@atarilinux thanks for all the links! I just got back from vacation so will have a read through them soon and see if a way forward jumps out.

@atarilinux much appreciated. Thanks!

@Eric-H the pixel 3a is a slot a/b device. Just at work but will investigate the things you mentioned this evening. Thanks!

@Eric-H Thanks! I'll check that tomorrow. It seems to me with stock android I can't boot into a build in recovery but that fastbootd does most of what's needed. So I have been using "fastboot boot twrp.img" if I need features that twrp offers.

Flashing twrp.img directly on to the pixel 3a doesn't work. To get it to install I usually do "fastboot boot twrp.img" and then go to "Advanced" and then "flash currently twrp".

@Eric-H The recovery doesn't work after flashing. That's one of the things that concerns me about this build. With the old style halium build the boot.img contains the ubports recovery, so there is a recovery to retrieve logs from. The boot loader shows the reason for being in bootloader mode as "error boot prepare" which I was led to believe indicates a problem with recovery (it couldn't get in to recovery so just settled for bootloader).

pstore is enabled in that kernel.

@atarilinux if you're still keen to do some research, one thing that would be handy to know is if anyone has actually successfully made a halium port for any device for ubports or halium... I see lots of attempts but not sure if any of them actually were successful.

I got a successful build of droidian using their build process and the result was the same as with the new style ubports build.

I'm going back to the idea that I should try building a halium 9 build... if I can't make that work then I don't see how I could make a halium 12 build work.

@Eric-H True... I just don't see any connections appearing (no new network adapters showing up, nothing ususual in dmesg). It's highly possible that my deviceinfo is wrong/out of date. After reading the droidian porting stuff and then reading the updated ubports stuff I can see a few things that I can do differently.

@Eric-H I do not. It just sits at the bootloader.

I see the porting documentation has been updated. I might just start again armed with some new insight after playing with other methods.

@Eric-H I just happen to know someone wiht a pixel 3a

I tried flashing those artifacts just now and same result.

@Eric-H That is a fork of https://github.com/LineageOS/android_kernel_google_msm-4.9 which was what I got when setting up the manifests for the halium build. It came with a bonito_defconfig which I modified according to the stand alone kernel instructions and put in a branch called halium-12.0 . I verified after doing my stand along kernel build that it had indeed checked out that branch.

@Eric-H Thank you again!

Here's what dmesg has to say after my last flash attempt:

[ 9780.171034] usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 40 using xhci_hcd
[ 9781.164612] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=18d1, idProduct=4ee0, bcdDevice= 1.00
[ 9781.164633] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 9781.164641] usb 1-2: Product: Pixel 3a XL
[ 9781.164648] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Google
[ 9781.164654] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: XXXXXXXXX

I'll wipe it again and try again with your last message in mind later. I completely forgot to check to boot debug documentation, so I'll have a read through that again as well.

@Eric-H Thank you for the detailed instructions. I very much appreciate it.

Here's what I did:

1. boot into android recovery and do factory reset (to remove encryption)
2. boot into twrp (fastboot boot twrp.img) and go into terminal
3. unmount /data (/dev/block/mmcblk0p72)
4. format /data as ext4 (mk2sfs -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p72)
5. remount /data (mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p72 /data)
6. confirm it is now mounted at ext4 (mount)
7. push renammed rootfs.img to /data (adb push ubuntu.img /data/)
8. reboot into bootloader from twrp
9. boot into fastbootd (fastboot reboot fastboot)
10. flash boot (fastboot flash boot boot.img)
11. reboot... this takes me straight to the boot loader
12. flash dtbo (fastboot flash dtbo dtbo.img)
13. reboot... still goes back to boot loader

I'm doing the formatting to ext4 bit as I read somewhere that it is required (please let me know if this was a mistake)

I'm pushing ubuntu.img before flashing boot.img because flashing boot.img gets rid of recovery and fastbootd.

I'm still feeling like there's a problem with my boot.img, as if I flash the boot.img from my halium build, it actually boots to recovery and fastbootd.

Might just go back a step and try getting a halium 9 build working, since I know that should actually work. Then maybe increment from there.

@Eric-H I tried a build without the systempart section (the droidian porting doc said to remove it) and then tried flashing just the boot.img and rootfs.img in fastbootd mode using these commands:

fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash userdata rootfs.img

Also tried flashing the sytem.img using

fastboot flash system system.img

But that always fails saying it can't resize the partition.

If anyone wants to play with the boot.img, it's in the artifacts from my latest build: https://gitlab.com/mr-growl/ubports-ubuntu-touch-google-bonito-volte/-/jobs/11808428371

But it doesn't seem to do anything useful.

I'll try to get on to telegram (it's not letting me in currently). I'm just guessing on the android stuff at the moment. Trying various combinations of images and commands, re-flashing android 12 inbetween attempts.

Thanks all for suggestions on things to try. Much appreciated.

