dimanche 4 novembre 2012

Mele_HTPC_0929_BETA_V1.3 Revised version: en_US v4

Another release that fixes the "reboot never ends" bug after having launched Google Play:
Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.img

On 4shared:
Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.img(4shared)
Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.ddimg.bz2(4shared)


Edit: md5sum=70aee0c6ae9c375e72d3f87bed594ef0  Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.img 
        dd-able image: Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.ddimg.bz2
        md5sum=ea14dab60e131feac04f20a7947291e9  Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.ddimg.bz2

Precision: this release disables the Google Play updates automatically (via a /etc/init.d/ script), that makes the bug occur. You don't need to perform the steps mentioned hereafter if you take it.

I hope this will be the last under Android 4.0 (next will be 4.1 JellyBean when Mele decides to release it).
After many tries (copy Vending.apk from old firmware, revert all /system/app and /system/framework, ...), nothing solved the "reboot never ends" issue.

Then I had the idea to revert the Market update (go to Paremeters->Applications->All->"Google Play"->"Uninstall updates".
And yes, it works. The Market update is what makes the system fail.

So the solution is to disable the Market update definitely. I don't know the consequences on a long term period, but for this release, no more "reboot never ends" issue.
In order to disable the Market update, see this thread: (How-to) prevent Android Market app from updating itself, that says:

Do "uninstall updates" on the market app (in "manage applications").
Open the terminal app.
Run "su" to become root.
Run: touch /data/app/com.android.vending-1.apk
Run: chattr +i /data/app/com.android.vending-1.apk

You can perform only "uninstall updates" step, but you will have to do that at each reboot.

In the above image, there is a init.d script that performs the required touch+chattr operations automatically.
I also removed the last Chinese application (sorry for them).

Note for Chinese people: this fix should apply on the Chinese firmware, but you have to add these lines in the init.rc script (on post-fs-data) since there is no init.d system in the original firmware.

34 commentaires:

  1. Great work Thierry!
    I installed several apps from Google Play and rebooted several times without problems. Some issues:
    - Some ocasional and bearable freezing from time to time
    - Using the remote, now apps button is not linked to the apps menu, but I can access them from the top right corner. So it's good for me.

    After a Thierry's hard work, the first really functional ICS image for my Mele.

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    Réponses
    1. The system is long to initialize, I think about the media scanner that scans at each reboot the entire system for example. This is a single core CPU, perhaps the reason why there are some latencies from time to time, but not constantly like there was on the original firmware.
      Can you tell me which one of the firmwares was able to bind correctly the remote buttons? I though it was a feature of apex launcher but I cannot find it again...

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    2. On version 1.3 rev 2 app button worked ok. Zoom buttons never worked.

      On the other hand I've been testing some remote control and filesharing apps and worked ok, lagging from time to time. Now I'm thinking about testing supercharger v6 on mele and check their effects

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    3. I used supercharger v6 rev9 for some times. Works great i used on 512 hp aggressive settings and no others tweak, with bulletproof launcher. My only problem is that i'm unable to use Paragon HFS/NTFS app for mount the sata hard drive (i have twice in hfs fs).

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  2. Hi,

    i don't have understand the first step.
    I have to freeze with titanium backup the Market Updater version 1.0? Because in manage application/settings i haven't Uninstall option.

    Thanks, and always cheers for the great work.
    I dded this image in only 3 minutes on 512mb (sd) :D

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  3. Hmm... sorry, my message was not clear: you don't have anything to do if you download this v4 firmware, a script runs at startup in order to perform automatically the steps.
    The steps are just for the ones who wish to keep the old firmware. In that case, you must revert the updates done by the Market updater
    (that's the action of Parameters->Applications->All->"Google Play"->"Uninstall updates").
    But ignore that if you install this v4 firmware.

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  4. No man, it's my fault ahaha

    Anyway many thanks again, also for info :)
    I come from 1.1 and this is very fast and seem stable (for my 2hr of try) :)

    Gabriele.

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  5. Hi Thierry!
    Does this version have improved audio video sync? I have stock version and audio and video is never in sync for Youtube or custom RTSP stream.

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    Réponses
    1. Hi Varun,
      No improvement, I did not touch to anything related to audio or video. I noticed delays when playing videos with MxPlayer, over network. For now I blame Android ICS, so I am waiting for the JellyBean update to see if it improves something.

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    2. But there may be a way to improve A/V sync by patching the kernel.
      I found this thread:
      http://scrolltabletforum.co.uk/site/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=1964&start=90#p24948
      The thread is originally a patch for the Allwinner A10 Gingerbread firmware. But this post is a firmware containing ICS version. Downloading, to see what kernel is included.

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  6. Anyone manage to get Netflix running on this?

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  7. This update worked for me. Thanks Thierry. Defo a keeper. I installed it on a a3600. Tested videos all working specially on stock video player TvdVideo. Bit faster/snappier. All sounds perfect..louder than previous versions. Only complain from the kids is Bad Piggies not working :D.

    Thanks again and excellent work.

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  8. So thierry, we have to "flash" this update.zip? By recovery? Or overwriting the file in the update.zip in our filesystem?

