Help me understand Kernels

[boocephus]

I am running CM 10.1. I had previously run a GB ROM that had resident overclocking. I have no idea what Kernel it was. Since my CM 10.1 is a battery destroyer right now, and I never have a charger or extra battery more than 10 feet from me, I thought I'd overclock to see if it made a difference. However, the experimental CM 10.1 ROM and Kernel that comes with it doesn't support overclocking. Last night, I screwed around all evening trying to flash a new kernel that did support overclocking, but I just couldn't get it to work.

The disclaimer I have is that by screwing around, I ended up with a factory wiped blank phone. I had to restore apps and everything. Google does automagically download all the apps that it knows about. But, it puts them all on the phone, so you have to move them all to SD card manually or you'll run out of space. If you have titanium, you can go back and restore the data for most of them and get yourself back to where you were. That is, minus settings like mail accounts, bluetooth pairing and other annoying trivia.

So, my first question is, what order do you do this in? It was my intent to flash the nexus modem, the nitest kernel and CM 10.1. I downloaded the various zips and put them on my SD card. It seems that no matter what order I installed them, I couldn't get the result I wanted. With the modem and the kernel, I ended up without service. I could only get service back if I flashed FC09 again. I cleared the caches and everything and still eneded up short of the gee whiz modem and a kernel that supports overclocking. Flashing CM 10.1 after the kernel update replaces the gee whiz kernel with the crap one from CM10.1.

Right now, my phone is fc09 modem, and the crap kernel that comes with the cm10.1 experimental release from 03042013. But I do have service and everything seems to be working right. So I can at least find my way back.

So, if I want the nexus modem, and a sweet kernel and CM10.1, how would I go about it? I have some links saved for the downloads if anyone is interested.

 

[boocephus]

I think I resolved it. Well, I compromised.

I just couldn't get that nexus modem to work. I am still on fc09. But I did flash a kernel that worked with cm10.1 that supports oveclocking.

Here is a link to the kernels. The nitstfxc is the kernel. 4.2 is jelly bean. WM is the epic modem / NM is nexus modem. Then the date.

I used 0308 for the epic modem, which is fc09. I have service - data and voice. I have overclocking available in performance options. And I have CM10.1. Everything seems to be working fine. I just have to restore my apps. Apprently, when you are on wifi, it'll automatically download your apps from google. Since I am not, it is not. Since I can text and make calls, I'll wait until tonight to start restoration.

 

[niteNarmor]

Can you kindly provide the link for overclocked kernel? As currently, I am on CM10 stable (work phone so I can't really use the nightly versions) and I also agree about the crap kernels that come with them. The program itself is great but it lacks performance. I was on "The Peoples Rom" for about a day and with that ROM it allowed overclocking. What steps were involved with flashing a new kernel for this phone. I come from another device where I had to use a backup of another ROM to replace the kernel. Same steps? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[boocephus]

I ended up taking a CM10.1 nightly and that replaced the kernel again. You can just flash the kernel like you flash a rom. You flash the kernel after your rom since the rom replaces the kernel. The modem was the part I couldn't figure out.

Here is a list of the Kernels from a guy I thought I could trust:

Goo.im Downloads - Browsing Kernel

I couldn't get the Nexus modem to work. I am still using FC09, which i guess is the best one. You can just download the zip of the one you want and "install from zip" from your recovery. I have CWM recovery back, but with the other kernel is was TWIRP or something like that. The kernel I had was nitest-jb42Em-0308m.zip The ones that say JB42-NM are for the nexus modem.

Just so ya know, I was happy to get the crap non-overclocking kernel back with my CM 10.1 nightly. The new Kernel had VooDoo color, which allows you to make some really granular geeky changes to your phone's display. You can make it look really good. And when you do, it will eat batteries like you wouldn't believe. I tried all kinds of setttings and it would still kill battery with the brightness turned all the way down to the extent that it wouldn't charge with a wall charger if the screen was on. You have to download this voodoo sound app to make the changes. I swear that the sound was better with this app. Never played with those settings at all.

