U-Boot is capable of starting a complete Android system from a microSD card. To boot a system from a microSD card, follow these steps:
- Restart Bootloader Android
- Boot Iso From Android Bootloader Download
- Android No Bootloader
- Android Bootloader
1. Create a bootable microSD card from an Android image
Requirements:
Restart Bootloader Android
Title Boot Hardware Detection Tool from iso image (with 'iso' parameter) kernel /memdisk iso initrd /hdt.iso You can also use a menu configurator like MultiBootISOs.exe from PenDriveLinux. Place ISOs on the flash drive, and run the utility to install the bootloader and configure the boot menu. Here's a Hak5 episode on installing Grub4DOS. Create Android x86 Bootable USB using Pie ISO. First you have to make bootable flash drive with the help of Rufus. So first connect the pen drive to the computer. Now start Rufus software on your computer. Click on “Select” button, Now you have to select the Android Pie ISO file that you downloaded in Step 1.
- Root/Administrator permissions in your development computer
- A microSD card with a minimum capacity of 2 GB
The following procedure will destroy existing data in the microSD card.
- To access recovery mode options, you’ll want to hold down the Power button and tap volume up. The Android System Recovery menu should appear, and you can perform whatever operations you need. Accessing Recovery with ADB. You can also boot into the bootloader with the Android Debug Bridge utility, also known as ADB.
- Jun 26, 2018 Clover Bootloader supports booting EFI files. This article will guide how to boot Ubuntu and Linux Mint ISO from Clover Bootloader. Overview: Clover Bootloader supports booting EFI files, in this article, I will add the Grub2 EFI file (grubx64.efi) to Clover Bootloader.Then I will configure Grub2 to boot Ubuntu and Linux Mint directly from the ISO file without having to select the menu.
To create a bootable microSD card from an existing Android image:
- Download the bootable Android image from this URL: ftp://ftp1.digi.com/support/android/5.1.1/r4/images/82003938_C/ccimx6sbc/eng/sdcard.img.gz
- Extract the .sdcard file from the zip you downloaded into a folder of your choice.
- Raw write the image on the microSD card using one of the following methods:
- Insert the microSD card into your computer and check the node Linux assigns to it (/dev/[sdcard]) using dmesg:CAUTION! Using an incorrect device node in the next step might destroy all data on your computer hard drive.
- Raw write the image file to the microSD card with this command:where:
- <path/filename.sdcard> must be substituted with the path and filename to the SD card image.
- <sdcard> must be substituted with the device node assigned by Linux to your microSD card.
The microSD card is now ready.
- Download the Win32DiskImager software from http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/latest/download.
- Uncompress the software and run it as Administrator.
- Insert the microSD card into your computer.
- In the software, select the drive that corresponds to the microSD card. Select the .sdcard image file you want to program and click the Write button.
The microSD card is now ready.
2. Boot Android from the microSD card
- Power off the device.
- Insert the microSD card into the microSD card holder (bottom side of the board).
- Change the boot mode configuration to boot from the microSD card. To do so, set the boot mode micro-switches as follows:
- SW3.1 OFF
- SW3.2 ON
- Power up the board.
Android now boots from the microSD card.
Active9 months ago
Is there any way to boot an Android phone* from a bus-powered USB drive**? If so, what are the steps to achieve this?
* E.g. one with USB OTG functionality.
** E.g. a flash drive.
sampablokupersampablokuper16111 gold badge22 silver badges1313 bronze badges
3 Answers
Please clarify what is the intended goal and why?
Android phones have their own boot-loaders and cannot be overridden by other means.
It is not like a PC's BIOS where you can switch the ordering of boot to boot from certain devices such as Network PXE, USB, Primary/Secondary H.D.D..
Edit:
After the comments below, and in relation to the OP's question
Is there any way to boot an Android phone (E.g. one with USB OTG functionality.) via way of a bus-powered USB drive
The generic boot-loader (*which resides on the chip-set) has no knowledge of USB etc, as the lk (Little Kernel) is more concerned about trapping keystrokes in order to chain-load into recovery or to boot directly into Android environment (When holding Vol+Down key in this instance) - in pseudo-code (this is from the context/aspect of lk, and also, the memory addresses pertaining to how to read the partitions are hard-coded into this lk so it will know how to process the logic!)
