January | 2015 | Tech Star

Build CyanogenMod: 6. Extracting proprietary files from the device

Posted by Kulani Mahadewa on January 27, 2015

Posted in: Build OS. Tagged: build, CyanogenMod, Linux, proprietary blobs. 1 Comment

Hi ! 🙂 I hope you have followed the 5th and 6th posts of Build CyanogenMod and ready with your device connected to the Linux VM. Because in order to successfully extract proprietary files from the device you need to connect your device via USB cable and enable ADB on Linux.

Step 1:

Open a new terminal –> Goto device/samsung/<your device> –> Execute the extract-files.sh file

Command:$cd ~/android/system/device/samsung/ancora

Command:$ ./extract-files.sh

Step 2:

Check the new files at android/system/vendor/ancora

Yesss ! we have got new proprietary blobs extracted from the device. 🙂 🙂

Cheers ! 🙂

Build CyanogenMod: 5. How to connect your mobile device to LinuxVM

Posted by Kulani Mahadewa on January 27, 2015

Posted in: Build OS. Tagged: adb devices, connection, Linux, Oracle VM Manager, USB. Leave a comment

Hi ! 🙂 Once you have enabled ADB on Linux VM, then check whether adb detects your mobile device. If not then you have to explicitly change settings through Oracle VM Manager. I have state here the steps to proceed.

Step 1:

First plug your device to the machine. Then;
Goto -> Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager–>Select UbuntuVM (Your Linux VM) –> Settings—>USB –> Select Add filters from device at the left side panel –> Select your device from the suggestions.

Step 2:

Restart your Linux VM (UbuntuVM)

This will install required device drivers and enable the connection between your mobile device and Linux VM.

Step 3:

Open a new terminal -> Execute adb devices command
This result on terminal will show your mobile device as a connected android device.

Cheers ! 🙂

Build CyanogenMod: 4. Enable ADB on Linux to link your device and LinuxVM

Posted by Kulani Mahadewa on January 26, 2015

Posted in: Build OS. Tagged: ADB, Android, AVD, Emulator, Linux, sdk. 1 Comment

Hi ! 🙂 I guess you have collected all required source codes by now. (If not please refer the Buidl OS guide) In order to proceed further you need to communicate with your device through ADB (Android Debug Bridge). So let’s go ahead and download Android SDK to our Linux VM and enable adb.

Step 1. Download Android SDK

We have a Linux environment. So get the android-sdk-r24.0.2-linux.tgz from android developer site here. Extract the files.

Goto android–>sdk—>android-sdk-linux –> tools.

You will see the android executable file. This is the Andorid SDK Manager. Execute the file.

Select Android SDK platform-tools, Build-tools and Install them. In order to get adb tool, fastboot tool these two should be installed on your machine.

Step 2. Update PATH variables

Add path to platform-tools and tools to PATH

Command: $ gedit ~/.bashrc

Command: $ adb

Note: Some required build packages are missing.

Step 3. Get required build packages

Command: $ sudo apt-get install g++-multilib

This will suggest you to add some additional packages. Install them as well.

New packages installed: g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

Step 4. Run adb command

Now the adb is enabled 🙂 Yesss

Command: $ adb devices

This will check for running android devices. Seems like we have no devices currently.

Never mind Lets check with some android virtual devices (emulators) 🙂

Step 5. Create an emulator and run the device.

Create emulator using avd

Command: $ android create avd -n <given name> -t <target ID> –abi <specify CPU>

Ex: $android create avd -n TestAVD -t 1 –abi armeabi-v7a

Run the emulator

Command: $ emulator -avd TestAVD

Running Emulator……

Step 6. Check for running devices through ADB

Command : $ adb devices

You can see the emulator is listed under the running android devices. 🙂

Cheers ! 🙂

Build CyanogenMod: 3. Getting device-specific code

Posted by Kulani Mahadewa on January 25, 2015

Posted in: Build OS. Tagged: ancora, cm-11.0, CyanogenMod, GitHub, GT-I8150. 2 Comments

Hi ! 🙂 Once you have completed downloading cyangenmod mainline source code, next you should get the device specific configuration and kernel source. You are a lucky chap if your device is listed under the available github repositories of cyanogenmod at GitHub (https://github.com/CyanogenMod) . Then you can simply use following commands.

Run the envsetup.sh script at android/system/build folder

Command:$ source build/envsetup.sh
Command:$ breakfast [device_name]

For an example if your device is a Samsung Galaxy S3;

Command:$ source build/envsetup.sh
Command:$ breakfast i9300

In my case things became little bit different. My device here is a Samsung Galaxy W (GT-I8150). Currently CyangenMod GitHub does not contain any repository for this device. So I had to look a different way to proceed from here. With reference to the wiki page of cynaogenmod ( http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/ ) an alternative to the breakfast command is to build an own local_manifest.xml.

Here at https://github.com/arco I found some git repositories holding device,vendor and kernel files for GT-I8150.

Step 1: Create the local_manifest.xml file inside .repo/localmanifests

Goto android/system –> Press (Ctrl + H) to view hidden files —> .repo folder will appear

Go inside the .repo –> you will see two folders called mainfests and local_manifests.

manifests folder—> contains the default.xml

default.xml : “The master list of all the git repositories that together comprise the CyanogenMod source code are defined in CyanogenMod’s default.xml manifest.” Do not change this file.

