linaro-android-tools Scripts Upgrade Android Kernel & Initrd via ADB

With Linaro 13.01 release, Linaro announced linaro-android-tools (aka Kernel Update Tools), a set of tools to improve development time for kernel developers. Today, they published a blog post explaining those scripts allow developers to update the kernel without having to take out the SD card from their development board, and instead update the firmware via ADB with a PC connected via the network or USB. Currently there are 2 shell scripts: update-android.sh – To update kernel files in boot partition such as boot.tar.bz2, single files (e.g. uImage) or kernel modules. Usage:

For example:

update-uInitrd.sh – To update files in the initrd Usage:

For example:

Those 2 scripts are available in Linaro git repository:

Currently the scripts only support Pandaboard, Origen, Versatile Express, and Versatile Express A9 boards,but they could be easily modified to support other boards supporting linaro packages. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software […]

AllWinner A10 Initramfs Support and Linaro 12.07 Image

An initramfs is a minimal root filesystem that is loaded at an early stage of the boot process, before the rootfs partition is mounted. This is optional but is now used by many Linux distributions such as Ubuntu in order to speed up boot time among others things. Up to recently, there was no support for this in the AllWinner A10 nightly builds, and there would be lot of error messages due to ureadahead process with Ubuntu, but I’ve changed that by: Using a boot.scr file (U-Boot Script) for each supported device in order to either follow the default init boot method or do an initramfs boot if uInitrd file is present in the FAT partition. Adding a script (a1x-initramfs.sh) to generate and install uInitrd initramfs in the rootfs. The initramfs can’t be generated at build time since the hardware packs are (mostly) distribution agnostic. If you want an initramfs, […]

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