Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation

Transcription

1 Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation Release 1 the pink panther Aug 22, 2018

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3 Contents 1 Prerequisites: 1 2 Unlocking the Bootloader 3 3 Working with A/B Partitioning Slots Installing LineageOS 7 5 Common Issues Fingerprint Scanner Stopped Working I Cant Boot After Restoring a Backup No Touch in TWRP Broken Crypto Magisk Removing the Red Verity Warning Stock Update Notifications are Still Appearing Back to Stock 13 7 Hidden features Add columns to QuickSettings Change the System DNS Server i

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5 CHAPTER 1 Prerequisites: You want fastboot up and running. Don t even attempt any of this if you don t. You will need a cable that is not the included cable. The included cable can cause issues with Fastboot. Unlocked Bootloader and Critical Partitions 1

6 Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation, Release 1 2 Chapter 1. Prerequisites:

7 CHAPTER 2 Unlocking the Bootloader Bootloader can be unlocked via fastboot flashing unlock THIS WILL WIPE YOUR DATA It is important you also fastboot flashing unlock_critical. This allows updating firmware partitions through fastboot. Failure to do so has caused issues for users attempting to revert to stock. 3

8 Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation, Release 1 4 Chapter 2. Unlocking the Bootloader

9 CHAPTER 3 Working with A/B Partitioning The two boot partitions on this device, named boot_a and boot_b respectively, are not your traditional boot partitions. Both of these partitions contain a kernel and ramdisk like you are probably used to. The difference is that the ramdisk is now your recovery. This device uses a system-as-root layout, with which the system partition now contains what would have been the ramdisk. The A/B partitioning scheme can be quite confusing to users. There are actually two copies of many of the partitions 3.1 Slots The concept of slots comes into play to determine whether you are booting slot A or slot B. We can determine which slot is active or marked for booting via adb: adb shell getprop ro.boot.slot_suffix and via fastboot: fastboot getvar current-slot At any time we can switch to the next inactive slot using: fastboot set_active other, or we can use: fastboot set_active [a,b], to manually switch to a specified slot. The slots are designed to enable seamless system upgrades. Android can install an update to the inactive slot while it is still running. Once the update is completed, and optimized, Android will tell the system to switch to the slot that was upgraded. This means, unless tampered with, one slot will always be one version behind. A/B Partitioning not only reduces first boot time by performing dexopt before rebooting, it also prevents boot failures from failed updates. If Android fails to boot it will switch back to the previous slot so that the next reboot will be back on the current, working, slot. 5

10 Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation, Release 1 6 Chapter 3. Working with A/B Partitioning

11 CHAPTER 4 Installing LineageOS You will need to flash TWRP, the latest can be found here: Flash it to the boot partition with fastboot. Invisiblek builds unoffical LineageOS images with modifications to make things easier/possible to use on mata. Invisiblek s unofficial builds include both the vendor.img and the Google Apps built in. These are included to facilitate LineageOS s built in updater. Invisiblek s Lineage builds can be found here: Roms are flashed the normal way through TWRP. More info and instructions here: Note: If you are changing roms you likely broke encryption and will bootloop until you fastboot -w Note2 Invisiblek s builds, because they are unofficial, are modified to pull OTA files from his personal server. Once official builds are released you will have to manually flash the official builds if you wish to receive official updates. A wipe may be required for this. 7

12 Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation, Release 1 8 Chapter 4. Installing LineageOS

13 CHAPTER 5 Common Issues 5.1 Fingerprint Scanner Stopped Working Chances are you have a firmware mismatch. Typically checking your build.prop for the build version and flashing the matching firmware package will fix this. Firmware packages here: If you move data between devices or change encryption. You may end up with a nonworking fingerprint scanner after restoring data from a twrp backup. If this occurs, you can flush the recorded fingerprint data by deleting /data/ system/users/0/fpdata and /data/system/users/0/settings_fingerprint.xml. You should now be able to re-enroll your fingerprints. 5.2 I Cant Boot After Restoring a Backup This is usually caused by the fact that you had to flash TWRP in order to get in to TWRP. Therefore, when you did your backup, it actually backed up the TWRP install instead of your ROM s boot.img. The kernel included with TWRP cannot boot Android. I recommend swapping slots before flashing and booting into TWRP. This will flash twrp onto your older, non-booting, slot. fastboot set_active other will switch slots for you. Once you get to TWRP, go to the reboot menu, change to the other (original) slot, and finally perform your backup. Make sure you always decrypt your data, in TWRP, before backing up. It s unlikely backing up the encrypted FDE data is viable to restore. (Tinfoilers can always encrypt the twrp backup that is generated with the check of a box). 5.3 No Touch in TWRP Some day you may end up with a firmware that doesn t play well with twrp. Either no touch screen, or no data decryption. 9

