX

Aah.. and I was just getting settled with my rc4, well downloading again

First Impressions:
Auto brightness is darker than before in low light, still good and clear for viewing.
No lag experienced yet.
Benchmark scores are also good as expected under my current settings.
Let's see how the battery performs overnight.

BTW i noticed that the default scheduler was set to deadline, but the changelog doesn't mention it. Can someone confirm plz. I changed it back to sio.

 

[Forbidden 403]

SiyahKernel v3.1 is imminent

Changelog:

• changed “format /emmc” and “format /sdcard” to “format internal sdcard” and “format external sdcard” to prevent confusion. In CWM Recovery, /emmc is internal sdcard and /sdcard is the external.
• added back the vibration level setting (thanks to myfluxi for the fix)
• fixed ntfs automount for usb sticks. it will be mounted to /mnt/ntfs

Not released yet.

edit: gokhanmoral has edited the post on his site. It's no longer called rc6, its just called 3.1

 

[eirikdh]

Why do I get "no zImage file found" when trying to flash Kernel with CWM Manager.
Siyah-v3.1rc5-CWM.zip downloaded and I can see the zImage file in the zip-file.
Zip-files is placed in internal SD root.
What option do I choose when rebooting into ClockWorkMod recovery to do the same procedure there? Do you think that will work?

Samsung Galaxy S2 4.0.3
Baseband version: l910XXLPS
Kernel version: 3.0.15-l910XXLPS-CL294511

 

[Forbidden 403]

Why do I get "no zImage file found" when trying to flash Kernel with CWM Manager.

You are already on a previous Siyah version, CWM Manager by Chainfire uses aspects of a modified CWM recovery in a CF-root kernel. The CWM recovery of Sitah kernels is modified by gokhanmoral according to his needs. It is not fully compatible with CWM Manager.
Somewhere gokhanmoral had mentioned that many actions of CWM Manager will not work and will reboot you to CWM recovery instead.

All you need to do is reboot into recovery (you can do that from the CWM Manager also) and then install the zip file from there. It will work, I had faced the same issue and it worked for me.

 

[eirikdh]

All you need to do is reboot into recovery (you can do that from the CWM Manager also) and then install the zip file from there. It will work, I had faced the same issue and it worked for me.

How do I install it? Like a ROM? Install zip from SD?

 

[Shotgun84]

How do I install it? Like a ROM? Install zip from SD?

Yeah just flash it like you flash a ROM. Its been a while since I've flashed a siyah kernel with the cwm app so I could be wrong here. But I think if you download the tar instead of the zip it will flash from the app.

 

[Forbidden 403]

How do I install it? Like a ROM? Install zip from SD?

Yes choose install zip from SD (or internal sd depending on where you copied it)

Yeah just flash it like you flash a ROM. Its been a while since I've flashed a siyah kernel with the cwm app so I could be wrong here. But I think if you download the tar instead of the zip it will flash from the app.

gokhanmoral has changed a lot of the CWM recovery app, adding swipe touch, software buttons, support for dual booting etc.
Hence the recommendation is don't use CWM Manager as it was coded to work with the cf-root kernel.
Use the zip only and flash from the recovery menu.

Nowadays all I use the CWM Manager app is to boot into recovery mode

 

[Shotgun84]

Yes choose install zip from SD (or internal sd depending on where you copied it)



gokhanmoral has changed a lot of the CWM recovery app, adding swipe touch, software buttons, support for dual booting etc.
Hence the recommendation is don't use CWM Manager as it was coded to work with the cf-root kernel.
Use the zip only and flash from the recovery menu.

Nowadays all I use the CWM Manager app is to boot into recovery mode

Personally I don't even use it for that, I just boot into recovery with the power menu shortcut, I'm not too sure why I still have it on my phone. I only really remember the .tar used to work with the app as I thought it was strange that worked and the cwm zip didn't.

 

[Hawker]

I've never used CWM manager neither.
I always flash via CWM Recovery. I've heard CWM Manager flashes can be unreliable. If you do want to flash when the phone is up and running, use Mobile Odin.

 

[Forbidden 403]

I've never used CWM manager neither.
I always flash via CWM Recovery. I've heard CWM Manager flashes can be unreliable. If you do want to flash when the phone is up and running, use Mobile Odin.

Ah of course how did I forget Mobile Odin. That's a wonderful app too.

It may be just me but I always feel comfortable with Odin on PC and CWM Recovery mode.

@Shotgun82
The power button shortcut is only available on custom roms if I am right.