The lk kernel is the de-facto standard by Qualcomm for MSM chipsets (Snapdragon) and adopted by manufacturers such as Sony, Motorola, LG, Samsung and can be found in the AOSP source under
bootable/bootloader
.if (Is Volume Down key pressed?) then
- chain-load kernel from
/recovery
partition into particular address in memory and jump to it and start execution, in bringing up the recovery environment
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- chain-load kernel from
/system
partition into particular address in memory and jump to it and start execution in bringing up the Android environment.
end if.
As the kernel within lk is pretty limited, considering that the binary image of the kernel is burned into the chip and therefore no way of modifying it. And also should be mentioned that lk contains the
fastboot
protocol in preparation for flashing /boot
, /recovery
, /system
and /data
partitions. There are two sequences to boot, primary boot and secondary boot as it is:- Primary Boot -> lk (depending on outcome of logic)
- Go into Secondary Boot ->
/boot
or/recovery
Side note: Samsung is fond of the PBL/SBL (Which is Primary Boot Loader and Secondary Boot Loader respectively) in their jargon when it comes to modding. Thing about Samsung, is that, in some handsets, PBL and SBL may be encrypted (Samsung Wave GT-S8500 is one such example, where porting Android to it was nearly impossible to do because of the DRM within the boot loaders which was a nightmare to deal with and made modding it extremely difficult, nonetheless, it is sort of working via an exploit in the FOTA code!)
This is why there are no extra facilities such as OTG functionality or anything else such as serial communications, reading from SDCard, graphics etc as it would make the lk kernel bigger than is intended. In other words, it is the smallest possible size of kernel that is designated to do just the above pseudo-code happen.
Also, another way of looking at it is this, and this is dependent on the Android version - the USB OTG functionality is fully brought up within the Android environment, i.e when the familiar home screen appears, then OTG's functionality is enabled. Unfortunately not the case when looking at it from lk's perspective.
If you're curious, here's the Qualcomm entry on the above lk which is a part of the tiny C source that has ARM assembly included and found in JellyBean's AOSP source in
t0mm13bt0mm13bbootable/bootloader/legacy/usbloader/main.c
13k11 gold badge3939 silver badges5858 bronze badges
It is possible in a sense, however. Given the limitations mentioned in @t0mm13b 's answer, it makes sense that the mentioned boot loader (lk) is incapable of doing this. So, we boot a custom kernel from
fastboot
(for testing), which boots, enables OTG functionality and once a valid kernel is found on the OTG device which is connected, chainloads that into memory and passes control to it. This could probably even be integrated into modern custom recoveries like TWRP which have both OTG and (in some cases) MultiROM support.This has actually been used to boot Ubuntu on a Nexus 9 tablet, using the method:
fastboot boot <otg_chainloader_kernel>
<otg_chainloader_kernel>
boots and enables OTG and waits for OTG device to be connected.- Device is disconnected from PC and USB flash drive having bootable Ubuntu image is connected to it via OTG.
<otg_chainloader_kernel>
detects a valid Linux kernel on the OTG device and passes control to it after chainloading it into memory.
Now, if you wanted to, you could boot a compatible Android ROM image in a similar way, but remember that the OTG drive would have to be kept connected to the device until you decide to return to the native OS (since all apps would load from, and all data would be written to the USB flash drive, unless the entire Android ROM could be configured as a ramdisk (ever heard of Puppy Linux?), which, given the current memory capacities of common Android devices and the size of the ROM itself is currently impractical). That precludes charging while booted to OTG OS, too, on most devices with unified data/charger ports.
Source: XDA-Developers Nexus 9 subforum
Tamoghna ChowdhuryTamoghna Chowdhury2,80122 gold badges2020 silver badges4040 bronze badges
its posible and i did it on my acer iconia tablet!!!!
connect a flash drive to your pc and format to fat32use rufus to port the iso/dd to your flash drive
connect it to otg and into your phone/tablet. hold the power key and tap volume downif it doesnt boot try holding the power key and tap the volume up
then using volume keys move over to UDisk (your flash drive brand) or SATA; UDISK (it doesnt have to be your usb brand, it can say usb storage) and click the power key to confirm
well, i had sevior trouble with booting into the menu, so i somehow managed to avoid the kernel to boot and by that stop the android to boot
Boot Iso From Android Bootloader Download
i think it was like this : i connected to the pc, then deleted all the assects from the tablet, but copying Android folder Download teamextreme minecraft launche….
kernel was removed and after boot connected back to the pc with a usb hub
well hope i helped :)
EliteXDEliteXD
protected by Community♦Dec 22 '18 at 8:30
Android No Bootloader
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