14 Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation, Release 1 One quick way to flash a zip in this situation is to put the device in sideload mode via an adb command: adb shell twrp sideload then flash your zip using adb sideload: adb sideload myawesomezip.zip 5.4 Broken Crypto If you get an error about ExtractTarFork() its plausible that you have a problem with crypto. It is likely that what is currently on your device is unhappy with how things were backed up. The best way I ve found to fix this is to perform a data wipe in fastboot via fastboot -w, then boot into your ROM (with clean data), go through the setup wizard and set a lockscreen password/pin (preferably matching what you had before), then reboot into twrp and restoring your data. Firmware between N and O are finicky when it comes to crypto. I m not even sure I ve even wrapped my head around all the ins and outs of Oreo s crypto yet. If you re backing up/restoring with O firmware, as of ( ) you re on your own. 5.5 Magisk Requirements: Working Android Tools (fastboot/adb) Decrypted /sdcard (remove your lockscreen security and reboot) A copy of your boot.img Magisk 16.4 or greater (16.4 beta is the latest at the time of this writing) The latest version of TWRP Getting your boot.img: If you are on the stock rom/kernel you may simply use the boot.img the appropriate BTS.zip ( matabts). If you are on Invisiblek s LineageOS builds, he offers a direct download of the boot image for pinned builds. If you are using a custom kernel you may simply use it s.zip instead of the boot.img If you are not on a pinned LOS, or you are using something else you will have to extract your boot.img. Note: It is important that you have completed the first time setup in order to Magisk to work. This cannot be applied to a fresh rom. Note 2: You must remove your lockscreen (be decrypted) in order to complete this procedure. This is so you can access your twrp, magisk, and boot.img from /sdcard later. Procedure: If you are unfamiliar with how the slots work flashing magisk can seem cumbersome. This is because magisk patches the boot.img which we are actually replacing with TWRP. Therefore the process will look a bit like this: Fastboot > flash twrp to active boot slot > boot twrp > flash boot.img to active boot slot > flash magisk to active boot slot. Before you reboot into fastboot to begin the process, make sure you have the required files on /sdcard. Reboot into fastboot, take note of your active slot, and flash twrp 10 Chapter 5. Common Issues

15 Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation, Release 1 Reboot into recovery from fastboot Using TWRP, flash your boot.img to your active slot just like you would a rom. (If your boot is a raw boot.img, you must switch twrp into image mode from the choose zip screen) Flash magisk on top of your boot.img in your active slot You have now just patched the boot.img you flashed ontop of TWRP and your ROM should be able to boot. 5.6 Removing the Red Verity Warning The red verity message that appears on modified systems and requires you to hit the power button to boot can be cleared by fastboot flashing this boot.img: That image will reboot over and over again (you ll never get anywhere) but when it does, it ll clear out that annoying red error. After flashing it, boot normally once. You will still get the red error but it will be cleared it the next reboot. Here s a link to the patch that is included to perform this: Stock Update Notifications are Still Appearing You may still get stock Essential Update notifications even when on a custom rom. This is especially true is you re are one Android Security Bulliten (ASB) release behind. Update notifications can be annoying, and accidental taps can result in the device trying (and failing) to update only to reboot back into the installed custom rom. These notifications can easily be disabled from Settings. Browse to Settings -> Apps & notifications -> See all <x> apps -> Google Play Services -> App notifications. At the bottom of this page you will see System Update. This will stop you from seeing the stock rom update notifications until you switch roms or wipe data again Removing the Red Verity Warning 11

16 Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation, Release 1 12 Chapter 5. Common Issues

17 CHAPTER 6 Back to Stock There is a tutorial on xda here: 13

18 Essential PH-1 (mata) Documentation, Release 1 14 Chapter 6. Back to Stock

19 CHAPTER 7 Hidden features Invisiblek s Los has some hidden customizations that were not mentioned earlier. These are made available through adb commands. 7.1 Add columns to QuickSettings The number of columns are changed using the command setprop persist.qs_columns as adb root For example, if you wanted four Quick Settings columns you can run: setprop persist.qs_columns 4 The default value is Change the System DNS Server It may be desirable for the user to use a DNS server other than Google s. Prior to Android P this is not easily done. Invisiblek demonstrates that you can make this change by echo ing the changes to /data/local.prop from adb shell. You will need to be root for this. In this example we will be setting the system dns server too Cloudflare s DNS , : adb root # you must first have root adb shell "echo 'net.rmnet_data2.user_dns1= ' >> /data/local.prop" adb shell "echo 'net.rmnet_data2.user_dns2= ' >> /data/local.prop" adb shell chmod 600 /data/local.prop # make local.prop rw for the current owner adb reboot Source: 15