With overclocking, i never saw any improvement no matter what settings I used. I just noticed that when I flashed the kernel, this thing would be at 15% by lunchtime. I do sit in a building with excessively crappy signal. So that doesn't help. But it was noticeably worse than when I had the kernel I get with CM10.1

If anyone can figure out how to get that nexus modem to work, let me know. I did it about 6 different ways and I could never get voice service with it. Sometimes I got no data or voice. I was never able to get it to work as a replacement for FC09.

If you are running Jelly bean (CM 10.1) there is a JB Big Mem patch that you should apprently apply. I have no idea what it did. It's one of those forum things. Half the people say that it is the greatest thing in the world. half the people say it is a plecebo. It's another zip that you can flash.

On a positive note, I am less intimidated than ever to screw with this phone. I burned this thing completely down and had a blank slate. all the apps downloaded automatically. I got all my settings back through titanium. I know my way around the settings enough now to set my preferences the way I want. I can even remember my email server settings without looking at my wife's phone. No matter how bad you screw it up, you can fix it pretty easily.

 

[boocephus]

One other thing. I do have really bad signal here at work. It is causing some serious problems with Google Now and other cool stuff jelly bean does. I did add a mobile data toggle to the drawer and killing it does wonders.

 

[niteNarmor]

Ok in the above post you stated "from a guy you thought you could trust". Don't want to sound ungreatful because I really appreciate the knowledge you are giving me. But if you no longer trust them or could not trust them, why should I? Just a question. I don't want it sound like I am being a smarta33. Not trying to be.

 

[boocephus]

You shouldn't trust anyone, really. Even if I told you why I trusted them, why would you trust me? The only thing I go by is the apparent reputation of the person in the development community/XDA forum (that and a lack of cyrillic text and umlauts in their username) . This is the kernel that alot of people were using. I didn't mean to infer that I no longer trusted them. I just assessed at the time that I could trust that kernel and so I gave it a whirl. As a matter of fact, I took a CM10.1 nightly yesterday and was planning on reflashing that kernel again to give it another shot, since I already have it on my sd card.


UPDATE: I typed that and flashed that kernel again and it seems pretty kick ass to me. First off, the stock minimum screen brightness is way brighter than this kernel's minimum. Similar stock minimum brightness is 50% on this kernel. The reason I ditched it was that the battery was going dead in a really short time. I blamed the screen because of the android battery meter's reporting. I added a button in the drawer to disable data and this thing is holding charge fine now. It wasn't the screen. it was this thing struggling to find data signal in this place I work. JB is apparently constantly wanting to contact the internet and it just brutilized my battery. I am overclacked at 1200 mHz and it is working fine, too. I noticed straight off that with this kernel (even before overclocking) was much snappier. No lag in scrolling.

So, I was CM10.1 0319 nightly - accepting all defaults.

I just took that and flashed the kernel i referred to above. Mine is 0308 version. then i flashed the big mem zip. Working great so far. I will turn data back on when I leave the building and go from there. There is another flash for doing something with the data, but I wasn't super impressed with that one. The flash was called speedtest.zip I think.

 

[niteNarmor]

With my old phone, I had to turn off data and sync while I was inside of my work. Only turning it on when I was outside or at home. I would last about 12-15 hours before needing charge.
Now in trusting - I come from another forum because I received a new phone and there is not much info on that site. But I can say without a shadow of doubt, I trust everyone I have ever worked with and/or helped. They are the reason, I know as much as I do, (my saying on that forum(we were all noops at one point)). Trust is something ppl like myself come to the forums for. But of course, with caution. As I "try" and read all the comments. Some topics have way to many comment s. So we turn to individual ppl to understand and learn. Just as I have.

Things I would like to do :

Flash a nexus modem. Instructions in my opinion, are not clear enough.

Flash a new kernel. The last time I tried boot loop. Flashed recovery and everything works. Whew!!!

 

[boocephus]

yeah, the nexus modem thing, I can't help. I couldn't figure out the order to do it either.

As for the kernel, you can just download that on that I linked to and flash it and see what you think. If you don't like it, you can just reflash your Cyanogen mod and it'll over write it. I flashed the old one back again. I had a few apps start to force close on me and didn't think to set the overclock back down to 1 ghz. I just flashed the latests CM10.1 nightly. You can see the voodoo color thing pretty clearly because the boot animation has this green halo around it when I am using that kernel.