UT Installation failure

magnargj · 20 May 2021, 11:21

Hi all. I've had great success with a Nexus 5 and UT and have been using it as daily driver for several years. Unforunately the glass broke, and since I think it has been a little slow lately, I decided to go onto the ubports page to check what other devices would pose a nice upgrade. And of course the Xiaomi Mi A2 seems to be the optimal device, so I got my hands on one.

Now, had I known the hassle of getting UT onto it, I probably wouldn't have bought it. I followed the instructions given by the installer, and since my expertice lies elsewhere, I even had to research what a stock rom and twrp are. Eventually I managed to get the phone unlocked and fastbooting twrp. After messing around and encountering lots of encrypted files, I tried to sideload the Android 9 rom suggested by the UT installer. I tried both slots (I don't know what a slot is btw) and it stopped after 5% both times. Then after reboot the phone just went black, seemingly not booting at all. When connected to a windows pc, it does make a sound when I connect it and tries to turn it on and off, so it seems to be alive but nothing shows on the screen. After searching the web I've found that it is probably in what is called edl mode?

I'm a little at a loss on how to proceed from here, any suggestions? In the meantime I'm running mobian on a pinephone as my daily driver, and it is not mature enough for my liking yet...

If I managed to get out of this one, I will contemplate writing a tutorial for other morans that might follow down the same path as me

Any help will be much appreciated!

odo · 21 May 2021, 07:40

@magnargj Hello! I had many problems too some days ago. The pone needs a lot of patience. The good thing was I could always boot back into fastboot mode holding both the power and the volume down button for a while.

magnargj · 5 Jun 2021, 21:15

@odo Hi! That is my main problem right now, that it doesn't respond to that anymore. Neither volume up and power and volume down and power (fastboot). Currently my next step is to leave it until the battery is drained and then see if it then comes to live. I've also seen some tutorials about opening it up and short circuit some test pins, but I'm not very eager to go down that path...

magnargj · 5 Jun 2021, 21:15

@magnargj Ok, so the phone is back alive. Had to use the MI flash tool on a windows PC and short circuit the test pins hidden under the battery connector. Important lesson: Start the flashing immediately, less than a minute after the phone was connected. I ended up flashing Android 8 on it.

But now I am at a loss at how to proceed. The UBports installer states: "You can use either use stock recovery or TWRP recovery to flash it. Flash it to both slots to be safe." The android 9 build it links to, doesn't contain any scripts for flashing. It also contains a .bin file which presumably contains .img files? Does this mean I need to flash these at a specific sequence using fastboot flash recovery etc?

Anyone know any good tutorials or want to share their experiences in this?

magnargj · 6 Jun 2021, 21:51

@magnargj Success!!! Wow, finally...

Ok, assuming that the necessary tools like adb and fastboot are installed on the PC. The phone is in developer mode, bootloader is unlocked and usb debugging enabled.

Download the latest twrp for the device, it is sufficient with the img file. Here: https://eu.dl.twrp.me/jasmine_sprout/
Download the zip file with Android 9 as indicated by the ubports installer
Turn on the phone in Fastboot mode (volume down + power).
Boot the phone with the twrp img file: fastboot boot filename.img (No point in flashing twrp to the device, it worked fine just by booting with it)
Just use the file manager (nautilus or whatever) and copy the zip file in point 2 above to the phone
In twrp press the big install button in the main menu and browse to the zip file and flash
Go to the big reboot button in the main menu and change slot to the other and repeat point 6.
Reboot the phone into Android 9. Enable developer mode and usb debugging.
Run the UBports installer and follow its instructions.

It worked!!! Finally.

BUT: USE A GOOD USB CABLE!!!!!!! Half of my problems were because the zip file was corrupted when transferred over to the phone. The first cable (which was the one that came with my pinephone) just didn't do the job. This caused error messages when attempting to flash.

malditobastardo · 19 Jun 2021, 09:45

@magnargj Great tip about using a GOOD usb cable, that is always 50% of the issues when installing UT.. glad you got the nerve and patience to make this work!

Thanks for sharing this information

Lakotaubp · 19 Jun 2021, 10:01

@magnargj Good yur all sorted. If you could mark it as solved https://forums.ubports.com/topic/6311/how-to-ask-a-question-and-then-mark-it-as-solved

elhombrefeliz · 21 Jul 2021, 08:40

@magnargj said in UT Installation failure:

@magnargj Success!!! Wow, finally...

Ok, assuming that the necessary tools like adb and fastboot are installed on the PC. The phone is in developer mode, bootloader is unlocked and usb debugging enabled.

Download the latest twrp for the device, it is sufficient with the img file. Here: https://eu.dl.twrp.me/jasmine_sprout/

Download the zip file with Android 9 as indicated by the ubports installer

Turn on the phone in Fastboot mode (volume down + power).

Boot the phone with the twrp img file: fastboot boot filename.img (No point in flashing twrp to the device, it worked fine just by booting with it)

Just use the file manager (nautilus or whatever) and copy the zip file in point 2 above to the phone

In twrp press the big install button in the main menu and browse to the zip file and flash

Go to the big reboot button in the main menu and change slot to the other and repeat point 6.

Reboot the phone into Android 9. Enable developer mode and usb debugging.

Run the UBports installer and follow its instructions.

It worked!!! Finally.

BUT: USE A GOOD USB CABLE!!!!!!! Half of my problems were because the zip file was corrupted when transferred over to the phone. The first cable (which was the one that came with my pinephone) just didn't do the job. This caused error messages when attempting to flash.

Thanks for the guidelines, I have recently managed to install UBPORTS on my new Xiaomi Mi A2.
3 points to note:

1.- In my case when running the UBports installer (point 9), at the first attempt selecting the stable channel, it did not work. Selecting the development channel everything worked correctly.
2.- I lost a whole day trying to install it from my personal computer with DEBIAN 10, it gave me many problems and I did not succeed. Using a pc with LINUX Mint 'Tricia' it worked fine.
3.- I bought the phone new and it came with Android 8.1 installed.

Sorry for my English, I have DEEPL as a translator.
Thank you all for your help, I'm a UBports fan since Ubuntu Touch and its BQ 4.5.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

magnargj · 21 Jul 2021, 13:18

@elhombrefeliz great that it worked! I have Debian 10 and that worked for me. Maybe a problem with the installer?

elhombrefeliz · 21 Jul 2021, 16:57

@magnargj The truth is that I do not know, the problem seemed in the management of USB, the installer stayed in 'Flashing', but nothing happened to the phone, Android was still there.