FireTV
Information about freedreno and linux on Fire TV
NOTE: the firetv comes with no root or unlocked bootloader. For the time being, you are on your own for that.
UPDATE: how to get root: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2783805
UPDATE: this is the CVE used to bypass the locked bootloader: https://www.codeaurora.org/projects/security-advisories/incomplete-signature-parsing-during-boot-image-authentication-leads-to-signature-forgery-cve-2014-0973 (read the patches, not the description)
For now, I'm just collecting notes here so that I don't forget by the time an unlocker is more widely available. Installing linux to boot off of the internal storage on firetv requires repartitioning internal storage. Be careful, you can easily result in a bricked firetv. If you don't understand what these commands, etc, are doing, you probably don't want to blindly follow them.
Note that I bootstrapped things by booting off of an existing usb disk with filesystem that I use with ifc6410/bStem/etc. You can probably get away with switching around the boot partitions when booted from internal disk, but you'll need to boot from usb disk at least once to merge userdata/cache/system partitions, and to extract new rootfs.
Original partitions:
[robclark@usbdisk:~]$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 15269888 sectors, 7.3 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 98101B32-BBE2-4BF2-A06E-2BB33D000C20
Partition table holds up to 20 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 15269854
Partitions will be aligned on 2-sector boundaries
Total free space is 0 sectors (0 bytes)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 34 16417 8.0 MiB 8300 persist
2 16418 32801 8.0 MiB 8300 goldpersist
3 32802 65569 16.0 MiB 0700 modem
4 65570 65825 128.0 KiB FFFF sbl1
5 65826 66337 256.0 KiB FFFF sbl2
6 66338 67361 512.0 KiB FFFF sbl3
7 67362 68385 512.0 KiB FFFF tz
8 68386 69409 512.0 KiB FFFF rpm
9 69410 71457 1024.0 KiB FFFF aboot
10 71458 91937 10.0 MiB FFFF boot
11 91938 112417 10.0 MiB FFFF recovery
12 112418 177953 32.0 MiB 8300 diag
13 177954 180513 1.2 MiB 8300 splash480p
14 180514 186017 2.7 MiB 8300 splash720p
15 186018 198305 6.0 MiB 8300 splash1080p
16 198306 198321 8.0 KiB FFFF ssd
17 198322 200369 1024.0 KiB FFFF misc
18 200370 1773233 768.0 MiB 8300 system
19 1773234 3346097 768.0 MiB 8300 cache
20 3346098 15269854 5.7 GiB 8300 userdata
In case your partitions are different (pay attention to start/end sector, etc) you'll have to adjust the following commands accordingly.
The default 10MiB boot/recovery partitions are not large enough for real linux, or in particular the initrd size. For Fedora, a stripped down ramdisk (with unneeded kernel modules removed) is still about 12MiB on it's own.
Fortunately lk seems to respect the partition names. So I rename 'boot' to 'origboot' and 'diag' to boot. Now we can use the larger diag partition for boot image.
sgdisk -c 10:origboot /dev/mmcblk0
sgdisk -c 12:boot /dev/mmcblk0
If you never care about booting the original android from firetv again, you can delete the three userspace partitions and create a single larger partition (or separate boot/swap/root partitions if you prefer).
For this step, you need to not be booted from the partitions you are about to delete/overwrite. Booting from an external USB disk is the recommended way. Maybe someone can come up with a ramdisk with enough useful tools to avoid the temporary need for USB disk filesystem.
sgdisk -d 18 /dev/mmcblk0
sgdisk -d 19 /dev/mmcblk0
sgdisk -d 20 /dev/mmcblk0
sgdisk -n 18:200370:15269854 /dev/mmcblk0
mkfs.ext4 -L rootfs /dev/mmcblk0p18
- prebuilt kernel: TODO
- kernel-msm branch: firetv-drm
- defconfig: bueller_rob_defconfig
Note the q6.* firmware files seem to be different compared to ifc6410. Copy the files from /dev/mmcblk0p3 to /lib/firmware.
The needed alsa UCM files: bueller-snd-card
If you have access to sufficient soldering skills/equipment (or know someone who does) then it is possible to solder up the debug uart. Note that it is 1.8V levels, and it is console=ttyHSL2,115200,n8. (not ttyHSL0 as on bStem/ifc6410.)