lineage LineageOS custom builds

[VaZso 1,998]

1 hour ago, EskeRahn said:

I'm pretty sure that a reboot to recovery is needed between the first two. At the least that was the case for Lineage 16 - have not tried without since.

I've had problems loading my custom build but what currently seems to work for me without factory reset is:
- Sideloading ROM
- Sideloading GApps
- Reboot to recovery
- Sideloading Magisk
- Start system

I have not replaced recovery but it clearly does not start when I load ROM, GApps and Magisk in one turn and even if I try ROM, reboot, then loading the rest but in that case, I have tried loading Magisk then GApps which may be a wrong order.

[EskeRahn 5,464]

Interesting. I must admit I'm a bit confused here, as this would mean that Gapps and Magisk go to different slots.

Could you check at next load whether it (in small print) says a or b at the three sideloads?

[VaZso 1,998]

26 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Interesting. I must admit I'm a bit confused here, as this would mean that Gapps and Magisk go to different slots.

Could you check at next load whether it (in small print) says a or b at the three sideloads?

I am also a bit comfused as I think the same but it worked for me and without sideloading magisk it was also unreachable - but also in that case rebooting to recovery and sideloading Magisk made it available again.

Anyway, I just checked there are mkfs.exfat and mkfs.ext4 available... what do you think, if I format my SDCard to ext4, will it handle it as SDCard?
...just because I may like to install a Linux environment later and ext4 would be much better than FAT32 which it currently has.

Anyway, a support for f2fs would be very good to have....

Edit: Interesting that it has fsck.f2fs

Edited September 3, 2021 by VaZso

[claude0001 1,343]

12 hours ago, VaZso said:

Anyway, I just checked there are mkfs.exfat and mkfs.ext4 available... what do you think, if I format my SDCard to ext4, will it handle it as SDCard?
...just because I may like to install a Linux environment later and ext4 would be much better than FAT32 which it currently has.

I have an ext4 partition on my SD card and it is recognised by Android. I did partition and format the card using my Linux PC, not from the Pro1, though.

Beware that many Android Apps will have problems accessing the ext4 partition. A file manager with root access will work, but many "normal" Apps won't. After some months, I found that disabling SELinux at boot time and re-mounting one of the many cryptic mountpoints of the SD partition allows one to use it almost normally from Android. I described that in this post. Of course one may want to think twice before nuking SELinux as that disables large parts of the Android security mechanisms. Also note that, even with that hack in place, you will always have file ownership mess as every App runs under another UID.

Concerning installing a Linux environment: I have my Debian installation on another partition of that same SD-card. For that partition I found that it must not be formatted as ext4, otherwise I cannot mount it to a custom location (e.g. /data/DEBIAN) at boot time. The reason is probably that Android recognises and "takes over" ext4 file systems into its awkward access management system. What worked for me is using ext3 for the Debian system partition. While the kernel has ext3 support, Android seems to leave that partition alone and allows me to use it to my own liking.

All this is experience from LineageOS 16, i.e. Android 9. Later releases introduced significant changes in the Android security mechanisms, so the behaviour may well have changed. That is actually the main reason I do not upgrade from LOS 16, as I can not be sure these workarounds would still work ...

[Rob. S. 1,663]

I have been trying formatting my SD card to ext4 in an earlier LineageOS version, too, but had to give up as hardly any app properly worked with that setup. (I didn't have root back then, though.)

 

[Sean McCreary 328]

On 9/2/2021 at 9:37 AM, EskeRahn said:

I'm pretty sure that a reboot to recovery is needed between the first two. At the least that was the case for Lineage 16 - have not tried without since.

Yes, this is a side-effect of the A/B system used by the Pro1 and other modern Android devices. When you install a full OS image, it is written to the *other* slot, but add-on packages are written to the current one. You need to reboot to recovery after installing a new OS image to swap slots.

[VaZso 1,998]

5 hours ago, Sean McCreary said:

Yes, this is a side-effect of the A/B system used by the Pro1 and other modern Android devices. When you install a full OS image, it is written to the *other* slot, but add-on packages are written to the current one. You need to reboot to recovery after installing a new OS image to swap slots.

Hmm, and when MindTheGapps is sideloaded before reboot to recovery that means somehow it goes also to the other slot or it may go elsewhere?
...or why it seems to be surviving then?

Sorry for misunderstanding just still something is not seems to be clear for me. 🙂

[Hook 3,031]

3 hours ago, VaZso said:

Hmm, and when MindTheGapps is sideloaded before reboot to recovery that means somehow it goes also to the other slot or it may go elsewhere?
...or why it seems to be surviving then?

Sorry for misunderstanding just still something is not seems to be clear for me. 🙂

If you are using the same MindTheGapps and you have previously flashed it to both slots, it doesn't matter if you flash it or not as long as data hasn't been wiped. At least, that's what I think is going on (I'm not an expert).

[VaZso 1,998]

2 hours ago, Hook said:

If you are using the same MindTheGapps and you have previously flashed it to both slots, it doesn't matter if you flash it or not as long as data hasn't been wiped. At least, that's what I think is going on (I'm not an expert).

Hmm, it can be a vaild reason,, thanks. 🙂

[Slion 1,201]

I'm having a hard time getting the build to work on a native Ubuntu 20.04 installation.
See: https://github.com/android/ndk/issues/1578
Right now I'm stuck, the build crashes and I have no idea what to try next.

Turns out it was a lot easier on Windows using WSL or Virtual Box, who knew…

Edited September 7, 2021 by Slion

[Slion 1,201]

On 9/4/2021 at 3:38 PM, Hook said:

If you are using the same MindTheGapps and you have previously flashed it to both slots, it doesn't matter if you flash it or not as long as data hasn't been wiped. At least, that's what I think is going on (I'm not an expert).

