LineageOS, Current status : 16.0 Test Builds

[Polaris 423]

28 minutes ago, tdm said:

Got some help with vbmeta so that should be solved for now. I still want to build and install the vendor partition for lineage but that's no longer top priority.

 

Last thing before test2 is switching to FBE, if I can manage that tomorrow.

👍👍👍👍👍

[tdm 2,322]

Got FBE working. Should have a new build tomorrow morning (about 12 to 14 hours from now).

[_DW_ 628]

3 hours ago, tdm said:

Got FBE working. Should have a new build tomorrow morning (about 12 to 14 hours from now).

Nice work!

[tdm 2,322]

Okay test2 build is up at the page linked in the OP.  Please note the instructions have changed.  I have switched to MindTheGapps.  This is a gapps package maintained by a Lineage developer and it plays nicely with A/B.

 

Enjoy!

 

[Polaris 423]

27 minutes ago, tdm said:

Okay test2 build is up at the page linked in the OP.  Please note the instructions have changed.  I have switched to MindTheGapps.  This is a gapps package maintained by a Lineage developer and it plays nicely with A/B.

Enjoy!

Oh, this is ssooo cool, I just wish I had my phone so I could start testing and playing!  As always, thanks for all the hard work!

[SteffenWi 139]

35 minutes ago, tdm said:

Okay test2 build is up at the page linked in the OP.  Please note the instructions have changed.  I have switched to MindTheGapps.  This is a gapps package maintained by a Lineage developer and it plays nicely with A/B.

 

Enjoy!

 

Flash successful. No issues this time. Just remember kids: use a USB 3 cable connected to a USB 3 slot on your computer. It might just be my machine being weird though. But if the process gets stuck, just give it a try. I'm going to update this post as stuff happens or bugs appear.

 

First bug: I'm using German keyboard layout, during the initialization Android asks you if you want to connect to a WIFI network. When trying to enter a password, the virtual keyboard does not pop up. When I open the physical keyboard, the screen does not change orientation and the keys I press do not match the input appearing on the screen. (I believe the original stock Android had the same issue and you have to go into settings and change the layout.)

 

If I then click on the small keyboard icon in the lower right corner a popup appears and I can enable the virtual keyboard regardless of the state of the physical keyboard, which works. It seems like the open/close action is not being recognized at this time. Is that what is meant with "virtual keyboard should default to enabled. "?

Edited December 4, 2019 by SteffenWi

[tdm 2,322]

6 minutes ago, SteffenWi said:

Flash successful. No issues this time. Just remember kids: use a USB 3 cable connected to a USB 3 slot on your computer. It might just be my machine being weird though. But if the process gets stuck, just give it a try. I'm going to update this post as stuff happens or bugs appear.

 

First bug: I'm using German keyboard layout, during the initialization Android asks you if you want to connect to a WIFI network. When trying to enter a password, the virtual keyboard does not pop up. When I open the physical keyboard, the screen does not change orientation and the keys I press do not match the input appearing on the screen. (I believe the original stock Android had the same issue and you have to go into settings and change the layout.)

 

If I then click on the small keyboard icon in the lower right corner a popup appears and I can enable the virtual keyboard regardless of the state of the physical keyboard, which works. It seems like the open/close action is not being recognized at this time. Is that what is meant with "virtual keyboard should default to enabled. "?

I believe stock has some changes to the orientation settings to allow landscape in more places.  But I am not quite sure exactly where or how yet, as I haven't gotten that far.

 

As you noticed, the virtual keyboard does not pop up by default.  On stock it does.  I believe this is a preference setting in the device tree.  You can manually activate it just as you noted, by pressing the keyboard icon in the navbar and telling it to always show the virtual keyboard.

 

I have not tried any non-English layouts and, to be honest, I would not know how they should behave.  But I can certainly investigate.  When setup is done, does the physical keyboard work as expected?

 

Oh, and I have also noticed the physical keyboard does not seem to react to special modifier keys (the yellow diagonal arrows).  So certain characters may not be possible to input.  I think the forward slash on the P key is one of them.  I'll need to figure that out soon.

 

My top priority right now is getting the figerprint reader to stop forgetting data on reboot.  Keyboard may be next if no other major issues appear.

 

 

[SteffenWi 139]

23 minutes ago, tdm said:

I have not tried any non-English layouts and, to be honest, I would not know how they should behave.  But I can certainly investigate.  When setup is done, does the physical keyboard work as expected?

Nope, it does not work. So what happens - and that is the same as with stock android - you press "d" on the keyboard and "s" appears. The numeric row is fine. I didn't try any special characters like äöü. For stock Android the solution was to go to System, then "Language and Settings", then "Physical keyboard", then click "Fxtec Pro1 (Default)" and in the pop-up select "German" (Or Deutsch if your system is set to German). For stock android that allowed the keyboard to work. On Lineage that doesn't do anything as far as  I can tell.

 

Another issue: The WIFi symbol looks like it only barely has a signal (completely greyed out) even though I'm right next to my router.

