don't let android init keep running us over and over

[android-debian.git] / README

diff --git a/README b/README
index e9402a0336f28b0b862e697a428d2111983f5da1..999cd0424b4c444f4f8b07f22ffd6e67c8b0fc90 100644 (file)
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,5 +1,63 @@
+Introduction
+------------
+
 These scripts are intended to ease the process of bootstrapping a Debian
 chroot on an Android device. Instructions for installing such a chroot
 may be found at:
 
 http://www.steven-mcdonald.id.au/tutorials/debian_on_samsung_galaxy.shtml
+
+
+Overview
+--------
+
+These scripts come in pairs; the ones under android/ are to be executed
+in an Android environment, and the ones under debian/ get executed in a
+chroot by the Android scripts.
+
+These scripts are ready to roll if:
+
+- your Debian chroot lives in /debian,
+- you place the scripts under android/ in /data/local/bin/, and
+- you place the scripts under debian/ in /debian/usr/local/sbin/.
+
+If this is not the case, then you will need to modify these scripts to
+work for you. Note that you will probably need to modify
+debian/debian-init anyway, to specify which services you want to have
+started automatically.
+
+
+Starting Debian services at boot time
+-------------------------------------
+
+In order to run the debian-init script at boot time, you can add the
+following to /system/etc/init.local.rc:
+
+service debian /data/local/bin/debian-init
+    user root
+    group root
+
+For some reason, Android's init won't start Debian if supplied with the
+'oneshot' option, so do not use that.
+
+
+Mounting Android file systems within the chroot
+-----------------------------------------------
+
+If you'd like to be able to manipulate Android's file systems from
+Debian, you can bind-mount them under /debian/android/. The debian-init
+script will do this for you, based on searching through the file system
+tree under /debian/android/ looking for empty directories. Just create a
+directory /debian/android/foo for each /foo in Android you want to be
+mounted in this way, and debian-init will mount it appropriately at boot
+time.
+
+
+Using a Debian shell from an Android terminal emulator
+------------------------------------------------------
+
+If you want your device's terminal emulator to default to using a shell
+in a Debian environment, just use /data/local/bin/debian-sh as your
+shell. This will su to root if you aren't already, chroot into Debian,
+set some environment variables and then execute bash in a Debian
+environment.