DivestOS: long term device support with enhanced privacy and security

125

@Saho

Your screenshots show two SIM cards.
The Nexus 6 only has one.

And that also doesn’t look like DivestOS.
Can’t help you much.

Try reflashing the latest full firmware.
NON-HLOS.bin
or
modem.img
if you can.

@EchedeyLR
To confirm, the DivestOS recovery fails to flash the image?
And once flashed it fails to boot?
Does it ever reboot itself?
Or does it keep spinning at the boot animation?

126

DivestOS recovery fails to flash the image showing the issue I saw in that Reddit post.

Using the solution in that Reddit post and installing an old TWRP recovery version, the DivestOS image is flashed correctly but it fails to boot. It does not reboot, just maintains “like booting” showing the DivestOS letters with the colors all the time to nearly 30 minutes (2x minutes) without showing slow-down of the animation or anything else. For me that showed that was not booting or was taking a lot of more than expected.

127

@EchedeyLR

Rule of thumb: new devices should boot in under 5 minutes and old devices under 10.
Any longer should be considered broken.

As for the i9100:
Is there any build of LineageOS 14.1 that you’ve successfully booted?
If so, it is probably something I broke.

I’ll try to get one to test, but they are becoming short in supply and expensive.
It always amazes me seeing sellers peddling such old phones for absurd prices.

128

There was a LineageOS 14.1 edition (the one made by the microG project) that booted in all their images. I didn’t make a backup before flashing the new image and microG deleted the builds for this and other devices some months ago (as I told in DivestOS: long term device support with enhanced privacy and security - #112 by EchedeyLR)

I am not sure if /e/ maintains a build for this device.

129

@SkewedZeppelin I found related threads in TWRP github repository related to my issue with the DivestOS recovery which is the same as current TWRP releases.

The first thread seems that some people started to play with partitioning in the devices to solve the problem while in both some people also followed using older TWRP releases.

130

Hi. I installed DivestOS 17.1 (I used this image: divested-17.1-20201224-dos-klte.zip) on a Samsung S5 SM-G900F phone and it works great!

I would like to mention a couple of things:

  1. I successfully mounted a SD Card and I could read from it. The statement from https://divestos.org/index.php?page=broken#klte that SD Cards don’t work doesn’t seem to be valid anymore.
  2. When the device boots, there’s this text appearing at the top of the Samsung logo: “Set Warranty Bit : kernel”. What does it mean? How can I get rid of it?
  3. How can I install microG? I tried installing “micoG Services Core” (with Foxy Droid - because with F-Droid it doesn’t even appear in the apps), but it fails, I get “Could not validate microG Services Core” “Invalid signature.”
  4. Are there any official Support channels (like mailing list, IRC, forum, etc)?

Thanks.

1 Like
131

@adrianfi

I successfully mounted a SD Card and I could read from it

I think it fails to format in some cases.

What does it mean? How can I get rid of it?

That is expected. You can’t get rid of it. It is just the bootloader marking that you flashed something not official Samsung.

How can I install microG?

DivestOS has support for microG, but it must be enabled at compile time.
I currently do not compile with it enabled.
There is a build guide on the site, you just need to set $DOS_MICROG_INCLUDED to “FULL” in init.sh.

Are there any official Support channels

This forum thread is the closest thing so far.
I do plan to setup a chat room.
I’ve been running an XMPP server for the better part of 8 years, but it has been for personal use only.
I might either make it public, or make a second one.
Mailing list and dedicated forum might happen in the future, I don’t think it would get much use with the number of users currently.

1 Like
132

Thank you @adrianfi for the motivation.

There is now an XMPP chatroom available! :rocket:
divestos-mobile@conference.konvers.me
You will need to have an existing XMPP account.
There is a captcha to join, once you participate enough you will be marked a member and will no longer need to solve the captcha on join.

Let’s see how it goes!

1 Like
133

I would prefer not to get dirty with building, to include microg, if possible. I don’t have the time, skills, patience, hardware.

So far I installed microg by manually downloading the .apk files from https://microg.org/download.html and then installing them with “adb install” from my computer. The apps appear installed on the phone, but microg Settings → Self-Check says that the system doesn’t have signature spoofing support and doesn’t spoof signature (don’t know what this means and what’s the impact…).

1 Like
134

Comment: If all you want is location, DivestOS has UnifiedNlp part of microg. It seems to work Ok, except self-test may say it does not have last known location…

If you want G services, why bother with a privacy/security oriented Rom anyway?

1 Like
135

I installed LineageOS for microG. Unfortunately I have to use some apps that require Google services.

I will keep an eye on DiestOS tho’, it’s really interesting.

Thanks.

136

G’day mate,

Samsung Galaxy S5 (sm-g900i)
Successfully installed with no fault found so far. Beautiful build, smooth operation.
Thanks for your work @SkewedZeppelin :+1:

2 Likes
137

@SkewedZeppelin my TWRP-Recovery was replaced by the Divested-Recovery when flashing the ROM on lg g3 d855
now what I have to do?