 

Starting youtube in the default browser and putting a video in fullscreen mode causes the screen to flicker. The status bars (top and right) are being displayed and disappear immediately again. Video playback itself isn't affected. It is quite irritating though. Playback in embedded mode/normal mode is fine.

My banking app crashes when trying to start without giving any information as to why. From my previous phone I do know that an unlocked bootloader isn't an issue.

On a more upbeat note: The camera is working perfectly and the physical button is working as expected :).

 

Disclaimer: As the SIM card is a bit difficult to get out of my current phone, I didn't test anything regarding that yet.

 

Question: Is there a way to get rid of the google asisstent stuff? Meaning the voice recog thingi? I had hoped that it wouldn't be included in the GApps package.

Edited December 4, 2019 by SteffenWi

[tdm 2,322]

4 minutes ago, SteffenWi said:

Nope, it does not work. So what happens - and that is the same as with stock android - you press "d" on the keyboard and "s" appears. The numeric row is fine. I didn't try any special characters like äöü. For stock Android the solution was to go to System, then "Language and Settings", then "Physical keyboard", then click "Fxtec Pro1 (Default)" and in the pop-up select "German" (Or Deutsch if your system is set to German). For stock android that allowed the keyboard to work. On Lineage that doesn't do anything as far as  I can tell.

Okay I guess I'll have to investigate that.

4 minutes ago, SteffenWi said:

 

Another issue: The WIFi symbol looks like it only barely has a signal (completely greyed out) even though I'm right next to my router.

Yes, the WiFi signal strength indicator is broken.

4 minutes ago, SteffenWi said:

 

Starting youtube in the default browser and putting a video in fullscreen mode causes the screen to flicker. The status bars (top and right) are being displayed and disappear immediately again. Video playback itself isn't affected. It is quite irritating though. Playback in embedded mode/normal mode is fine.

Seems to work fine here, both in the browser and in the youtube app...?

[SteffenWi 139]

26 minutes ago, tdm said:

My top priority right now is getting the figerprint reader to stop forgetting data on reboot.

Fun fact: It isn't forgetting the data for me? When I initially set up the device after flashing it, I registered my thumb and three shutdowns and one reboot later it is still being recognized.

[tdm 2,322]

Now that we have a working Lineage install, I think we need an issue tracker.  I think the easiest thing to do is to use github since it has a built-in issue tracker for projects.

 

https://github.com/tdm/android_device_fxtec_pro1/issues

 

[SteffenWi 139]

10 minutes ago, tdm said:

Now that we have a working Lineage install, I think we need an issue tracker.  I think the easiest thing to do is to use github since it has a built-in issue tracker for projects.

 

https://github.com/tdm/android_device_fxtec_pro1/issues

 

Done. I'm assuming the "This build was signed by a public key" message will go away when we have a non-test LineageOS build?

[tdm 2,322]

29 minutes ago, SteffenWi said:

My banking app crashes when trying to start without giving any information as to why. From my previous phone I do know that an unlocked bootloader isn't an issue.

If you can get me a logcat, I can take a look.  But no promises, I obviously do not share your bank... 😄

29 minutes ago, SteffenWi said:

On a more upbeat note: The camera is working perfectly and the physical button is working as expected :).

Yes I noticed this last night.  Maybe I was pressing it wrong before? 😛

29 minutes ago, SteffenWi said:

Disclaimer: As the SIM card is a bit difficult to get out of my current phone, I didn't test anything regarding that yet.

Cellular functionality will be interesting to see.  My device has a zero MEID, so I cannot connect until I change it.

29 minutes ago, SteffenWi said:

Question: Is there a way to get rid of the google asisstent stuff? Meaning the voice recog thingi? I had hoped that it wouldn't be included in the GApps package.

I'm not sure where assistant is located.  It may be in the Google app.  But I'm not even sure where that is, as I never cared to delete it entirely and the gapps zip does not contain any files that look like independent packages for assistant.  You can disable always-on listening.  I always do this at the setup screen, as I definitely do not want Google recording everything it hears.  I know from experience with a previous device that when you disable always-on listening it actually does get disabled.

[tdm 2,322]

6 minutes ago, SteffenWi said:

Done. I'm assuming the "This build was signed by a public key" message will go away when we have a non-test LineageOS build?

Yes, official Lineage builds are signed with official Lineage keys.  I never bother to generate and sign my builds with private keys.

 

[SteffenWi 139]

10 minutes ago, tdm said:

If you can get me a logcat, I can take a look. 

I'm guessing that it has something to do with the test build environment...if this persists when the official build comes around I'll dive deeper into it.

[EskeRahn 5,459]

On the keyboard layout issue.

The qwertY and qwertZ keyboards are electrically identical. Basically the qwertZ is a logically unshifted qwertY. That is the letters are shifted back to their natural positions, and then a few national keys in the right pane.

Have you tried if FinQWERTY works under Lineage too?

[Polaris 423]

3 hours ago, SteffenWi said:

Question: Is there a way to get rid of the google asisstent stuff? Meaning the voice recog thingi? I had hoped that it wouldn't be included in the GApps package.

