Important info for those flashing/building kernels and roms.

[LeslieAnn]

This was copied from the Harmonia thread and explains something many are unaware of.

If you are flashing kernels, building kernels or building roms, you need to read this as it will give you problems.

We have to go back to the beginning, to see how we got here. Yes it's long, deal with it.

When RevolutionRed ported the Xionia 005, he brought with it the associated drivers. While this increased battery life dramatically, it also brought the charging bug(s) many experience. Aphrodite continued using the Xionia system, as has Rodimus.

When we all flashed our first roms, we were all excited and no one really paid attention to how we had gained so much battery life, we all just assumed it was due to all of the optimizations. In a way, it's been a long time since RevolutionRed imported that kernel, and no one has really thought much about how those drivers effected us, we had no need to. Our phones kicked butt and we were happy.

When we flash an anykernel update to our roms, you only change the actual kernel. Everything else is retained. When you build a rom, you compile a boot.img. This contains the ramdisk, the kernel, which of course also brings the kernel animation, portions of the drivers, and a few other things. Most refer to the boot.img as the kernel, but in reality, it's only part of it.

Everything was peachy, we had fast roms, and things worked quite well.
That is, until we went back to LG source and brought back some of those drivers while creating the boot.img. While we eliminated the charging bugs, we brought back the wireless driver without knowing how bad it was. Apparently the stock wifi driver is complete and utter GARBAGE. So now we have to swap out those drivers at the boot.img level. I've already sent a message to Picasticks and given him as much as I can to help.

Basically anyone creating a rom from these new kernels is going to run into this issue and anyone flashing the anykernels to a stock rom will have these issues as well. I can fix it, but not as easily or as good as Picasticks.

I posted a fix in post 3.

 

[Kreatur3]

Since starting to use these new kernels I've noticed I have a hard time connecting to my wifi at home. I guess this is why...oh well I'll deal till it gets fixed by someone. Still have my 3g . Thanks for the info

 

[LeslieAnn]

I posted a temp fix in the Harmonia thread.

Basically if you want to run a Virgin based rom, with one of the new Virgin based kernels, flash a Xionia kernel first (Marzz's Xionia 005 is a good choice), then the Virgin kernel of your choice in order to wipe out the wifi driver.

 

[Kreatur3]

Thanks very much Leslie. Always a wealth of helpful knowledge. Glad to have this wifi bug fixed since it is rather annoying.

 

[obijohn]

Well, yes and no. On a completely stock system, flashing a kernel built from the LG sources for the V, wifi works great. I even have the Personal AP Hotspot working perfectly in the new builds of Bumblebee without needing a tethering app. I'll be releasing this update in the next day or so.

The real problem is that the kernel source itself doesn't provide the .so libs (among other things) that are found in the system image. The previous ROMS and kernels were made from the S ROMS and kernel sources (patched, of course), and many of the files that a "pure Virgin" kernel needs to run properly are going to cause issues, some minor, some severe, because some of these files came from an S system originally just to get the S-kernel to work on a V. Even with a stock Virgin system and kernel, doing a full Titanium Backup of system data from a system with these files from the S system is going to bork the wifi, and probably other things too.

To compound the problem, it appears that none of the currently available recoveries actually do a full wipe very well. I could be that they actually do wipe data and cache properly, but in the ROM edify scripts telling the recovery to recursively delete /system before installing the new system, it just doesn't delete everything (formatting system does seem to work). Wherever the problem is, some files are left lingering, and it is causing conflicts. I provided a user with an update.zip that formats data, cache, and system before installing the ROM, and he reported it went perfectly, whereas before there were problems. I can only attribute these problems to files being left behind after a wipe or the edify delete_recursive command when they shouldn't be.

I'm going to update the install procedure for Bumblebee to address these issues. I will also keep looking into the recovery wiping issues, but until then, formatting system, data, and cache seems to be the only way to truly wipe.

 

[Kreatur3]

To compound the problem, it appears that none of the currently available recoveries actually do a full wipe very well. I could be that they actually do wipe data and cache properly, but in the ROM edify scripts telling the recovery to recursively delete /system before installing the new system, it just doesn't delete everything (formatting system does seem to work). Wherever the problem is, some files are left lingering, and it is causing conflicts. I provided a user with an update.zip that formats data, cache, and system before installing the ROM, and he reported it went perfectly, whereas before there were problems. I can only attribute these problems to files being left behind after a wipe or the edify delete_recursive command when they shouldn't be.

I'm going to update the install procedure for Bumblebee to address these issues. I will also keep looking into the recovery wiping issues, but until then, formatting system, data, and cache seems to be the only way to truly wipe.

That wipe all zip you made did work great. Not sure why I needed it as, from what you described, I should have been ok. In the CWMA .6 recovery I did all the wipes which includes the format /system, /data, and /cache options. I always do all the wipes even if they are part of the "big" wipe you have as an option on the first screen. In any case it worked and I have no issues now.

 

[LeslieAnn]

The full V package will work, however the wireless system is still a battery hog, it always has been.

 

[overthinkingme]

I always heard of clockwork recoveries not wiping correctly since my days with the evo and nexus.

Sent from my VM670 using Tapatalk

 

[LeslieAnn]

Well, yes and no. On a completely stock system, flashing a kernel built from the LG sources for the V, wifi works great. I even have the Personal AP Hotspot working perfectly in the new builds of Bumblebee without needing a tethering app. I'll be releasing this update in the next day or so.

I keep re-reading what you wrote and I have the impression you think wifi isn't working.

It's working, even the access point. It all works just like a stock Virgin rom does.
The problem is that it's draining the battery at the same rate as the stock Virgin rom did and we pretty much traced the problem to the wifi. Switching the wifi system over to the S system gave us a better, more efficient driver. I don't think anyone realized it at the time though.

I'm positive that even if I wipe everything, and then restore a nandroid backup going back to stock Virgin, I would get the same battery draining result. Before and after flashing Harmonia.

 

[BiafraRepublic]

I decided to port the drivers/net/wireless sources from Xionia Kernel's Virgin Mobile branch over to my github for BLUEsphere (http://github.com/biafrarepublic/bluesphere). Hopefully, this will work...

 

[Delphis]

Very useful information. I use wifi pretty much all the time so I'll be sitting on the fence to see how this plays out. I'm on a Xionia 010 kernel at the moment but I'd like to try a V kernel some time. Well done and thanks to everyone working on the kernels!

 

[drezliok]

We should also remember that all Kernels are not "equal" or the same just because of how close the sources are. All LG Virgin based Kernels we have have been compiled by different people on different systems. We should take each issue test by test.

obijohn seems sure that his kernel/rom combo does not have the wifi bug, but is suffering from recoveries not wiping correctly. Just read his Thread and the only wifi trouble mentioned was mine. In that instance it was my fault.