Root [Avail] [WIP]What we hope to do w/Avail and CM

[cwwilson721]

I know a large part of us want CyanogenMod on our Avail Z990 phones.

Let's take this one step at a time.

We need to:

• Develop/Compile a working 'generic' kernel, as 'base' as possible, to allow other things to proceed
• A new CWM or TWRP Recovery that we can maintain. By "We" I mean this community. That way, all can distribute as they wish.
• THEN we can work on a CM rom for the Avail.

Why in this order?

Kernel

The kernel IS Android. It is what all else uses/hangs on/runs by. Without it, it is like having seats for a car without it's frame, engine, or body. While it looks cool, it is basically useless to get you to Aunt Sadie's house for Thanksgiving. (Sorry to our non-US people. I live here, and so I'll use US holidays. Substitute what you want...lol). Once we get that rolling, we can then move to next step:

CWM or TWRP Recovery

There is some floating around out there for the Avail. However, the "best" CWM for our phone has 3 issues:

1. Based on VERY old CWM
2. Not fully functional (Close, but not quite there)
3. The Dev took all links down when he left. While some of us may have copies, we need a new one. That one is no longer maintained.

With a new Recovery, we can easily flash, edit, etc. our phones. We need a functional kernel for this.

We can go either CWM (The "default" alternate Recovery), or TWRP. Either way, we need one the does all it needs to. When we have those two pieces, then:

CyanogenMod

This is the last piece, the programs/scripts, etc, that make it a full Android system. Version, at the moment, doesn't matter. What we need to do is get to almost ANY working version, then we can go from there.


A word about what we can do

And that word is ANYTHING.
Anything is possible.
You can do anything.
As far as I know, there is NO reason why we cannot do this.

All of this is going to be a community effort. As far as I'm concerned (for me, at least), anything I end up posting here can be modded/improved/commented on/shown to others. I don't know everything. I make mistakes (ask my kids and my mother...lol). I miss lines in code. I copy/paste the wrong thing. But, let me know, and we all can do it better. If you know someone who might help, show them our work. Most devs have different ideas on what to do. Some will work, some won't. But if we all try, we can do this.

/Cheers, standing ovation, flinging of hats, general pandamonium

Next post in this thread is going to be for what I am currently working on. Reply, encourage, and do what you need to.

All comments welcome about the work.

 

[cwwilson721]

I'm syncing the repos for CM7 to get us a start. I already have the 'official' ZTE-Z990 kernel sources.

After it FINALLY syncs, I can start on the kernel and CWM/TWRP. I might try TWRP after CWM. Why? CWM has a much larger "dev base", and as such, should get us rolling faster. Then, we can look at TWRP (It's always nice to have choice. That's why I use Android, and work almost exclusively in Linux. Otherwise, if I didn't want choice, I'd be running Windows and holding an iPhone in my hand)

If anyone in the community has a working makeconfig file for the kernel, let me know. It will save a bunch on the "will this work" stuff

*** Compiled a kernel. Now testing on my own phone. Details to follow ****

 

[cwwilson721]

Okay..Kernel built/compiled. Have all the zImage/modules in one place.

Now, Why can't I make a flashable zip for cwm? What am I missing?

 

[cwwilson721]

I have a CWM built w/ext4 kernel, and the boot.img for the ext4 kernel

Links posted inna bit. Maybe in other threads

 

[cell2011]

Id be interested in testing since i use my merit wifi only. And have flashed all the blade builds and some flashed to the zte logo and some abort. Wouldnt that mean its close to booting? I flashed all the roms on Unlockr site

 

[mixmax]

Thanks for your effort! Did you use kernel from here as a baseline version? keep up good work - we all are so eager to see CM and 4.x Android running on Avail

 

[cwwilson721]

Yea, partly. Plus merges from other places.

Still working on it, tho

 

[repkam09]

I am also very interested in getting CyanogenMod up and running. While I am an experienced Linux user I have not done very much with Android or ROMs yet.

I would love to help test if you need anything.

