Firefly-RK3288 Buy Specs

Quad-Core Cortex-A17 open source board, with Mali-T760 MP4 Graphics Processing, supports Android and Linux systems, has rich external extension interfaces.

Customize Firmware

Update time：2018-03-13 Views：3357

1 Introduction

To customize Android firmware, there are two methods:

1.Modify source code, then compile and package to new firmware.

2.Patch based on existing firmware.

The former can customize Android on any level freely, but require compiling environment with high performance, and personal knowledgeable skill in Linux kernel and Android. Please see the detail in Build android.

We introduce the latter one here. It is divided in three stages: extract, customize and package. We use Linux as the host OS, and utilities which are all open source.

2 Image Format

Our new update image, release_update.img here, contains bootloader loader.img and the actual firmware data update.img. That is, release_undate.img is a wrapper of loader.img and update.img.

release_update.img
|- loader.img
`- update.img

update.img is a composite file, which contains multiple files described by package-file. A typical package-file is:

# NAME		Relative path
package-file	package-file
bootloader	RK3288Loader_uboot_Apr212014_134842.bin
parameter	rk3288-3.10-uboot-data1G.parameter.txt
misc		Image/misc.img
kernel		Image/kernel.img
resource        Image/resource.img
boot        	Image/boot.img
recovery	Image/recovery.img
system		Image/system.img
backup		RESERVED
update-script	update-script
recover-script	recover-script

  • package-file

  • Package description of update.img. In update.img, there is a copy of package-file.

  • RK3288Loader_uboot_Apr212014_134842.bin

  • Bootloader

  • rk3288-3.10-uboot-data1G.parameter.txt

  • parameter file, which can specify kernel command line. The command line has rich information, such as partition of the flash storage.

  • Image/misc.img

  • Image of misc partition. It is a boot mode selector. If it is empty (all zero), system boots normally. If it contains recovery command, system boots into recovery mode with corresponding command and arguments.

  • Image/kernel.img

  • Android Linux kernel.

  • Image/resource.img

  • Resource image, has kernel startup logo and DTB (Device Tree Blob) inside.

  • Image/boot.img

  • Android initial ram disk, which is the first root filesystem to load and has important system initialization.

  • Image/recovery.img

  • Image of Android recovery mode, has kernel and recovery mode root filesystem inside.

  • Image/system.img

  • Image of Android's system partition, which will has extensive customization below.

Extracting firmware, will involve in extracting update.img from release_update.img, and then extract files described by package-file inside update.img.

Packaging is just the reverse, which packs the files described by package-file into update.img, and then mix with loader.img into the final image file - release_update.img.

3 Prepare the Utilities

git clone https://github.com/TeeFirefly/rk2918_tools.git
cd rk2918_tools
make
sudo cp afptool img_unpack img_maker mkkrnlimg /usr/local/bin

4 Extract Firmware

  • Extract release_update.img

$ cd /path/to/your/firmware/dir
$ img_unpack Firefly-RK3288_Android4.4_20140818.img img
rom version: 4.4.2
build time: 2014-08-18 14:25:57
chip: 80
checking md5sum....OK

  • Extract update.img

$ cd img
$ afptool -unpack update.img update
Check file...OK
------- UNPACK -------
package-file	0x00000800	0x00000285
RK3288Loader_uboot_Apr212014_134842.bin	0x00001000	0x0004694E
rk3288-3.10-uboot-data1G.parameter.txt	0x00048000	0x000005A1
Image/misc.img	0x00048800	0x0000C000
Image/kernel.img	0x00055000	0x00578E3C
Image/resource.img	0x005CE000	0x0001C400
Image/boot.img	0x005EA800	0x0011F6CF
Image/recovery.img	0x0070A000	0x0040F6AE
Image/system.img	0x00B19800	0x180EF000
RESERVED	0x00000000	0x00000000
update-script	0x18C09000	0x000003A5
recover-script	0x18C09800	0x0000010A
UnPack OK!

  • Check file/directory trees under update directory:

$ cd update/
$ tree
.
├── Image
│   ├── boot.img
│   ├── kernel.img
│   ├── misc.img
│   ├── recovery.img
│   ├── resource.img
│   └── system.img
├── package-file
├── recover-script
├── RESERVED
├── rk3288-3.10-uboot-data1G.parameter.txt
├── RK3288Loader_uboot_Apr212014_134842.bin
└── update-script

The firmware is extracted successfully. Let's start to customize.

5 Customization

5.1 Customize system.img

system.img is an image file with ext4 filesystem format, which can be mounted into system to modify directly:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/system
sudo mount -o loop Image/system.img /mnt/system
cd /mnt/system
# Add or delete apks inside. Pay attention to the free space. You canno add too many apks.
# Edit complete. Unmount it.
cd /
sudo umount /mnt/system

Please note, the free space of system.img is nearly zero. If you want more, you have to expand it, and change partition settings in parameter file accordingly.

Here is an example of how the expand the image. Before expanding, run mount to make sure that system.img is not mounted (Unmount it if it is):

# Add 128M disk space
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=128 >> Image/system.img
# Update filesystem records
e2fsck -f Image/system.img
resize2fs Image/system.img

6 Packaging

First, you need to check the size of system.img. Make sure it is matched with partition setting in parameter file. If not, modify the parameter file to adjust the partitions.

For example, you can find the "CMDLINE" line in parameter file rk3288-3.10-uboot-data1G.parameter.txt, which has the string "system":

0x00180000@0x00092000(system)

The number before symbol @, is the size of the partition, in unit of 512 bytes (traditional disk sector size). Therefore this system partition has a size of:

$ echo $(( 0x00180000 * 512 / 1024 / 1024))M
768M

If size of system.img does not go beyond 768M, there is no need to change parameter file.

If the partitions do not changed, you can flash the new system.img to the device for a test. Otherwise, you need to package a new firmware, flash it and test.

Here are the steps to  package update.img:

  • package update.img ：

# The current directory is still update/, which has package-file. All files listed in package-file are available.
# Copy the parameter file, which is the default one used by  afptool.
$ cp rk3288-3.10-uboot-data1G.parameter.txt parameter
$ afptool -pack . ../update_new.img
------ PACKAGE ------
Add file: ./package-file
Add file: ./RK3288Loader_uboot_Apr212014_134842.bin
Add file: ./rk3288-3.10-uboot-data1G.parameter.txt
Add file: ./Image/misc.img
Add file: ./Image/kernel.img
Add file: ./Image/resource.img
Add file: ./Image/boot.img
Add file: ./Image/recovery.img
Add file: ./Image/system.img
Add file: ./RESERVED
Add file: ./update-script
Add file: ./recover-script
Add CRC...
------ OK ------
Pack OK!

  • Package release_update.img ：

$ img_maker -rk32 loader.img update_new.img release_update_new.img
generate image...
append md5sum...
success!

Congratulations, release_update_new.img is the final firmware image file ready to flash.

7 FAQ

7.1 How to change firmware version

In parameter file, find the following line and modify it. The version can only contain digital numbers, and the two dots can not be omitted.

FIRMWARE_VER:4.4.2