Activities/Android/Workshop

Participating at a "Free Your Android" Workshop

What will you do at the workshop

Checklist & HowTo prepare for the workshop

Be aware of

Actually Freeing your Android

Where to get Information

How to backup your Android

before rooting your phone

There are instructions in the Cyanogenmod wiki on how to backup your Android. Unfortunately all their links go to a non-free market store. So here is the manual but free version of doing a backup of all your data:

you find the data afterwards under 'sdcard/backup'

Now all your personal data on your internal memory should be copied to your SDcard. Finally, copy all data on your SDcard (even as sd-card should not be touched by installing custom rom) as a backup to any memory. That's it.

and/or after rooting your phone

Using Clockworkmod, there is also the possibility to backup the whole system in once. But this option is not available before rooting your phone. If you like to be sure, do the inscriptions above before you root your phone and use Clockworkmod after rooting in addition.

Technical High-level overview

On most phones Android operating system is spread over several partitions, most important ones being:

/boot - The main system boot loader

/system - Partition where Android operating system is installed

/data - Partition holding all installed applications and all application data (including system data - SMSes, contacts, etc.)

/recovery - Partition holding an alternate bootable system meant for recovering broken Android installation and Android upgrades

The goal of liberation is to replace the proprietary device manufacturer recovery program (which accepts only manufacturer-signed OS packages) with a custom one, which will allow installation of other operating systems (in our case CyanogenMod) to the "/system" partition.

The steps required for most devices are as follows:

  1. Backup user data (SMS, Contacts, etc.)
  2. Gain root access on the device
  3. Use root access to unlock bootloader to allow changes to "/system" and "/recovery" partitions (not all devices need that)
  4. Use root access to replace manufacturer recovery with an open one (e.g. ClockworkMod, Amon_Ra, etc.)

  5. Reboot phone into Clockwork / Amon_Ra recovery and use it to flash CyanogenMod zip file

  6. From within Clockwork/Amon_RA wipe "/data" and "/cache" partitions to prevent boot-loops and OS crashes because of application version differences

Giving a "Free Your Android" Workshop

Offical workshops timeline

Workshops that have been given

When

Where

Attendees

Who

Remarks

2012-03-22

FoeBuD in Bielefeld (Germany)

6

Torsten Grote

https://www.foebud.org/datenschutz-buergerrechte/free-your-android-2013-workshop-beim-foebud/

2012-08-26

IN-Berlin in Berlin (Germany)

12

Torsten Grote

trainers

2012-09-04

smartdevcon.eu in Katowice (Poland)

3

eal

2012-09-08

FLOSSK in Prishtina (Kosovo)

5

eal

2012-09-15

Kiperpipa in Ljubljana (Slovenia)

12

eal

2012-09-15

IN-Berlin in Berlin (Germany)

7

Torsten Grote

https://blogs.fsfe.org/anaghz/2012/09/17/libre-android-libre-knowledge/

Workshops that will happen

When

Where

Attendees

Who

Remarks

2012-11-03

BLIT in Potsdam (Germany)

tba

Daniel Guagning & eal

On-the-fly-workshop

2012-11-09

fscons in Gothenborg (Sweden)

tba

eal

2012-11-15

SFScons in Bozen (Italy)

tba

Torsten Grote und eal

training for trainers

2012-11-16

SFScons in Bozen (Italy)

tba

Torsten Grote und eal

Templates

Activities/Android/Workshop (last edited 2016-03-25 23:37:09 by paul)