 

[nickdalzell]

i'd do anything to get CM 6 or 7 on my Merit. so far that is my favorite and required ROM and is not as of yet out for the Merit. I won't use ICS-based anything though. never liked it. I've managed to tack on many of CM's elements (look, boot animation, built-in CPU clock, etc) but most require separate apps to accomplish, which makes space a problem. so far ROM Toolbox Pro's built-in tools are as close as I can get to the 'CyanogenMod Settings' menu which is part of CM builds. unfortunately there is nothing I can do to a stock or any other custom ROM out there to allow CM-specific apps, such as Theme Chooser or 2G/3G toggle apps to work. and, in addition, I have not yet figured out how they got that neat 'TV' style on/off screen animation in there. I tried installing it via Rom Toolbox but it must have failed (didn't tell me it installed and I got no animation)

 

[out of ideas]

You can add most of that stuff. Just takes a while.

Good luck cw. Cm7 would be cool. I've tried half ass porting from the blade but end up upside down and only get the cm status bar.

 

[nickdalzell]

most of the stuff yes but not the exclusive stuff. most takes separate apps or one large app to accomplish a lot of what CM has built-in, which is bad for the Avail/Merit's serious internal space problem (it's rather small). plus some exclusives such as the 2G toggle are not working except in CM builds because that menu does not exist on stock ROMs. i have however found an app called Phone Info (free) that i can use to easily force 2G only but it doesn't stick if the phone self-reboots or you turn it off yourself to back it up. then certain things exclusive to CM such as the TV flip animation that shows when you power down or wake the device up don't work outside of it. you can't tack that on from my experience. most of that requires Theme Chooser, which i cannot find an APK for yet.

although i have managed to, outside my choice of launcher/theme gotten my device to look almost indistinguishable from CyanogenMod 7, right down to the boot animation and certain features and status bar tweaks. unfortunately it's cost me most of my phone's internal storage. i had to go back to the stock rooted ROM Stayboogy created long ago, because certain features i use are broken in SpeedFreak and One.Three (the speech to text settings cause a FC every time)

 

[out of ideas]

I'm not talking about apps. I meant actually adding stuff in the code. Cm is gingerbread so you could add almost everything. That crt animation looks like an hour job tops.

You should download a cm7 update and you can pull out all the apks you. Don't know if they will work for you or not. Could also grab sounds and such if you need them

 

[stayboogy]

most of the stuff yes but not the exclusive stuff. most takes separate apps or one large app to accomplish a lot of what CM has built-in, which is bad for the Avail/Merit's serious internal space problem (it's rather small). plus some exclusives such as the 2G toggle are not working except in CM builds because that menu does not exist on stock ROMs. i have however found an app called Phone Info (free) that i can use to easily force 2G only but it doesn't stick if the phone self-reboots or you turn it off yourself to back it up. then certain things exclusive to CM such as the TV flip animation that shows when you power down or wake the device up don't work outside of it. you can't tack that on from my experience. most of that requires Theme Chooser, which i cannot find an APK for yet.

although i have managed to, outside my choice of launcher/theme gotten my device to look almost indistinguishable from CyanogenMod 7, right down to the boot animation and certain features and status bar tweaks. unfortunately it's cost me most of my phone's internal storage. i had to go back to the stock rooted ROM Stayboogy created long ago, because certain features i use are broken in SpeedFreak and One.Three (the speech to text settings cause a FC every time)

dude, the stuff you're wanting won't happen...

the apps spare parts and blade buddy are what you wanting for settings...

i've built CM7 and told you that it won't do what you are wanting. why you won't give it up i have no idea. i can give you a list of every app that comes with CM7 and there is nothing that will do everything that you are wanting... and they aren't hidden settings either. it's all done through apps.

you guys don't know even the slightest bit of information when it comes to building CM or even what's included with it.

hang it up. much more and better can be done without it. period.

 

[cell2011]

Why dont someone put it together and just add apps from the store and a mixer from other roms

 

[nickdalzell]

For one tacking on every CM element takes up twice the space on an already limited storage. Secondly, certain elements, namely the tv flip animations seen when waking or locking the device cannot be tacked on. The animations are part of theme chooser. From my experience theme chooser isn't available in the play store or downloadable as an APK

 

[cwwilson721]

...which is bad for the Avail/Merit's serious internal space problem (it's rather small)...

G1 has WAY less memory, and runs CM7 rather well, CM9 mostly, and CM10 as alpha.

