Skip to content

Adding native GPS Support to the EXT2 Filesystem in Android.

Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings

jervisfm/W4118_HW6

Repository files navigation

December 9th, 2012
Operating Systems
Homework 6
Columbia University
Team 21 (Alex, Jervis, Shane)

About
======
This project consists of modification of the Linux Filesystem on which Android is based on to have native support for the storage of GPS information. 

Design
=======
The Inode operations struct was updated to include support for setting and getting gps information for an inode. 

The GPS information is written whenever an Inode is created or modified, and this includes the case when files are written to.

The storage of the information is designed to be compatible with both big-endian and little endian systems. 

How to Test/Run
===============
1) First create a new FS using the modified ext2 tools included. Assuming you're in the root directory, do: 

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=hmwk6.fs bs=1M count=1
$ sudo losetup /dev/loop0 hmwk6.fs
$ sudo ./userspace/src/e2fsprogs/misc/mke2fs -I 256 -L w4118.hmwk6 /dev/loop0
$ sudo losetup -d /dev/loop0

2) Compile modified kernel and load up the android device with the modified Linux kernel. 

3) Copy the new FS on to the device
$ adb push hmwk6.fs /data/misc/

4) Make and Copy the gps daemon to the device
$ cd ./userspace/src/gpsd/
$ make; make install_dev

5) Make and Copy the test program to the device
$ cd test
$ make; make install_dev

5a) If testing on the device, you should run the provided GPSLocator android app
so that it creates the /data/media/gps_location.txt file. 

6) Start the GPS daemon
$ adb shell /data/misc/gpsd

This default command (i.e. no arguments) is interpreted to mean that the daemon will read coordinates from /data/media/gps_location.txt 

For emulator testing purposes, the daemon can also feed monotically increasing coordinates to the kernel. To activate this option, pass in the "emu" as an argument: 
$ adb shell 
$ /data/misc/gpsd emu


7) Mount the File System. 
Use the mount script to mount the EXT2 modified FS. Make sure that the directory /data/misc/hmwk6 exists and it is empty. 
$ cd ./userspace/bin
$ ./slloop.sh

If you see no error messsage(s) or no other output at all, then you have successfully mounted the FS. 

8) Run the test programs 
Create a file and try to read back its GPS coordinates
$ adb shell
$ /data/misc/test write

Modify a File and try to read back its GPS coordinates
$ adb shell
$ /data/misc/test mod

Read GPS coordinates of an existing file
$ adb shell
$ /data/misc/test read

Test that kernel does not accept GPS coordinates with all 0s
$ adb shell
$ /data/misc/test gps

The file in question in the first three cases is this :
/data/misc/hmwk6/gps_test.txt  where hmwk6 directory is a mount point. 

Testing
==========
This modifed filesystem was tested as much as possible and to the best of our knowledge it works. 

FileLoc Testing
===============
On the FS, there the following files: 
* 1
* 2
* dir1 # this is a directory with a td1 test file
* dir2 # this is a directory with a td test file
* gps_test.txt
* walktool

Running File Loc on some of files and directories, we see the following results: 

./file_loc /data/misc/hmwk6/1
GPS File Reader Tool
Retrieved GPS Information:
Latitude: 40.808517
 Longitude: -73.966408
 Accuracy: 21.889999m

Age of GPS info is 139202 seconds
Google Maps URL: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?zoom=13&size=800x800&maptype=roadmap&markers=color:blue|label:P|40.808517,-73.966408&sensor=false

--
./file_loc /data/misc/hmwk6/2                        
GPS File Reader Tool
Retrieved GPS Information:
Latitude: 40.808517
 Longitude: -73.966408
 Accuracy: 21.889999m

Age of GPS info is 139198 seconds
Google Maps URL: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?zoom=13&size=800x800&maptype=roadmap&markers=color:blue|label:P|40.808517,-73.966408&sensor=false

--

./file_loc /data/misc/hmwk6/dir2                     
GPS File Reader Tool
Retrieved GPS Information:
Latitude: 40.808517
 Longitude: -73.966408
 Accuracy: 21.889999m

Age of GPS info is 139237 seconds
Google Maps URL: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?zoom=13&size=800x800&maptype=roadmap&markers=color:blue|label:P|40.808517,-73.966408&sensor=false


Other Notes
===========
Please note that to avoid potential loss and destruction of data, you should unmount the mounted file system properly by using the umount command or if that is not possilbe by properly shutting down the system or device through the conventinal Power Off / Shutdwn option. Failure to do so may result in loss of data as a consequence of the filesystem not being in a consistent state. This is possible because the EXT2 filesystem that we are working with has no support whatsoever for journaling or transactions support.

