Update: LG addresses bugs in kernel source for Optimus V
Sweet victory! LG took quick action and wrote me yesterday to tell me they’d released an updated version of the source code for the Optimus V that fixes the bugs I identified over the weekend.
So, all is well in this small corner of the open-source world. I’ve downloaded the new source code (labeled “LGVM670(Thunder) Android Froyo/kernel bugs were fixed” on LG’s download site), and verified that the fixes were made and that the new code builds cleanly.
In case you’re interested in the differences between the Optimus S and Optimus V (LS670 and VM670, respectively), here’s a diff of the kernel sources that I’ve made.
0140454
April 19, 2011, 5:53 am
hello
i am E720 user
i have renamed xt_mark.h to xt_MARK.h etc.
but when compiling code, it raises some errors…
could you tell me how to contact LG to ask them fix those bugs? or could you test on compiling E720 kernel code?
Sorry for my bad English
sticks
April 19, 2011, 1:53 pm
I’m happy to help.
xt_mark.h and xt_MARK.h are actually 2 separate files, you need them both. The mistake LG made when they packaged the files was to put them on a case-insensitive filesystem (which sees these as the same file) and one file overwrites the other one. That was the problem with all 15 missing netfilter files in the vm670 source.
So if you don’t have both xt_mark.h and xt_MARK.h, then you have the same problem and need to ask LG to fix the archive. They wrote me back from opensource-mc@lge(dot)com so you could try that address. Please let me know if it works or not!
Harley
May 17, 2011, 11:27 am
Excellent work! I’m glad I’ll have a working source tree when I start looking at the code myself since I plan on purchasing this phone in the near future (hopefully at least.) This kind of compliance goes a long way for me when looking at hardware to buy. Overall, I’m always pleasantly surprised by how helpful many companies are being to the open source communities.
sticks
May 17, 2011, 9:36 pm
Thanks! You might find this piece about upstream contributions to the kernel interesting.
I would say that LG is doing only slightly more than the bare minimum (i.e. GPL compliance), so personally I wouldn’t be too effusive with praise. It’s not like they’re really engaging with the community … on the other hand they’re not as bad as HTC! All their code builds. The kernel code is complete and totally usable, but the Froyo code is missing the LGE framework and many other APKs on the system, along with all the .rc files (so, basically, it’s very incomplete and not any more useful toward making a running OS than a build of vanilla Froyo from the Android tree). Also (on my Optimus S), the source dump is at least a version or two behind.
Overall, it is more good than bad, but coming from a Linux background I expected the platform to be a lot more open than it is … at the end of the day you have to dump files off your phone and disassemble Java bytecode to get the whole story.