[MOD][UNOFFICIAL] MultiROM for Xperia SP

Introduction

MultiROM is one-of-a-kind multi-boot mod. It can boot any Android ROM as well as other systems like Ubuntu Touch, once they are ported to that device. Besides booting from device's internal memory, MultiROM can boot from USB drive connected to the device via OTG cable. The main part of MultiROM is a boot manager, which appears every time your device starts and lets you choose ROM to boot. You can see how it looks on the left image below and in gallery. ROMs are installed and managed via modified TWRP recovery. You can use standard ZIP files to install secondary Android ROMs and MultiROM even has its own installer system, which can be used to ship other Linux-based systems.

Features:
* Multiboot any number of Android ROMs
* Restore nandroid backup as secondary ROM
* Boot from USB drive attached via OTG cable

You can also watch a video which shows it in action.

Warning!

It _is_ dangerous. This whole thing is basically one giant hack - none of these systems are made with multibooting in mind. It is no longer messing with data partition or boot sector, but it is possible that something goes wrong and you will have to flash factory images again. Make backups. Always.

Installation

Manual installation
Firstly, there are videos on youtube. If you want, just search for "MultiROM installation" on youtube and watch those, big thanks to all who made them. There is also an awesome article on Linux Journal.

MultiROM has 3 parts you need to install:

• MultiROM (multirom-YYYYMMDD-v33x-huashan.zip) - download the ZIP file from second post and flash it in recovery.
• Modified recovery (multirom-YYYYMMDD-recovery-huashan.zip) - download the ZIP file from second post and use a recovery to flash it into the FOTA partition (see TWRP 3 thread for more informations).
• Patched kernel - You can use those kernels on most Marshmallow and Lollipop based primary ROMs to add kexec boot support. Be aware that those patchers will be update when possible after kernel sources updates

You current rom will not be erased by the installation.
Download links are in the second post.

Adding ROMs

1. Android
Go to recovery, select Advanced -> MultiROM -> Add ROM. Select the ROM's zip file and confirm.

Recommended values are :

• Cache : Keep default value
• Data : Minimum 4000
• System : 1000 is enough for most installs

Using USB drive

During installation, recovery lets you select install location. Plug in the USB drive, wait a while and press "refresh" so that it shows partitions on the USB drive. You just select the location (extX, NTFS and FAT32 partitions are supported) and proceed with the installation.
If you wanna use other than default FAT32 partition, just format it in PC. If you don't know how/don't know where to find out how, you probably should not try installing MultiROM.
If you are installing to NTFS or FAT32 partition, recovery asks you to set image size for all the partitions - this cannot be easilly changed afterward, so choose carefully. FAT32 is limited to maximum of 4095MB per image - it is limitation of the filesystem, I can do nothing about that.
Installation to USB drives takes a bit longer, because the flash drive is (usually) slower and it needs to create the images, so installation of Ubuntu to 4Gb image on my pretty fast USB drive takes about 20 minutes.
Enumerating USB drive can take a while in MultiROM menu, so when you press the "USB" button in MultiROM, wait a while (max. 30-45s) until it searches the USB drive. It does it by itself, no need to press something, just wait.

Updating/changing ROMs

1. Primary ROM (Internal)

• Flash ROM's ZIP file as usual, do factory reset if needed (it won't erase secondary ROMs)
• Go to Advanced -> MultiROM in recovery and do Inject curr. boot sector.
• Reflash the kernel patcher to add kexec support

2. Secondary Android ROMs
If you want to change the ROM, delete it and add new one. To update ROM, follow these steps:

• Go to Advanced -> MultiROM -> List ROMs and select the ROM you want to update.
• Select "Flash ZIP" and flash ROM's ZIP file.

Explanation of recovery menus

Main menu
- Add ROM - add ROM to boot
- List ROMs - list installed ROMs and manage them
- Inject boot.img file - When you download for example kernel, which is distrubuted as whole boot.img (eg. franco kernel), you have to use this option on it, otherwise you would lose MultiROM.
- Inject curr. boot sector - Use this option if MultiROM does not show up on boot, for example after kernel installation.
- Settings - well, settings.

Manage ROM
- Rename, delete - I believe these are obvious
- Flash ZIP (only Android ROMs) - flash ZIP to the ROM, for example gapps
- Add/replace boot.img - replaces boot.img used by this ROM, this is more like developer option.
- Re-patch init - this is available only for ubuntu. Use it when ubuntu cannot find root partition, ie. after apt-get upgrade which changed the init script.

Source code

MultiROM - http://ift.tt/1CAI2pm (branch master)
Modified TWRP - http://ift.tt/1e3LPDj (branch master)
Device Tree - http://ift.tt/1RXwhzl (branch android-6.0)
Kernel w/ kexec-hardboot patch - http://ift.tt/1RXwhzp (branch multirom)

XDA:DevDB Information
MultiROM for Xperia SP, Tool/Utility for the Sony Xperia SP

Contributors
Adrian DC
Source Code: http://ift.tt/W33Ris


Version Information
Status: Alpha

Created 2016-04-03
Last Updated 2016-04-03

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