Create a new xml file called local_mainfest.xml inside local manifests folder

local_manifest.xml: Add all the new device specific dependencies to this file. This local manifest allows you to customize the list of repositories used in the copy of the source code by overriding or supplementing the default manifest. Thereby you can extend or change the repository without editing the default.xml.

Step 2: Add the new dependencies to the local_manifest.xml file


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<manifest>

<remote name="arco" fetch="https://github.com/arco" />

<project path="device/samsung/ancora" name="android_device_samsung_ancora" remote="arco" revision="cm-10.1"/>
<project path="vendor/samsung/ancora" name="android_vendor_samsung_ancora" remote="arco" revision="cm-10.1"/>
<project path="kernel/samsung/samsung-kernel-msm7x30" name="samsung-kernel-msm7x30" remote="arco" revision="cm-10.1"/>
</manifest>

Step 3: Execute repo sync

Command: $ repo sync -j4

Fetching each new repository included in the local_manifest.xml

Fetching android_device_samsung_ancora

Fetching android_vendor_samsung_ancora

Fetching samsung-kernel-msm7x30

Completed fetching and syncing repository

Completed syncing… See what you have got ! 🙂

Now lets have a look on what we have got new 🙂

system/device/samsung/ancora

system/vendor/samsung/ancora

system/kernel/samsung

Note: (Possible Errors)

When you run the envsetup.sh script at build folder and follow up breakfast command, if your device does not present in the cyanogenmod github repository you will get an error like following;

So,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Go ahead create your own local_mainfest.xml file (Y)

Cheers !! 🙂

Build CyanogenMod: 2. Get-prebuilts requires while building

Posted by Kulani Mahadewa on January 24, 2015

Posted in: Build OS. Tagged: CyanogenMod. Leave a comment

Hi ! 🙂 When you are done with downloading CyanogenMod source code, (Refer: Getting CyanogenMod source code ) next recommended step is to run the get-prebuilts script located at the vendor/cm directory This will install some new files under the vendor directory, which will be useful while building the source code.

Command: $ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

Command: $ ./get-prebuilts

Installing new source to vendor/cm directory –> proprietary directory

proprietary directory contains Term.apk plus several files inside lib folder.

Inside lib folder

Cheers ! 🙂

Build CyanogenMod: 1. Getting CyanogenMod source code

Posted by Kulani Mahadewa on January 23, 2015

Posted in: Build Android, Build OS. Tagged: Android, CyanogenMod, Repo, source code. 1 Comment

Hi ! 🙂 If you are interested in building a fresh operating system for your Android device from CyanogenMod source code, lets start from here… First of all you need to get the required source code which will take some extra hours from your time to sync. So be patient.

Prerequisites:

Linux environment
Repo – repository management tool built on top of Git

What is CyanogenMod?

Why are we using CyanogenMod ? that because we are interested in what CyanogenMod offers which does not present in other official firmware. 🙂

I extracted the following description from CyanogenMod official web site

“CyanogenMod (pronounced sigh-AN-oh-jen-mod), is a customized, aftermarket firmware distribution for several Android devices. Based on the Android Open Source Project, CyanogenMod is designed to increase performance and reliability over Android-based ROMs released by vendors and carriers such as Google, T-Mobile, HTC, etc. CyanogenMod also offers a variety of features & enhancements that are not currently found in these versions of Android…”

Step 1: Install Repo

Repo is making the job easy for Android developers to collect the source code , since it enables downloading files from several git repositories.

Create a folder name bin inside home directory.

Command: mkdir -p ~/bin

Download repo

Command: curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo

Make it executable

Command: chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Add ~/bin to PATH

Command: gedit ~/.bashrc

Open the ~/.bashrc add following

# set PATH so it includes user’s private bin if it exists
if [ -d “$HOME/bin” ] ; then
PATH=”$HOME/bin:$PATH”
fi

Step 2: Initialize CyanogenMod source repository

Create directory structure ~/android/system

Command: mkdir -p ~/android/system

Change directory

Command: cd ~/android/system/

Initialize repo

Command: repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-11.0

With this command it initializes the repository in the android/systems directory.

Step 3: Downloading the source code with sync

Next step is to sync the source of CyanogenMod. Fetching and cloning will take several hours. Until the fetching is completed you will not see source files in the directory.

Command: repo sync -j4 -c

Start fetching…….

Fetching completed –> Start checking out source

Completed checking out all source

Complete source: ~/android/system

Cheers! 🙂

Aeturnist#2 Issued

Posted by Kulani Mahadewa on January 6, 2015

Posted in: Mobile Security. Tagged: how to protect your device, malware attacks, Mobile Security, Vulnerability Analysis. Leave a comment

Hi 🙂 Aeturnist#2 Issued. My article on “Mobile Security” is published in this issue 🙂 This article covered brief history of mobile security, Vulnerability Analysis, Why Malware Attacks? Why on Android? How to Protect Your Device and Importance of Mobile Data Security. Hope you guys enjoy reading… 🙂

” Security for IT and IT for security are commonly used terms in the IT industry. While IT provides diverse technological solutions to ensure the security of day to day life, IT solutions become vulnerable to threats, so security for IT came to the subject. Since early 19s people were interested about this subject and came up with different solutions to protect data and systems. In fact the cryptographic algorithms were initially used as an encryption technique during civil wars. Earlier, IT security was refered only to the protection of desktops, laptops and servers. Now it has been quiet for a long time, and today’s trending topic is mobile security… ”

Read more. Download “The Aeturnist” from here :http://aeturnum.com/mag/