    Please, i'm very interested to fix the audio/video delay, i hate it!
    Thanks, Gabriele.

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    Réponses
    1. You have to burn it on a SDcard using the Phoenixcard tool
      For the A/V delay, some have found a solution by patching the sound driver. Every kernel I tried to compile for Android fail, so I could not try this solution yet. JellyBean version is supposed to reduce this latency that's why I wait for the JB release from Mele!

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  9. Hi thierry,

    how can i burn with phoenixcard if is a zip file?
    I tried to extract and make a new img file, but i give an error with phoenixcard when i'm loading the image. Same result if i load the zip file renamed in .img under phoenixcard.

    Thanks, Gabriele.

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    Réponses
    1. Think we don't talk about the same file:Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.img is a PhoenixCard image, Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.ddimg.bz2 is a compressed dd-able Image you can burn once uncompressed on a sdcard from linux with: dd if=Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.ddimg.bz2 of=/dev/sdX (X is the device letter of your sdcard)

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    2. Argh, mistake:dd if=Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.ddimg of=/dev/sdX (don't burn the compressed image). The resulting sdcard is the same via the Phoenixcard or via dd

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  10. No man, sorry i'm talking about of the fix that you posted two days ago. That for a/v sync. I asked you how i can use and you told me that i have to burn with phoenixburn but doesn't work..

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  11. thierry in last 3 weeks your us_4 works fine
    new fw in the mele page
    http://bbs.mele.cn/showtopic-1328.aspx

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    Réponses
    1. Thanks for the link.
      After 17 attempts of wget, I finally managed to get the firmware. Hopefully wget retries automatically :)
      I will check the contents; but it seems to be for Russian market (Digma series).

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  12. Hi Thierry,

    Thanks for all the work you put in. With a bit of fiddling I was able to create a bootable update SD card from your image file on my Macbook under OS-X, and the Mele 2000 was happy to update from it.

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    Réponses
    1. Hi,
      great, good to know!
      Did you follow a tutorial?
      Do you have a link to your update.zip?

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    2. Hi Thierry,
      I got my Mele 2000 out of the factory with original Chinese firmware. I tried Phoenixcard on a 2GB SD card, but the Mele never took the image from it. So I wanted to try your ddimg methode.

      I didn't have a Linux system near me, so I wanted to try using my Macbook instead to create the SD card from your ddimg.bz2 file. I inserted the SD card into my Macbook which auto-mounted it as /dev/disk57. I opened a Mac Terminal window, ran 'sudo su' to become root. Then I dismounted the SD card from the Mac command line

      # diskutil umount /dev/disk57

      Then I used the command you provided for Linux

      # bzip2 -cd Mele_4.0_V1.3BETA_revised_en_us_4.ddimg.bz2|dd of=/dev/disk57 bs=4096

      After that I updated the Mele and it worked.

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    3. OK, I misunderstood; I thought you were talking about a update.zip flashed under recovery mode.
      The Phoenix utility provided with the Mele firmwares is bad (3.0.3 version does not work properly under Windows 7) and leads to a non functional SDCard. You must find the 3.0.6 version of the PhoenixCard utility for Windows ; but well you managed to write the ddimg from MacOS X, that's far better!

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  13. I don't understand. step by step please.

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    Réponses
    1. 1/ download http://www.4shared.com/file/a3N3jveL/Mele_40_V13BETA_revised_en_us_.html
      2/ under Windows, download the PhoenixCard tool: http://www.lundman.net/ftp/mele/PhoenixCardV306_2012_03_02.zip
      3/ run and burn the downloaded .img onto sdcard
      4/ insert sdcard into Mele, power on, wait for the blink light to stop, remove sdcard, reboot and you are done.

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  14. Mele_40_V13BETA_revised_en_us was working perfect till today, yesterday I think Play updated itself, and now here again "reboot never ends" :((

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    Réponses
    1. Strange... but I must admit I did not run google play on my latest install.
      I am preparing a different setup from the latest Mele firmware. It will run totally from SDCard, better for tries (see my post from yesterday) ; using this, you could perhaps save your NAND installation.
      I am preparing also an update script installing gapps-ics zip file while Android is running (no need to go into recovery).

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  15. I have flashed my Mele A3700 (8GB /sdcard model) with this image, it is totally well working, except that now I can see me nandk block device a just 4GB device (I lost the next 4GB). I would be glad if you kindly tell me what should I do to make the system reconsider the whole flash as nandk.

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    Réponses
    1. Maybe something related to the boot process...
      Do you have a link to a A3700 firmware?

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    2. I do not know if it is the right firmware, but it is mentioned it can be used for A3700:
      http://www.kimdecent.com/drivers/100.html

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    3. Well, I don't know if it comes from my scripts that re-generate firmwares or from the files inside the firmware.
      Did you try the latest firmware here: http://tmerle.blogspot.fr/2013/01/melehtpc20121220v13-enus-imgsdcard.html ?
      Still the issue?

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  16. I do not have a LInux system, so how to use the sdcard version using Window XP?

    Thanks.

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    Réponses
    1. Using a linux liveCD could do the trick... Unfortunately the makefile creates ext4 filesystem on the sdcard, which is only possible under linux.

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