Run Celadon on Intel Platforms

This page explains what you’ll need to run Celadon natively on Intel hardware platforms.

Hardware Prerequisites

  • An Intel® NUC with an eighth generation or newer Intel® Core™ Processor.

You can try out the CiV experience on your Intel® architecture (x86) hardware platforms with UEFI BIOS and Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) for IA-32, Intel® 64 and Intel® Architecture (Intel® VT-x) and Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) for Directed I/O (Intel® VT-d) features enabled.

Note

Users should be aware that test suites provided by Google may not pass with 100% scoring if deploying Celadon on bare metal systems. While Celadon in VM deployments are supported by Google Mobile Services (GMS), Celadon on bare metal does not have GMS support. Dedicated use cases like retail, client, education and gaming do not need GMS. If there is a need for GMS while running Celadon on bare metal, direct communication with Google will be necessary.

Configure the BIOS Setting

  1. Depending on your bare metal target device, enter the BIOS firmware menu by pressing the hotkey (e.g. F2, DEL, or F12) at the start of system bootup.

  2. Enable Intel® VT-d and Intel® VT-x features in the Security configuration of the BIOS if it is not enabled.

  3. Disable the Secure Boot feature in the BIOS for live testing the CiV features at the early stage. Secure Boot should be re-enabled later.

    Note

    Do not forget to restore your previous BIOS settings after the test. Disabling the Secure Boot feature may result in the previously installed OS failing to boot.

Build Android Image

Refer to the Build Celadon in VM image section in the Getting Started Guide to build the CiV images.

Flash and Boot the Device

The following CiV image types are generated at the end of the build:

  • caas.img

    The GPT disk image for live booting on the target device.

  • caas-flashfiles-eng.<user>.zip

    The compressed flashfile package contains the kernelflinger executables. You need to unzip the content of the package to a USB key, and install the CiV images from the UEFI Shell.

Live Boot

The live boot feature is enabled in the CiV images by default. The live boot feature allows you to flash a specially-built image to a USB drive and then boot from the USB drive to Android* directly without installing Android to internal storage first.

The live boot feature is used only for debug purposes and must be built with eng or userdebug build flavors.

For Celadon, you will build a GPT disk image, flash it to a USB drive (similar to installing Android on the USB drive), and then boot Android from the USB drive. With this approach, Celadon supports all Android features, except some security features that need hardware binding.

Perform the following steps to live-boot Celadon.

  1. Build a live boot image.

    1. Follow the steps in Build Celadon From Source to set up the local development environment and to download the source code.

    2. Open the mixins config file to verify that the kernelflinger supports the USB live boot feature for your [lunch_target], because the feature is enabled by default for some of the lunch targets such as "caas", "celadon_ivi" and "celadon_tablet".

      The following example shows the mixins config file device/intel/project-celadon/caas/mixins.spec for the "caas" lunch target:

      boot-arch: project_celadon(...,...,usb_storage=true,live_boot=true)

    3. Enable the live boot feature by adding the usb_storage and live_boot options to the mixins.spec file.

    4. Execute the following command to build a live boot image:

      $ make SPARSE_IMAGE=true gptimage -j $(nproc)

      As an alternative, you can pass the options in the make command line:

      $ make SPARSE_IMAGE=true KERNELFLINGER_SUPPORT_USB_STORAGE=true KERNELFLINGER_SUPPORT_LIVE_BOOT=true gptimage -j $(nproc)

      After a successful build, you will have an out/target/product/[lunch_target]/[lunch_target].img image. For example, an out/target/product/caas/caas.img image is generated for the caas lunch target.

    5. The previous command creates an image file of 32GB that contains an entire GPT disk. To change the default image size, edit the mixins config file device/intel/project-celadon/[lunch_target]/mixins.spec as follows:

      gptbuild: true(size=32G,generate_craff=false)

  1. Flash the live boot image to a USB drive.

    • For Linux*, use the dd tool to flash the image file to the USB drive. For example:

      $ sudo dd if=caas.img of=/dev/sdc bs=1M

      Caution

      You MUST change the /dev/sdc to the actual USB drive device.

      Be sure all the buffered data is written to the USB drive before removing the USB drive by running the sync command in Linux.

    • For Windows, use the rufus tool to flash the image file to the USB drive.

  2. Boot from the USB drive to Android directly.

    Insert the USB drive and power on the computer. Then, press a function key to enter the BIOS boot menu. Select boot from the USB drive. Now, you can boot from the USB drive to Android directly.

    If you choose to save data to this Android device and you have not removed the USB drive, the data will be saved to the USB drive. You can then use the saved data on other computers.

    Note

    1. If you already installed Android in the internal storage, disable the internal storage if you are using USB live boot.

    2. If you want to use one USB drive in two computers, make sure the lock state is the same on each computer.

Dual Boot Celadon with Windows

You may want to install Windows and Celadon Android on one device, and select which OS to boot every time the device is powering up. To facilitate dual boot, install Windows and Celadon on two separate storage devices.

The compressed flashfile package contains the kernelflinger UEFI installer, which does not prompt the target storage device to install. You must disconnect the Windows installed storage device first, connect the storage back to the device after installing Celadon, and then select the OS to boot from the BIOS boot menu.