[Letux-kernel] How to build LetuxOS Android Kernel for LetuxOS Replicant 4.2?

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi,
maybe some reader here remembers better than me how to build
the android compatible kernels for LetuxOS Replicant.

Our LetuxOS Replicant 4.2 image

	http://download.goldelico.com/letux-replicant/4.2/  (File: latest-replicant.tbz)

can be easily installed on a µSD with

	makesd replicant

and boots successfully with a working kernel that is included.

But the problem I have is that this is a 3.12 kernel which still expects the
old NAND format and therefore reports thousands of ECC errors before sometimes
booting to Replicant. And it does not support the GTA04A5 board (or other boards).

So I tried to find out how to build a newer kernel for Replicant, but didn't
find the correct procedures any more.

We have 4.9.4-android and 4.10-android on

	http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-kernel/

and in theory this should even work with a 5.2-rc6 after merging in the branch

	http://git.goldelico.com/?p=letux-kernel.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/letux/android

Those kernels can boot up to a console but they fail to load the kernel
modules. Therefore we have no display and no frame buffer and Replicant
fails to start its applications and permanently reports "init: untracked pid #### exited".

I remember that kernel module loading was special for Android
and there is a flat directory /system/lib/modules where a set of .ko
files is available (maybe from the 3.12 kernel) which is not the
Linux standard tree structure /lib/modules/$version/kernel/$subsystem/...

What I also found is that lsmod is empty but it is possible to manually
modprobe some modules.

So it looks as if we have to prepare the kernel modules to make them being
automatically loaded.

Last time we had looked at Replicant 4.2 for GTA04 is 2-3 years ago...

Anyone remembers this topic? Any ideas? Any thought? Any hidden knowledge?

BR and thanks,
Nikolaus