138

@lgg3

If you want to put TWRP back on your G3 you can use this tool:

$ python partitions.py --restore twrp.img boot

139

Hi, it has been 42 days since my last changelog. There is now a dedicated page on the site for this here. All future changelogs will be posted there instead of here.

System Updates

  • January ASB builds were released between the 10th and 14th.
  • Rebuilds were published on the 24th thru 26th primarily for CVE patcher updates.
  • IMS/VoLTE was made working on supported devices. image
  • CNE was removed after being briefly included in the Dec/Jan builds. This removal breaks Wi-Fi calling, but is likely worth the security benefits.
  • The deblobber received tweaks to better handle more property edits. commit
  • Part two of the Debian/retired Linux CVE import was completed. Linux 3.0, 3.4, and 3.10 devices benefit the most from this, averaging between 10 and 90 added CVE patches. import and update
  • The exec-based spawning feature from GrapheneOS was disabled. We likely failed to port it over correctly and the result is many subtle breakages.
  • All versions now include the LineageOS 17.1 APN list for better cell carrier compatibility. commit
  • All versions were mostly patched against the old CVE-2019-2306. commit
  • umask is now explicitly set in the build scripts and many files had their permissions corrected. This fixes many subtle issues.
  • [upstream] Updated to January ASB.
  • [upstream] Updated WebView to Chromium 88.0.4324.93, has many security fixes. commit

Device Updates

  • mata has long-standing audio issues, Lineage team has been trying to fix them. Currently the earpiece speaker works on calls, but the loud speaker cannot have its volume adjusted.
  • The microphone issue on shamu was resolved, was caused by our removal of some voice recognition blobs (which are required for adspd bring-up). commit
  • bullhead now installs (and works) after removing the firmware images to workaround the missing proprietary additions needed for their flashing. related

Roster Updates

  • mako was re-enabled for 16.0 for users who do not want to re-partition their device.
  • flo was re-enabled for 15.1, for users who do not want to re-partition their device.
  • mako was re-enabled for 15.1 for testing purposes.
  • hammerhead was re-enabled for 15.1 due to Bluetooth issues in 16.0.
  • ether and shamu were re-enabled for 15.1 as they are the last versions with working IMS.
  • star2lte was added to 17.1 and was tested broken, likely due to its usage of stock vendor.img.

App Updates

  • Mull saw 84.1.2, 84.1.4 and 85.1.0 releases.
  • Hypatia had some commits forward-ported from the stable branch to the unfinished dev branch. git log
  • The PrebuiltApps repository saw a handful of app updates. git log

Website Updates

  • The device downloads page now supports serving multiple build versions per device. commit
  • A 'news' page was added for changelogs and project history. commit
  • A 'network connections' page was added for documenting connections made by the system. commit
  • Pages with tables were fixed up for mobile.
  • The 'recommended apps' page had some additions. commit
  • The 'messengers' page received some needed updates.
  • The credits and legal notices section of the 'about' page was updated.
  • Some typos were fixed. commit
1 Like
140

Some people don’t like the derogatory word Goolag as a substitute for Google, but… When I read things like the above quote, I see “Unfortunately I am a slave…” and Goolag seems to fit.

141

Goolag prisoners were paid for their labor. I don’t think Google pays users :smiley:

2 Likes
142

Users pay google!

Gulags (Soviet, North Korea, maybe others), prison labor systems, company town labor systems, etc., are deep subjects, too deep to simply summarize. Whether you are paid in food and shelter, company scrip, pieces of pretty paper, or cryptocurrency, is a detail. The best prison labor system is when people don’t even know they are in one, and even better, they love Big Brother. :smiley:

1 Like
143

Must say, I am positively impressed by scope and competence of this project.

Tried to install DOS (on top of LOS 17.1) on crackling and enchilada and ran into the same problem both times:
After reboot from recovery phone goes into loop of animated DOS logo and dark screen (with LED on). During dark screen it is possible to go to shutdown menu by long-pressing power button, from there through “emergency” button possible to enter upper menu widgets (wi-fi, location, etc), but without going any deeper into settings. Never actually tried to capture logs somehow, but from recovery mode copied this string (don’t know if related):

E: (emulated) Failed to bind mount /mnt/staging/emulated/media/0 to /storage/emulated: No such file or directory

From newbie point of view this seems to be fixable. By the way, @SkewedZeppelin, what would you suggest as an introductory read about kernels and related low-level stuff?

Thanks for your awesome work and keep it up!

144

@thallium-doped
When you say “on top of LOS 17.1” you did wipe first, correct?
While both of those devices are untested, I am surprised crackling wouldn’t boot.
Especially since you say you can see the quick tiles.

That error is likely unrelated.