@Eric-H I had wondered if that was the case (about it just using what was already on the phone). Thanks for that info!

With the stand alone kernel method, I flashed the boot.img but it would not boot into recovery. When i flashed the boot.img from the halium build it did boot the recovery, so I think I've missed something with the stand alone kernel method. I'll have another go at it, keeping in mind what you've said, and see if anything becomes apparent.

Thanks again!

Current state of affairs:

New Build Method (the one here: https://gitlab.com/mr-growl/ubports-ubuntu-touch-google-bonito-volte)

• Builds successfully
• boot.img doesn't boot to anything

What I'd like to research regarding this is:

• has any other community port used that method to make a successful android 12 port?

• if so, I'd want to compare their repo to mine and see what I've missed.

• how are the binary blobs being included in this build method

Old Build Method (the one from the video and the halium website, steps documented here: https://gitlab.com/mr-growl/ubports-ubuntu-touch-google-bonito-volte/-/wikis/Building-halium-12-for-bonito

• Builds successfully

• boots into recovery

• very clear where the vendor blobs need to be added

For this method I need to figure out:

• is the fixup-mountpoints script still relevant and if so, why isn't it in the build folder anywhere

• are there any obvious flaws with using this method over the new one?

Droidian

• Documentation is straight forward

• they provide api 32 (android 12L) rootfs zips that can be side loaded

• their deployment instructions are more like lineage (which is a good thing)

What I'd like to find out with them is:

• has anyone in their community done a successful halium 12 port to any device

• why do they have a separate sargo rootfs zip?

• will an api 28 rootfs work with halium 12 (12.1 should be api 32)

I think my next step is to do a droidian build following their docs and see what happens. I'm presuming that the boot.img produced should also work for ubports.

Anyways... off to work

I tried the halium-install script, too, with a ubports rootfs tarball but it stalled while pushing the system.img over adb (stopped at 5% and stayed there).

@atarilinux I suspect it's because I skipped the step in the documentation about setting up the fixup-mountpoints script. I could not find that script anywhere so skipped it just to try to get something booting.

Here's the part I'm talking about:

Include your device in fixup-mountpoints

Fixup-mountpoints replaces the aliases of block device nodes in /dev/block/by-name with their literal nodes under /dev/block. This prevents issues caused by by-name not being populated by systemd.

First check if the codename of your device is already included in the <BUILDDIR>/halium/hybris-boot/fixup-mountpoints script.

If it’s not already included, you will need to add it. Your device should be running LineageOS or another ROM where you can get root access over ADB.

    Find the fstab file for your device. For my Moto G5 Plus, this was fstab.qcom in device/motorola/potter/rootdir/etc

    Enable adb root access

    Create the skeleton for your device in fixup-mountpoints, right before the *):

    "[codename]")
        sed -i \
            [replacements, one per line]
            "$@"
        ;;

    For every line in fstab where the type is not auto, emmc or swap, run readlink -f [src] on the target device over ADB. [src] is the leftmost colum in fstab.

    Write all of our replacements, one for every mountpoint. Here’s the bones of one:

    -e 's [src] [return] ' \

Replace [src] with what you input into readlink and [return] with what it returns. The space after [return] is important. The build fails without it.

I don't have that in the location they mention. I found a fixup-mountpoints script in another project but I don't know that it'll actually be run if I put it in that location as that location doesn't currently exist.

So that's what I'm investigating currently.

@atarilinux I've made some progress, I think. I successfully built halium 12 for bonito and I now have the ubports recovery booting.

I flashed the system.img from the halium build, then formatted the data partition as ext4 and then sideloaded a droidian rootfs on to it but it just came back to recovery. The end of the log file is filled with messages like:

ueventd: Cannot get SELinux label on '/dev/block/mmcblk0p29' device: No data available

So I think it's time to start debugging. Will save that for another time.

I documented the steps for building halium 12 for bonito here:
Building-halium-12-for-bonito

@atarilinux Also worth mentioning for your setup... in the Droidian porting guide is mentions:

this guide assumes that you're going to cross-compile an arm64 Android kernel on an x86_64 (amd64) machine using the Android-supplied precompiled toolchain that's available in the Droidian repositories. It's trivial to disable cross-compiling and compiling using the standard Debian toolchain.

which says to me that you can compile it on your arm64 machine without having to use any x86 stuff.

@atarilinux I've just finished and flashed my own build of lineage 19.1... for comparison, the ubports build takes me about 1 hour... the lineage build took closer to 20 hours on the same machine... so I really feel like something might be missing

That said, it may be that the lineage build is building everything where as the ubports build is downloading the GSI rootfs and such... I dunno... still learning.

I think my next step is to follow the halium documentation and correlate that with the Droidian porting documentation. I do have a suspicious about where and when the blobs might need to be added but just need to go over everything again and let it sink in a bit. Anything I discover I'll document on the wiki for the repo I'm working in on gitlab and will link to here.