diff --git a/misc/arm/a b/misc/arm/a
new file mode 100755
index 00000000000..140b47e2962
--- /dev/null
+++ b/misc/arm/a
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+# Copyright 2010 The Go Authors.  All rights reserved.
+# Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
+# license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
+
+# This is a small script for executing go binaries on the android platform.
+#
+# example:
+# ./a 5.out foo bar baz
+#
+# The script exports the local values of GOARCH, GOTRACEBACK and GOGC
+# to the android environment.
+#
+# Known issues:
+# The script fails unless the last character output by the program is "\n"
+#
+# TODO(kaib): add gdb bridge support
+
+exp ()
+{
+	if [ ${!1} ]; then
+		echo "export $1=\"${!1}\"; "
+	fi
+}
+
+# adb does not correctly return the exit value of the executed program. use this
+# wrapper to manually extract the exit value
+rloc=/data/local/tmp/retval
+rsize=$(adb shell "ls -l $rloc"|tr -s ' '|cut -d' ' -f4)
+rcheck=38
+if [ $rsize != $rcheck ] ; then
+#	echo "debug: retval size incorrect want $rcheck, got $rsize. uploading"
+	echo  >/tmp/adb.retval '#!/system/bin/sh
+"$@"
+echo RETVAL: $?' 
+	adb push /tmp/adb.retval $rloc >/dev/null 2>&1
+	adb shell chmod 755 $rloc
+fi
+
+# run the main binary
+if [ "$*" != "$1" ]; then
+	args=$(echo $*| cut -d' ' -f2-)
+fi
+adb push $1 /data/local/tmp/$1 >/dev/null 2>&1
+adb shell "$(exp GOARCH) $(exp GOTRACEBACK) $(exp GOGC) \
+	/data/local/tmp/retval /data/local/tmp/$1 $args" \
+	2>&1|tr -d '\r' |tee /tmp/adb.out|grep -v RETVAL
+exit $(grep RETVAL /tmp/adb.out|tr -d '\n\r'| cut -d' ' -f2)
diff --git a/test/arm-pass.txt b/test/arm-pass.txt
index ce24e01ac6f..e4187c29999 100644
--- a/test/arm-pass.txt
+++ b/test/arm-pass.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
-./235.go  # slow
-./64bit.go  # slow
-# ./args.go  # android runner doesn't pass args through
+./235.go
+./64bit.go  # slow with GOGC=on
+./args.go
 ./assign.go
 ./bigalg.go
 ./blank.go
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@
 ./defer.go
 # ./deferprint.go  # need floating point
 ./empty.go
-# ./env.go  # android runner doesn't pass env through
+./env.go
 ./escape.go
 # ./float_lit.go  # need floating point
 # ./floatcmp.go  # need floating point
diff --git a/test/run-arm b/test/run-arm
index d6d257adc62..4a469ceae18 100755
--- a/test/run-arm
+++ b/test/run-arm
@@ -35,6 +35,14 @@ FAILEDFILE=/tmp/gotest3-$$-$USER
 # on thresher, 3GB suffices to run the tests; with 2GB, peano fails.
 ulimit -v 4000000
 
+# no core files please
+ulimit -c 0
+
+true >times.out
+
+# TODO(kaib): figure out why the GC makes things so utterly slow.
+export GOGC=off
+export GOTRACEBACK=0
 
 for i in $(cat arm-pass.txt | sed 's/#.*//')
 do
@@ -42,7 +50,7 @@ do
 	dir=$(dirname $i)
 	export D=$dir
 	sed '/^\/\//!q' $i | sed 's@//@@; $d' |sed 's|./\$A.out|$E &|' >$RUNFILE
-	if ! sh $RUNFILE >$TMP1FILE 2>&1
+	if ! { time -p bash -c "bash $RUNFILE >$TMP1FILE 2>&1" ; } 2>$TMP2FILE
 	then
 		echo
 		echo "===========" $i
@@ -58,6 +66,7 @@ do
 	then
 		echo $i succeeded with no output.
 	fi
+	echo $(awk 'NR==1{print $2}' $TMP2FILE) $D/$F >>times.out
 done | # clean up some stack noise
 	egrep -v '^(r[0-9a-z]+|[cfg]s)  +0x'  |
 	sed '/tmp.*Bus error/s/.*Bus/Bus/; /tmp.*Trace.BPT/s/.*Trace/Trace/
@@ -75,7 +84,7 @@ done | # clean up some stack noise
 failed=0
 rm  -f $RUNFILE $TMP1FILE $TMP2FILE *.$A $A.out
 diffmsg=""
-if ! diff run.out golden-arm.out
+if ! diff -b run.out golden-arm.out
 then
 	diffmsg="; test output differs"
 	failed=1