Installation Experience

cick0

I got a Redmi Note 7 today just so I could install UT on it. The experience wasn't so great, unfortunately. I'll report a few issues here, hopefully it might help someone.

The real nightmare was trying to unlock the device. Fortunately, on this one there is no 1 week waiting period, as there is on some other Xiaomi devices. But I ran into a problem where the device would disconnect on Fastboot when reading the "oem device-info". The same was happening when the unlocker tool was trying to read the info so it took a while to figure out which part was not working correctly.
Luckily, found a similar issue somewhere on Reddit, stating that it worked on an older PC. For me it did not work on one Windows laptop, the Java tool couldn't run on Linux, but fortunately it worked on a third machine.

After unlocking, the installer reported a wrong checksum for the downloaded vendor file, although the zip file has no errors.

Now, after the installation has completed, the phone is stuck on the boot logo and can't be turned off.

cick0

Just checked the checksum with sha256 and it indeed differs from the one in the script.
However, the script does not really know which file will be downloaded from the url, though. (you can see I'm under the impression of IPFS and its benefits)

cick0

One, obviously important, detail is that I selected the RC channel initially, because I wanted a shorter release cycle.

In the meantime I managed to get into Fastboot mode and have repeated the process with the stable version and it did manage to install and boot successfully.
But, as I'm writing this, it has rebooted itself and is again stuck at the boot logo.

cick0

Checking the installation script, it seems that it expects the vendor.img but the downloaded file is .zip and I used that without unzipping the content.
In the meantime, I've also downloaded a few more versions of lavender firmware from miui
The sha256 hash matches, so perhaps the third time lucky...

stanwood

@cick0 Hi, I've also ordered a Redmi Note 7 (that will arrive next week or so).

Note that you have to downgrade to Android 9 version if device is getting Android 10. Otherwise it won't work.

I have simulated an installation without the device....
I guess you did unlock the bootloader using the MI flashtool?

Indeed, I think you have to first extract the lineage-16.0-20200226-lavender-vendor.zip and than move the vendor.img file to your home folder.

If you're running Ubuntu 20.04, don't forget to install adb and fastboot packages.

Maybe try

oem fastboot unlock

before to run the installer...

cick0

@stanwood said in Installation Experience:

I guess you did unlock the bootloader using the MI flashtool?

Yes. I believe this is the only way to do it. And they have an official client only for Windows.

I've completed the setup successfully. Now onto exploring.

messayisto

There is an unofficial unlock-Tool:
https://xiaomitool.com/V2/
which worked for me on linux.

I also had to do the Ubuntuflashing using the UbportsInstaller twice... but now its kind of great!

cick0

@messayisto Interesting. I found only some Java version but it didn't run on Arch at first.
Thanks for sharing.