Yes, 100% solution, don't install GcrApps! 😉😀

[tdm 2,322]

So I have spent most of the day today trying to get TWRP to decrypt FBE.  It has been quite an adventure, as my only prior experience with TWRP decrypt has been FDE on Android 7.0 which is quite simple to support.  FBE on Android 9.0 requires a lot of infrastructure that I had not known about.  I'm not done yet.  Hope to have it working in the next couple of days.

 

I'm also preparing an EDL package for user consumption.  This will allow anyone to un-brick their device and restore the stock factory image no matter how badly they damage the software.  But don't go erasing your entire device flash for fun... (1) damaging the xbl partition requires dissasembling the device to enter EDL and (2) damaging the fsc partition will kill your IMEI and possibly some other critical radio settings.

 

[Polaris 423]

2 minutes ago, tdm said:

So I have spent most of the day today trying to get TWRP to decrypt FBE.  It has been quite an adventure, as my only prior experience with TWRP decrypt has been FDE on Android 7.0 which is quite simple to support.  FBE on Android 9.0 requires a lot of infrastructure that I had not known about.  I'm not done yet.  Hope to have it working in the next couple of days.

 

I'm also preparing an EDL package for user consumption.  This will allow anyone to un-brick their device and restore the stock factory image no matter how badly they damage the software.  But don't go erasing your entire device flash for fun... (1) damaging the xbl partition requires dissasembling the device to enter EDL and (2) damaging the fsc partition will kill your IMEI and possibly some other critical radio settings.

 

See my italics in the quote above...

As for the first part, it sounds like a serious headache.  I have never looked into FBE, but have done some FDE stuff and agree it's rather simple.

Oh, come on now, you're being quite the killjoy! 😀 Sounds like more reasons to backup some of the other (unmounted) partitions!  Again, thanks for the all the time your investing and I look forward to the EDL package!

[silversolver 849]

4 hours ago, tdm said:

So I have spent most of the day today trying to get TWRP to decrypt FBE.  It has been quite an adventure, as my only prior experience with TWRP decrypt has been FDE on Android 7.0 which is quite simple to support.  FBE on Android 9.0 requires a lot of infrastructure that I had not known about.  I'm not done yet.  Hope to have it working in the next couple of days.

 

I'm also preparing an EDL package for user consumption.  This will allow anyone to un-brick their device and restore the stock factory image no matter how badly they damage the software.  But don't go erasing your entire device flash for fun... (1) damaging the xbl partition requires dissasembling the device to enter EDL and (2) damaging the fsc partition will kill your IMEI and possibly some other critical radio settings.

 

That you are creating an EDL package for the rest of us to recover our bricks is simply amazing! I'm so grateful! Thank you! With friends like you, this project cannot fail!

[Polaris 423]

2 hours ago, silversolver said:

That you are creating an EDL package for the rest of us to recover our bricks is simply amazing! I'm so grateful! Thank you! With friends like you, this project cannot fail!

Here here!

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

7 hours ago, tdm said:

So I have spent most of the day today trying to get TWRP to decrypt FBE.  It has been quite an adventure, as my only prior experience with TWRP decrypt has been FDE on Android 7.0 which is quite simple to support.  FBE on Android 9.0 requires a lot of infrastructure that I had not known about.  I'm not done yet.  Hope to have it working in the next couple of days.

 

I'm also preparing an EDL package for user consumption.  This will allow anyone to un-brick their device and restore the stock factory image no matter how badly they damage the software.  But don't go erasing your entire device flash for fun... (1) damaging the xbl partition requires dissasembling the device to enter EDL and (2) damaging the fsc partition will kill your IMEI and possibly some other critical radio settings.

 

Since this seems all like a lot of work, may I ask you if you have some kind of donation intake?
Or would it help if we use the general lineage donation stuff?

[tdm 2,322]

1 hour ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

Since this seems all like a lot of work, may I ask you if you have some kind of donation intake?
Or would it help if we use the general lineage donation stuff?

Thank you so much for the consideration. I won't take donations for this project myself but please do donate to Lineage, the EFF, or your favorite open source project.

 

[Noob 158]

I had to give up un-Googling the stock firmware as I couldn't remove GMS without the phone locking up on boot, so I gave this a spin.  Thank you for your efforts on this, and for the detailed explanations as you go :)

I put the SIM in and phone calls don't sem to work, either incoming and outgoing (SMS works though).  Not sure if this is expected at this stage or if I should file a bug report.  Another weird issue; when I changed the pattern lock to 5x5 grid, the lock screen grid was still 3x3 so I couldn't unlock it.  It fixed itself on reboot though.  A few questions:

- at this stage with no suitable TWRP I couldn't install the lineage su extra.  Can this be built into the ROM?

- how do you rate the difficulty in developing LineageOS on this device compared to other manufacturers?  I don't know what support they're offering beyond hardware, I assume source as well or are you still working with closed binaries?

Edited December 7, 2019 by Noob

[Polaris 423]

4 hours ago, Noob said:

 

I put the SIM in and phone calls don't sem to work, either incoming and outgoing (SMS works though).  Not sure if this is expected at this stage or if I should file a bug report.

Minor consequence to not having any GcrApps installed!

 

....I'm just kidding (kinda), lol. 😀😀