[Jay Freeman] has a rather exhaustive tutorial on how to set up a Debian environment on your T-Mobile G1. The first major issue with this is that getting root level access through telnetd is being patched. It certainly is a security issue that needs to be fixed, but a user shouldn’t have to root their own phone to begin with. While the G1 comes with some Linux tools, they’re limited. [Jay]’s goal was to create a familiar Debian environment on the phone. It takes a few tricks, but if you’re familiar with the command line, you shouldn’t have any problems. Debian already has ARM EABI support, so creating a working image isn’t a problem. The image file is stored on the SD card and mounted using the loopback device. The G1’s kernel has module support turned on, so [Jay] created an ext2 and unionfs kernel modules. [Benno Leslie]’s Android version of busybox is used to perform the actual mounting. Once mounted, you just need to chroot into the environment to start playing with native Linux apps. [Jay] takes this a step further by using unionfs to make the Android and Debian environments share the same root. This is really a great how-to and it’s nice to know that modules can be added to the kernel.
[photo: tnkgrl]
[via Hackszine]
This is awesome news! However, Google has already fixed the big that permitted this. Will this still be possible?
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/11/google-fixes-an.html
users should have root on device they own. ownership pwnership
ran it on my g1, must say it is awesome. I have openssh, gcc, vim, and hg all installed. Im gonna see if i can get xorg to work just for kicks and giggles. If so, ill throw xfce on it.
i have no words for this EXCELLENT
Following on from this, I have created and easy installer and bootloader for getting Debian onto your phone in 5 minutes.
You can download it at:
http://www.androidfanatic.com/cms/community-forums.html?func=view&catid=9&id=251
help….i need help. cant get pass the first step ext2.ko