On Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 08:59:25PM +0200, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli wrote: > On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 17:43:40 -0400 > "A. F. Cano" <af...@comcast.net> wrote: > > ... > It's also possible to know that by looking at LineageOS source code > instead. For instance I often look to the scripts that extract non-free > software from a device to understand what needs to be replaced with > free software or avoided. > > This makes it easy to evaluate devices for Replicant without even having > to buy them. And we don't ever need to download nonfree software to do > that. > > The file names of the nonfree software can also give us some > indications on the modem protocols being used.
Good to know that. I'll keep it mind for down the road. > ... > I think that it would be really useful to have free rooting software > because users should be in control. Managed to do it again. Details follow. This page shows all the official firmware versions available: https://desktop.firmware.mobi/device:411 The phone I have came with the original Android 7.0, security patch of 2017-05-01. In the process of experimenting I upgraded to the latest version, security patch 2018-03-01. All these versions (6 available) generate a page with the official images (recovery.img and boot.img) as well as a supposedly rooted (cf-auto-root) recovery.img and cache.img. I tried both the official and rooted images repeatedly for the 2017-05-01 and the 2018-03-01 versions. I could never get the rooted versions to do anything I was expecting, like installing su or the app to gain root access that I had seen the first time I did this. Going back to my notes, the images that worked are here: https://androidfilehost.com/?fid=962187416754464638 This is the file: CF-Auto-Root-zerofltetmo-zeroflteue-smgt920t.zip Inside this file are: -rw-r--r-- 1 afc afc 41955584 Aug 17 2017 cache.img -rw-r--r-- 1 afc afc 26632192 Aug 17 2017 recovery.img The dates match the original patch date, and so I re-installed that version (2017-05-01) and then flashed these two: heimdall flash --RECOVERY recovery.img --no-reboot and turned the phone off with VOL DOWN-HOME-POWER for a few seconds. Then: heimdall flash --CACHE cache.img After putting it again in download mode. Upon reboot there finally were lots of messages. This image was doing what was needed: patching, installing the Super SU app, su and whatever else was needed. After adb shell, I could su. Still adb root still claimed that it was not possible in a production environment. It is also possible that these images work with the next 2 releases, security patch 2017-07-01. > ... > A way to check would be to unpack the boot and recovery images you > were trying to flash and see what's in them. I suppose these images can be mounted as loop devices. While the phone was rooted I made tar balls of the cache, efs, sbfs, su and system partitions. I'll investigate what's there at some point. Couldn't tar the data partition as that was the only place I found where I could put the tar file and the exclude option to tar (to exclude the file I was creating) didn't work. The phone is now returned for replacement since it had hardware issues. I'll continue when I get the replacement. > ... > As for rooting, I think it would be super useful to be able to do that > with free software. And rooting software is not an issue for the > guidelines if it's free software and has no nonfree dependencies. Mmm... Is what I've found above free software? In any case, thank you very much for your help. Feel free to use the above in the "RootingDevices" wiki. > References: > ----------- > [1]https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/RootingDevices > [2]https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html > > Denis. Augustine _______________________________________________ Replicant mailing list Replicant@osuosl.org https://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/replicant
