Istratii-tech/SENSES

This repository exists to satisfy the GNU GPL version 2 obligations that come with distributing a modified QEMU.

The SENSES Android application runs an ARM32 Android system on an ARM64 phone by translating its individual processes — there is no guest kernel. The translator is a modified QEMU, and that is what this repository contains: our patches, our added source files, and the script that builds it.

MADE WITH CLAUDE CODE

Repository: https://github.com/Istratii-tech/Senses. Requests for sources: issues of this repository (https://github.com/Istratii-tech/Senses/issues) or https://t.me/istratii_tech.

Инструкция как использовать SENSES Emulator

1. Скачать прошивку которую хотите запустить
2. Положить файл прошивки в папку ISTRATII_TECH_SENSES в корне вашего телефона
3. Запустить эмулятор (он сам может предложить распаковку) и нажать на нижней панели SENSES -> Fimware -> нажать плюс -> выбрать файл вашей прошивки -> нажать распаковать
4. После распаковки нажимаете SENSES -> Start
5. Для остановки нажимаете SENSES -> Stop

How to Use SENSES Emulator: A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Download the firmware you want to run
2. Place the firmware file into the ISTRATII_TECH_SENSES folder in the root directory of your phone
3. Launch the emulator (it may automatically prompt you to extract the files) and follow these steps on the bottom panel: Tap SENSES -> Firmware -> tap the plus (+) icon Select your firmware file and tap Extract
4. Once extracted, tap SENSES -> Start to begin
5. To stop the emulator, tap SENSES -> Stop

• No firmware. The application ships none, and neither does this repository. The user supplies their own archive; the application unpacks it on the device.
• No links to download firmware. Deliberately.
• Not the application's own source. The application is a separate program: it starts QEMU as a separate process and talks to it over sockets, arguments and files. No QEMU code is loaded into its process. See NOTICE, section 4.

You are responsible for having the right to use the firmware you supply, and to have a modified copy of it made on your own device. The application changes that copy on the device (patched code, re-signed packages with a key generated on the device, removed vendor modules) and runs a local TLS proxy whose root certificate is generated on the device and added to the trust store of the copy. When the firmware's own installer has a menu, the application answers its screens with the default choices, as a person pressing "Next" would — except the agreement screen: the application shows you that agreement in full before unpacking, and you accept it or not (the application never accepts it for you; if you do not, nothing is unpacked and nothing is created, and the application says before the first start where it finds such a screen). Your acceptance is recorded in the container on your device; unpacking the same firmware again in place asks again unless it is recorded. The first-run wizard of the firmware is not skipped either: you go through it, and its agreements, yourself; it can be turned off only by hand, after you confirm that you have studied the agreements of the firmware and accept them. By starting a firmware in the application you confirm that you have read and accept the terms of that firmware and of the software inside it. These changes are made for compatibility only; they do not remove copy protection, DRM, licence checks of applications or account protection. Nothing is sent anywhere. Details: NOTICE, section 5.

Requires an aarch64 Linux host with root. The script mounts /proc and /dev, unpacks a minimal Alpine root into a chroot and builds there — Alpine is used because it ships a static glib, which QEMU needs and most other distributions do not provide.

sudo ./qemu/build-android.sh

Output: qemu/build/qemu-arm-android — a fully static aarch64 binary. It has to be static: Android's linker will not load a foreign dynamic loader, so a dynamically linked build simply would not start on the phone.

The build is pinned; the script refuses to continue if a download does not match:

The packages installed into that root are the ones Alpine v3.20 serves on the day of the build, so the script records exactly what it used. When it finishes it writes qemu/build/BUILD-MANIFEST.txt: the QEMU version and archive sum, the Alpine root and its sum, the output of apk info -v in the chroot, the compiler version, the number of patches with the sha256 of each, the sha256 of every file of ours and of the build script itself, and the sha256 of the resulting binary. Keep that file together with the binary you distribute.

To build another QEMU version or another Alpine root you must give its checksum as well (VER, QEMU_SHA256, BR, ALPINE_ROOTFS, ALPINE_SHA256); the patches in this repository are written for QEMU 8.2.4.

COPYING                 GNU GPL version 2, full text
NOTICE                  what is third-party, under which licence, where its source is
licenses/               licence texts of the other third-party components
qemu/build-android.sh   downloads upstream QEMU, applies patches, builds
qemu/patches/           99 patches against QEMU 8.2.4
qemu/src/               43 files we added to linux-user/, GPL-2.0-or-later

Each patch starts with a description of the symptom it exists for — that is usually more useful than the diff itself.

• QEMU and our changes to it — GNU GPL version 2 or later. COPYING. QEMU's own statement on the licences of its files: licenses/QEMU-LICENSE.txt.
• Libraries linked statically into the binary — GLib and GNU gettext (LGPL-2.1 or later, licenses/LGPL-2.1.txt), musl libc (MIT, licenses/musl-COPYRIGHT.txt), zlib (licenses/zlib.txt), libgcc (GPL-3.0 or later with the GCC Runtime Library Exception). Versions and where to get their sources: NOTICE, section 1.3.
• libarchive, liblzma and libbz2 (linked statically into the helper libunarc.so, a separate process) — libarchive: BSD-2-Clause with the notices of a few individual files, licenses/libarchive-COPYING.txt; liblzma: BSD Zero Clause License, licenses/liblzma-0BSD.txt; libbz2: licenses/bzip2-LICENSE.txt. Versions, source archives and their sums: NOTICE, section 2.3.
• Start-up code of the C library of the Android NDK (in the programs of the phone side) — BSD licence of The Android Open Source Project. licenses/AndroidNDK-BSD.txt.
• Bouncy Castle 1.70 — Bouncy Castle Licence. licenses/BouncyCastle.txt.
• Kotlin standard library and JetBrains annotations — Apache License 2.0. licenses/Apache-2.0.txt.
• Android Open Source Project headers — Apache License 2.0. licenses/Apache-2.0.txt.

Modification notices required by GPLv2 §2(a) are written into each changed QEMU file at build time, not in the patches themselves: a notice inside a patch would shift the start of the file and break the context of the next patch.

Android is a trademark of Google LLC. All other product names, logos and brands are property of their respective owners. This project is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them.

https://github.com/Istratii-tech/Senses (issues: https://github.com/Istratii-tech/Senses/issues), https://t.me/istratii_tech