I'm pretty sure that's not the case. You need to reapply GApps even if it was installed on that slot before, same for Magisk. I'm guessing both sideloads overwrite files from the ROM.

[VaZso 1,998]

2 hours ago, Slion said:

I'm having a hard time getting the build to work on a native Ubuntu 20.04 installation.
See: https://github.com/android/ndk/issues/1578
Right now I'm stuck, the build crashes and I have no idea what to try next.

Turns out it was a lot easier on Windows using WSL or Virtual Box, who knew…

Interesting.

I have compiled it on a chrooted Ubuntu environment earlier and now I have checked relevant packages were not upgraded since then.
I have not tried yet to compile the very latest version of Pro1-related codes anyway.

Maybe - are you sure you have enough free space on the partition where this compile runs?

[Hook 3,031]

2 hours ago, Slion said:

I'm pretty sure that's not the case. You need to reapply GApps even if it was installed on that slot before, same for Magisk. I'm guessing both sideloads overwrite files from the ROM.

I don't know since I always just went ahead and reflahed Gapps and Magisk when I was sideloading because it was easy.  But tdm indicated that you shouldn't need to in his instructions for LOS 16 (though he noted some said it didn't work).  And why does both Gapps and Magisk persist after OTAs?  Just asking questions because I'd like to learn.

[Slion 1,201]

20 minutes ago, Hook said:

And why does both Gapps and Magisk persist after OTAs?  Just asking questions because I'd like to learn.

Very good point, I'm just like you, trying to understand and learn. 

[Slion 1,201]

1 hour ago, VaZso said:

Interesting.

I have compiled it on a chrooted Ubuntu environment earlier and now I have checked relevant packages were not upgraded since then.
I have not tried yet to compile the very latest version of Pro1-related codes anyway.

Maybe - are you sure you have enough free space on the partition where this compile runs?

Definitely enough free space, it's an almost empty 2TB SSD.

I think this is a hardware issue, some kind of memory corruption since I can't reproduce the crash. It always crashes differently even froze the PC once.
I've reset the BIOS notably RAM clock from 3600 Mhz to the default 2133 Mhz. Those sticks were rated as 3600 Mhz but that's still overclocking so I guess I better try the system's default.

Sure enough my build is still running but I'm pretty it never went that far so it looks like RAM speed was the issue.

[Slion 1,201]

30 minutes ago, Hook said:

And why does both Gapps and Magisk persist after OTAs?

I believe OTA is a different package than the sideload.

[Slion 1,201]

Still building... RAM usage went up to almost 20GB. All cores at 100%, temperatures still below 70C.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Slion

[raymo 177]

14 minutes ago, Slion said:

And why does both Gapps and Magisk persist after OTAs?

I don't know but in my phone I never sideload Gapps after OTA update, but Magisk every time.
I know in first install it's always said "flash LOS, then Gapps, before booting for the first time :

"Note: If you want the Google Apps add-on on your device, you must follow this step before booting into LineageOS for the first time!"

I think If you couldn't understand what happen in this weird A/B slots, I wouldn't have a chance...

Edited September 7, 2021 by raymo
typo

[VaZso 1,998]

21 minutes ago, Slion said:

I think this is a hardware issue, some kind of memory corruption since I can't reproduce the crash. It always crashes differently even froze the PC once.
I've reset the BIOS notably RAM clock from 3600 Mhz to the default 2133 Mhz. Those sticks were rated as 3600 Mhz but that's still overclocking so I guess I better try the system's default.

Right, that may cause problems even if it does not reveal in a usual workflow.
Anyway, does memtest86 run on the machine for a longer period (like a day) without issues?

Otherwise, if you will experience problems again, you may also try to run it using another kernel, in very rare cases it may also cause problems on a specific hardware.

Anyway, how long does it take for you to compile?
...and I am curious to see if it was different on these OSes.

Edited September 7, 2021 by VaZso

[Hook 3,031]

11 minutes ago, Slion said:

I believe OTA is a different package than the sideload.

I checked the updater and the OTA package is slightly larger (749 MB) than the sideloaded one (707 MB), whatever that means.  Maybe just the sideload plus the install executable?

[Slion 1,201]

4 minutes ago, VaZso said:

Anyway, how long does it take for you to compile?

About 6h30mn on Windows using Virtual Box, about the same using WSL.

On Ubuntu I'll let you know once it's done. Looks like those random crashes are gone for good.

[Slion 1,201]

Build took 01:49:55 on Intel Core i7-11700K with 64GB of RAM though I don't think RAM usage got much over 20GB anyway. I used 100 GB ccache but it only contains 26GB after the build. Huge speed increase then, which was to be expected when compared to Windows hosted solutions.

[Slion 1,201]

How do you guys do your reboot to recovery after ROM sideload? I don't think you can do it from ADB which would be my preferred solution. I usually try to do it using Power and Volume Up but that's far from reliable I find.

[Slion 1,201]

13 minutes ago, Slion said:

How do you guys do your reboot to recovery after ROM sideload? I don't think you can do it from ADB which would be my preferred solution. I usually try to do it using Power and Volume Up but that's far from reliable I find.

Ok, apparently you can do it from the advanced menu as explain there:

LATER: nope looks like I misread that.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Slion

[VaZso 1,998]

9 minutes ago, Slion said:

Ok, apparently you can do it from the advanced menu as explain there:

LATER: nope looks like I misread that.

I have an option in recovery to reboot to recovery anyway.