Multi-booting Ubuntu and Android 4.3

[Paul]

This is an overview of how to multi-boot Ubuntu and Android 4.3 on the Eee PC 1015PEM netbook.  I am mainly writing this for my own reference, since I am likely to be changing the Android installation often.

1) Download the iso from android-x86.org.  I grabbed version 4.3-20130725.

2) Burn the iso to disk or USB stick (I went with USB stick, and installed UNetbootin for the task... was having issues with Startup Disk Creator)

3) If you do not have a free partition on your computer, run gparted to resize one.  I made mine a couple GB large.  Format it as NTFS.  Take note of its designation (mine was /dev/sda4)

4) Plug in the USB stick or insert the disk, and reboot.  If using USB stick, press ESC during bootup and select the USB stick to boot from it.  If using CD, press F2 during bootup and verify the CD drive is listed before your hard drive.

5) Choose to install Android.  Select the device (e.g. sda4).  When asked if you wish to format it, select No.  When asked if you want to install GRUB, choose yes.  If you want a virtual SD card, choose to create one when asked (or you can alternately use a physical SD card if you have one).

6) When done, remove the USB stick or CD and reboot to verify Android is working.

7) Reboot, and in the GRUB menu, press 'e' to see the GRUB commands.  Write them down carefully.

8) Insert your Ubuntu Live CD or USB stick and reboot.  Select "Try Ubuntu without installing".

9) Open terminal, and enter:

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    cd /
    sudo mount dev/sda1 /mnt
    sudo grub-install --recheck --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda(replace sda1 and sda with the device designation for where your main Ubuntu partition resides and which device you booting from -- in my case, Ubuntu is on /dev/sda1, and I boot from disk /dev/sda)

10) Reboot your computer, and go into Ubuntu.  Edit /etc/grub.d/40_custom and add an entry like:

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menuentry "Android 4.3" {
    set root='(hd0,4)'
    linux /android-4.3-test/kernel quiet root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=android_x86 video=-16 SRC=/android-4.3-test SDCARD=/data/sdcard.img
    initrd /android-4.3-test/initrd.img
}Be sure to use the correct device identifier for the 'set root=' line to point to the partition where Android is installed.  In my case, /dev/sda4 translates to '(hd0,4)'.  The other two lines are the commands you wrote down in step 7.  Only change is to use the command "linux" instead of "kernel" for the first one (difference between GRUB1 vs GRUB2).

11) From terminal, run:

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sudo update-grub
12) Reboot and verify you can boot into Android.

One more note, if you get stuck with "Detecting Android-x86 .........." continuously printing dots, check the 'SRC=' parameter in the linux command from step 10 (I had a small typo in mine that took forever to figure out it was the problem)

[littleguy]

Awesome, I may try this.  Just curious, why did you use NTFS for Android?  I would have expected ext3 or ext4.

[Paul]

I wanted to be able to share files across the other OS's (I'm multi-booting Ubuntu, Win 7 and Snow Leopard on this netbook).  If you don't need that, I think ext3 is normally used.

[littleguy]

Cool.  That's a good idea.  I didn't realize mac sold just its operating system until I just googled it.  Might have to try that...

[Paul]

Mac is not easy (or intended) to get set up on non-Apple hardware.  It's actually a very fun project to try and set up these so-called "Hackentosh" partitions.  I have one on my netbook, main PC, and several in Virtual Box.  I started with Virtual Box just so I could test my web pages on Safari, but had so much fun with it I kept on doing them

[archangeles]

Would there be any wisdom you could share for a simple man wanting to dualboot android and Ubuntu touch on a metro PCs gs3, or a note 2?

[Paul]

I don't have any experience dual-booting on an actual phone/ tablet, sorry.  I've seen videos of a hack to dual-boot Android and Ubuntu on the Nexus 7, but nothing for the GS3 or Note2.  You probably will be able to get better information on the xda-developers forum.

[av777]

Is that eee pc using an atom set to sixty four bit? Have You looked into the source code for android-x86? 

[Paul]

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umount /dev/<name_of_the_connected_USB_flash_drive>
dd if=/<filename>.iso of=/dev/<name_of_the_connected_USB_flash_drive> bs=512k