Test Results
=============
We were able to run the walktool successfully. The URL generated is given below. 

http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?zoom=15&size=800x800&maptype=roadmap&sensor=false&path=color:0xff0000|weight:5|40.807618,-73.963072|40.807617,-73.963070|40.807614,-73.963075|40.807614,-73.963070|40.807618,-73.963072|40.807614,-73.963073|40.807615,-73.963074|40.807615,-73.963074|40.807421,-73.961976|40.807421,-73.961976|40.806886,-73.961491|40.806877,-73.961235|40.806880,-73.961188|40.806880,-73.961188|40.806880,-73.961188|40.806880,-73.961188|40.806880,-73.961188|40.806880,-73.961188|40.807084,-73.961663|40.806666,-73.961369|40.806666,-73.961369|40.806666,-73.961369|40.805762,-73.961775|40.805757,-73.961862|40.805721,-73.961866|40.805747,-73.961853|40.805756,-73.961889|40.805692,-73.961881|40.805681,-73.961969|40.805856,-73.962566|40.805990,-73.962700|40.806058,-73.962990|40.806077,-73.963133|40.807495,-73.963099|40.806288,-73.963711|40.806402,-73.964021|40.806423,-73.964167|40.806641,-73.964495|40.806623,-73.964837|40.806639,-73.964821|40.806583,-73.964813|40.807259,-73.964037|40.807262,-73.964028|40.807262,-73.964028|40.807262,-73.964028|40.807262,-73.964028|40.807262,-73.964028|40.807262,-73.964028|40.807262,-73.964028|40.808121,-73.966134|40.808215,-73.966189|40.808327,-73.966279|40.808271,-73.966328|40.808052,-73.965991|40.808021,-73.966037|40.808022,-73.965989|40.808023,-73.966051|40.808028,-73.966118|40.808039,-73.966093|40.808017,-73.966063|40.808024,-73.966033|40.808073,-73.966040|40.808115,-73.966238|40.808115,-73.966258|40.808383,-73.966369|40.808508,-73.966419|40.808498,-73.966443|40.808458,-73.966441|40.808513,-73.966430|40.808400,-73.966442|40.808438,-73.966358|40.808492,-73.966424|40.808464,-73.966397|40.808491,-73.966409|40.808510,-73.966375|40.808400,-73.966392|40.808428,-73.966411|40.808406,-73.966405|40.808506,-73.966454|40.808456,-73.966378|40.808513,-73.966350|40.808487,-73.966384|40.808496,-73.966417|40.808498,-73.966424|40.808492,-73.966446

If you want to see the raw data, you can also find the included walktool and walktool_coords files in the repository. We also have an image file showing a map with the waypoint paths plotted on it. 

Resources Consuluted:
======================
Naser who was helpful with advice on how to make the floating point types work in the Linux Kernel. Also helped with debugging why the walk_tool was not working for us. 

Alex who helped with debugging the  "sleeping while atomic" bug, that occured due to incorrect usage of locks/locking.

Professional Linux Kernel Architecture, Chapter 8 : Virtual File System.

Linux Kernel Development, 3rd Edition: Chapter 13, Virtual File System.

Personal Operating System Class Notes 

Printf specifiers syntax: 
http://en.cppreference.com/w/c/io/fprintf
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstdio/printf/

GlibC Source Code: Finding the flags for R_OK flag that specifies read file permission
http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=posix/unistd.h#l281

About

Adding native GPS Support to the EXT2 Filesystem in Android.

Resources

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Releases

No releases published

Packages

No packages published