Debian Ported to the G1

[poetic_folly]

iPhone hacker Jay Freeman (aka saurik, author of such iPhone programs as Cydia, Cycorder, and WinterBoard) has successfully managed to get a Debian distro running on the G1. And the best part? It runs in full harmony with Android - you lose no functionality.

Why? Seems a lot of people's first response to jailbreaking the G1, or even something as huge as installing Debian to it is "Why? Android is open source, right?" The same reason we "jailbreak" the G1 in the first place - while Google is non-evilly open with Android's source, they most certainly have not allowed anyone to get root on the G1 and use the device to its full potential. Without full access to the phone's software and hardware, a lot isn't possible, notably video recording ("there's no way in hell you could do video compression fully in software fully on dalvik" is how saurik put it) as well as any type of graphical theming/skinning.

The process is a bit involved, but easy enough to follow along with. If you're not comfortable with the command line, you may feel a bit out of water here - you're going to need to use it to make this happen. Of course, if you're not familiar with command line, there's no reason for you to jailbreak your G1 anyway yet.

Complete instructions are here.

NOTE: The debian image saurik mentions hosted on RapidShare was coming down at around 25 kb/s for me, so we've mirrored it here for members and here for non-members.

[amgupt01]

Is it possible to undo this and restore back to the default Android firmware?

As much as I like my Debian, I just wanna make sure that I can still install Android on my G1 again. Do you just do the same process that you do for manually updating the firmware or something?

Thanks,

~amgupt01

~FIRST POST~

[living_sword]

Originally Posted by amgupt01 Is it possible to undo this and restore back to the default Android firmware? As much as I like my Debian, I just wanna make sure that I can still install Android on my G1 again. Do you just do the same process that you do for manually updating the firmware or something? Thanks, ~amgupt01 ~FIRST POST~

Debian and Android co-exist.

[amgupt01]

Originally Posted by living_sword Debian and Android co-exist.

YAYZ! I'm assuming that Debian Lenny installs on the SD card right? And does it run all of the binaries that the regular Lenny distro runs?

Also, if I have the modified RC30 which still has root access, will this work?

[living_sword]

Originally Posted by amgupt01 YAYZ! I'm assuming that Debian Lenny installs on the SD card right? And does it run all of the binaries that the regular Lenny distro runs? Also, if I have the modified RC30 which still has root access, will this work?

yep, it goes on the card. I suppose it should run all regular apps, haven't tried it out myself yet.

yeah, no effect on jailbroken android.

[amgupt01]

I'm pretty dissapointed in it though... I was expecting to run some super-light X window environment like Enlightenment or LXDE, but all there is is a console-based system...

I'm going to try to use apt to install LXDE, but if I can't get a GUI working, I'm just going to scrap it.

[spiffster]

Text console only? Count me in!

[u2uonly]

Can we just run android on debian system which is on any pc and enjoy wifi android?

[living_sword]

Originally Posted by u2uonly Can we just run android on debian system which is on any pc and enjoy wifi android?

i don't think so.

[marysvillemojo]

While setting this up, I once again run into issues early on... any ideas would be great

_ mknod /dev/loop0 b 7 0
mknod: /dev/loop0: permission denied

[parasvashist]

Hi
Can anybody tell me how to chage teh google account settings on my g talk account in my g fone

[marysvillemojo]

well for one this is definitely not the right place for that post... if you cant find a post related to your question it's usually best to start your own thread. but your gtalk account on your G1 is attached to your primary setup account. to change your gtalk you need to reset the whole phone unfortunately.

*side note woohoo! finally broke 100 posts

[kegansjack]

for anyone who has tried this, what debian applications where you able to install? im fairly fluent in ubuntu and fedora distros, but i havent touched debian before.

[Stubbspks]

I've not tried it yet, but Ubuntu is based on Debian, and so I would imagine that you can apt-get pretty much the same set of applications you would be used to running on ubuntu (minus GUI apps of course since this is console only).

[no6969el]

having a issues entering the below command..

insmod $kit/ext2.ko

it keeps saying

insmod: init_module '/sdcard/kit/ext2.ko' failed (no such file or directory)

but its there!! lol


tried this


# modprobe ext2

# modprobe unionfs

it entered.. we will see if it worked.. found it here..

http://www.telesphoreo.org/pipermail...ry/000416.html