The issue of CM not on this device yet has to do with very few CM make files and other proprietary files that have not been tackled by the Cyanogen Mod team YET. Will they ever? Probably after a while. Progress is being made. You just have to wait. CM on this phone would work fine.

...because certain features i use are broken in SpeedFreak and One.Three (the speech to text settings cause a FC every time)

The FC for speech to text/Text to Speech issue in SF's rom is easily overcome by installing the Pico TTS apk. Any other issues as far as FCs in SF's rom are also easy to fix. (AND, sometimes related to each other. Fix one, others start to work correctly, too)

As a matter of fact, SpeedFreak 2.0 is testing already, as is another ROM, on another forum.

Seems like we have more than stock. Wishes and hard work seem to come out on top. We want, we work, we don't let anything or anybody get us down, and we progress. The Model T was a good car. I prefer the GT-40. To each his own, I guess.

But I won't say you can't. WE ALL CAN, if WE want it.

 

[nickdalzell]

To offer correction, I was stating that tacking on features that are found in CM to any stock rom (most requiring separate apps to do) costs tons of space, I am aware that having it built in as is the case with CM builds would not harm storage, as that is very different from having five or six separate apps to do the same job. Now someone a week or so ago PMed me about a working CM 6 ROM that was out for the Avail but he didn't provide a link, and has not responded to my question about that. I cannot find any such info though online anywhere, so I'd like to know more about it

 

[out of ideas]

i doubt the merit/avail is gonna make it to official cm status. The prevail had a solid cm7 for like a year and its still unofficial. Definetly thing it would run good on this phone. If you are adding the cm7 your also removing alot of merit stuff, its about the same amount of space. I know DSP manager works fine on this phone, ive had it on for a week. anyone know the specific music player libs? tried some but nothing doing.

 

[nickdalzell]

I've managed to tack on much of CM's elements like the boot animation and using certain features in ROM Toolbox Pro to make up for the lack of the CyanogenMod Settings menu (performance/UI tweaks) and did *something* by accident that fixed the phantom reboot bug for keeps! I also disabled the low disk space notification that used to kill sync and sms reception. It's not a perfect copy but aside go launcher I've managed a darn good representation of the features and stability and even the 2G only mode (done via app who's Icon is on the dock, scroll down after clicking and select GSM Only, and to go back just use airplane mode and then disable airplane mode and you're back on 3G. I can clean it up and post it if anyone wants to play with it.

 

[cwwilson721]

If you're so hung up on 'low space', get rid of the crud, then mount the /data /sdext partitions together. Whatever size you had partitioned on the sdcard for sd-ext, that's what you'll have for 'internal'. It will be slightly slower (depending on the class of the card), but your low mem issues will be gone.

outofideas: The Prevail has zip to do with this phone (Different manufacturer, totally different phone). As for 'official' status, that doesn't matter at all. 80% of phones don't have it. We just need a working port to a 'sister' phone, and we'll progress from there. There are CM builds out there for the various phones, just none work ATM.

 

[cell2011]

Hey man I've always liked Cyano too when i had a Hero cdma. I'd like to test this im running ice cream dre 1.0 Does wifi work on this? I only need to use wifi data not important

 

[nickdalzell]

I disabled the low space alert because I still had well over 20mb left so I didn't feel that it killing sync and text/ email reception was needed. This revives my sync. That's all. I'm quite satisfied now because I've pulled off almost all of CM's features, and accidentally fixed my reboot bug. Honestly now even of CM does come out I'm likely to keep using my own mod as default. I got all my apps I want no problems.

 

[out of ideas]

No crap its a different phone bro. Point is they are both low-end androids that cm isn't going to go out of there way to fix. Someone on the boards will end up having to do it. There's a couple for the blade, thats a good place to start.

 

[nickdalzell]

the LG Optimus V was a low-end phone too, but it had CM 7.1 (and unofficial one but one that is easily found) which not only got the phone to go from Froyo to Gingerbread, but it has all the Cyano goodies. so a low-end device does not count out the possibility...

 

[out of ideas]

I know. I'm sure this phone would handle it fine.

Definitely let us know if you get that kernel working. I'd like to check that out.