Custom ROMs: Installing via TWRP (e.g. Prometheus ROM)

After installing TWRP and installing some ROMs via adb sideload, (or this story with my old Nexus 7) i learned that there is another way for installing Custom ROMs:

• Boot in to recovery (Samsung: Home Button + Power + Volume Up)
• Copy the ROM.zip to the SD card of the smartphone
• and then follow this screenshots

Click on "Install"

Click "Select Storage"

Select your SD card

Select the ROM you want to install:

Swipe to the right

Then some of the ROMs (like Prometheus) will guide you through an installation wizard, where you can chose some options.

If you want to try Prometheus you can download it here.

Building my own Recovery ROM for a Samsung J5 2017 (j5y17lte, TWRP)

After several hours of sideloading a custom ROM and flashing a TWRP recovery image i thought the next step is to build a TWRP recovery image on my own.

What is a TWRP recovery image?

So how to do that?

My startpoint was

https://github.com/Doge-Jxy17lte/twrp-jxy17lte

(just search github for your device with TWRP)

But this is not the way to begin.

First you have to follow this page:

https://github.com/minimal-manifest-twrp/platform_manifest_twrp_omni

and do

repo init -u git://github.com/minimal-manifest-twrp/platform_manifest_twrp_omni.git -b twrp-7.1

and

repo sync

Then add the j5y17lte.xml to .repo/local_manifests. After that the repo sync works but the

$ lunch omni_j5y17lte-eng

ends up with a warning:

WARNING: device/samsung/j5y17lte/omni.dependencies file not found

============================================

PLATFORM_VERSION_CODENAME=REL

PLATFORM_VERSION=7.1.2

TARGET_PRODUCT=omni_j5y17lte

TARGET_BUILD_VARIANT=eng

TARGET_BUILD_TYPE=release

TARGET_BUILD_APPS=

TARGET_ARCH=arm64

TARGET_ARCH_VARIANT=armv8-a

TARGET_CPU_VARIANT=cortex-a53

TARGET_2ND_ARCH=arm

TARGET_2ND_ARCH_VARIANT=armv7-a-neon

TARGET_2ND_CPU_VARIANT=cortex-a53

HOST_ARCH=x86_64

HOST_2ND_ARCH=x86

HOST_OS=linux

HOST_OS_EXTRA=Linux-4.15.0-88-generic-x86_64-with-Ubuntu-18.04-bionic

HOST_CROSS_OS=windows

HOST_CROSS_ARCH=x86

HOST_CROSS_2ND_ARCH=x86_64

HOST_BUILD_TYPE=release

BUILD_ID=NJH47F

OUT_DIR=/media/schroff/895337b7-c4eb-44a4-9063-00f629e5149f/omni/out

============================================

The good point: just ignore this warning and do the mka recoveryimage.

Here i got two errors:

/bin/bash -c "prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/flex/flex-2.5.39 -oout/target/product/generic/obj/STATIC_LIBRARIES/libedify_intermediates/lexer.cpp bootable/recovery/edify/lexer.ll"
flex-2.5.39: loadlocale.c:130: _nl_intern_locale_data: Assertion `cnt < (sizeof (_nl_value_type_LC_TIME) / sizeof (_nl_value_type_LC_TIME[0]))' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)

Here i followed this hint:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=tr#!topic/android-building/0kzPnw3akxg
and copied the provided flex to "prebuilts/misc/linux-x86"
   cp ~/Downloads/build/flex flex-2.5.39

You have to change the name from flex to flex-2.5.39 and you have to rerun source build/envsetup.sh again.

Then i got the following errors:

bootable/recovery/gui/../twrp-functions.hpp:24:10: fatal error: 'ext4_utils/ext4_crypt.h' file not found

bootable/recovery/gui/../twrp-functions.hpp:24:10: error: 'ext4_utils/ext4_crypt.h' file not found with <angled> include; use "quotes" instead

bootable/recovery/twrp.cpp:49:10: fatal error: 'base/strings.h' file not found

This i could resolve with:

cd bootable/recovery

ln -s ../../system/extras/ext4_utils

vi twrp-functions.hpp # add the quotes!

ln -s ../../system/core/base/include/android-base base

After that the build went through and i got a TWRP image:

-rw-rw-r--  1 schroff schroff 26937344 Mai 17 23:40 recovery.img

This ran without a problem on my J5 after a

heimdall flash --RECOVERY recovery.img

Samsung J5 2017 (aka j5y17lte) installing STOCK ROM

After installing a custom ROM (s. here) i wanted to flash the STOCK  ROM onto my smartphone again.

So what to do?

First: Download a ROM (e.g. sammobile.com)

and you will get something like

J530FXXU6CSK9_J530FDBT6CSL1_DBT.zip

this zip cannot be sideloaded. So you have to unzip and the you have:

AP_J530FXXU6CSK9_CL16642474_QB27583084_REV00_user_low_ship_meta_OS9.tar.md5
BL_J530FXXU6CSK9_CL16642474_QB27583084_REV00_user_low_ship.tar.md5
CP_J530FXXU6CSK9_CP14486297_CL16642474_QB27583084_REV00_user_low_ship.tar.md5
CSC_DBT_J530FDBT6CSL1_CL17419960_QB27658856_REV00_user_low_ship.tar.md5
HOME_CSC_DBT_J530FDBT6CSL1_CL17419960_QB27658856_REV00_user_low_ship.tar.md5

Within this you have to do a:

 for a in *md5; do echo $a;  tar -xvf $a; done

and the result should be:

boot.img   cm.bin      modem.bin  recovery.img  system.img
cache.img  hidden.img  param.bin  sboot.bin     userdata.img

(then you can follow this guide: https://ar.al/2018/07/15/flashing-stock-firmware-onto-a-samsung-galaxy-s9+-sm-g965f-on-ubuntu-18.04-using-heimdall/)

or just type:

~/bin/heimdall flash --BOOT boot.img --SYSTEM system.img --CACHE cache.img --HIDDEN hidden.img --PARAM param.bin --CM cm.bin --USERDATA userdata.img --RADIO modem.bin --BOOTLOADER sboot.bin --RECOVERY recovery.img

and after nearly 10 minutes of anxious waiting you J5 boots up with the STOCK ROM again.

Corona-Homeoffice: second monitor for my laptop - portable!

After several weeks working in homeoffice and my children in homeschooling i had to increase my efficieny. And the best thing is to get a second monitor running which meets the following requirements:

• Single Plug (for signal and power)
• Easy movable from living room to workspace and back
• Touchscreen would be nice

 So i decided to buy a wimaxit 15.6" portable monitor and today it arrived:

 

The second screen is only connected (and charged) via USB-C.

Even connecting my smartphone just works out of the box - really cool!