PostmarketOS Installation

Installation steps on how to 'Linux your Android' using PMos

Our phones:

• Working (Community): Oneplus 6 (1x), Samsung Galaxy A3 (5x), Samsung Galaxy SIII (1x)
• Experimental (Testing): Oneplus One (1x), Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime (1x), Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, any iOS

PMos in Three Steps

1. Identify your phone model
2. Find your device in the community section (or testing if applicable)
3. Download and install the latest stable release of SXMO (or any other UI) on the install page (walkthroughs below)

Walkthroughs

Oneplus 6

Prerequisites:

1. Inside Ubuntu, open the terminal and install fastboot (If asking for UEFI toogle: Accept, set pwd)

sudo apt install fastboot (or android-tools)

2. Unlock the bootloader of the phone:

• Open Settings, go to "About" and tap on the "Build number" box ~10 times until the "You are now a developer" message appears.
  
• Go back to the main settings page, go to "System" and then "Developer options" (it might be hidden behind a dropdown menu). Toggle the switch to "Enable OEM unlocking"

Install PMos

1. Enter Flash-Mode:

While OFF: Hold Power and Volume Up until you see a screen showing information about the device

2. Plug-In USB, make sure the device is recognised by running fastboot devices

3. Unlock by running: fastboot oem unlock

4. Say yes to all, delete internal storage, the device will reboot.

5. Back on PC: Download and unzip both pre-built images (img.xz and boot-img.xz):

Navigate to the Downloads folder cd ~/Downloads and unzip the .xz archives unxz --keep [file name, press tab to fill out automatically]

6. In the PC terminal enter the following commands:

fastboot erase dtbo

fastboot flash boot [the file that ends in -boot.img]

fastboot flash userdata [the other file]

If you see <waiting for any device>, try running as sudo and restart your device into fastboot mode again.

8. After flashing use the following command to reboot device

fastboot reboot

9. YOU DID IT!

Samsung Galaxy A3

1. Install heimdall and fastboot. In the terminal run the following:

   sudo apt-get install heimdall-flash fastboot

2. Download Samsung A3 1k2nd bootloader lk2nd-msm8916.img

If you use a browser to download this file, it will end up in the users Downloads folder. In order to follow along with the guide, make sure you cd to the Downloads folder by writing cd ~/Downloads in the terminal

3. Shutdown the phone, and boot it holding the HOME button & volume down.

4. Connect the phone to the PC using a micro USB cable

5. In the terminal, enter the following command to flash the downloaded firmware:

   heimdall flash --BOOT lk2nd-msm8916.img

6. The phone should boot into the ik2nd bootloader

7. Download a pre-built image with sxmo-de-sway. Make sure to download the .xz file without boot in the filename.

8. Unpack the .xz archive

   unxz --keep 20241002-0701-postmarketOS-v24.06-sxmo-de-sway-1.15.0-samsung-a3.img.xz

9. Flash PostmarketOS

   fastboot flash userdata 20241002-0701-postmarketOS-v24.06-sxmo-de-sway-1.15.0-samsung-a3.img

10. Erase system and reboot the phone

   fastboot erase system && fastboot reboot

11. DONE! The phone should boot into PostmarketOS

Samsung Galaxy SIII

1. Enter Flash-Mode:

While OFF: Hold Power and Volume Up

2. Flash postmarketOS rootfs image onto microSD

Download and unzip both pre-build images (img.xz and boot-img.xz):

Navigate to the Downloads folder cd ~/Downloads and unzip the .xz archives unxz --keep [file name, press tab to fill out automatically]

flash the one that doesn't end in boot onto the micro sd

plug micro sd into phone

3. Enter odin mode.

Turn off phone

Hold power, home and volume down buttons until warning screen.

Plug in with cable to computer.

Push vol down to continue into odin mode

4. Flash boot

Download Heimdall

heimdall flash --BOOT <Decompressed image filename> --verbose

After this is done the phone should automatically reboot into pmOS

Additionally:

Connecting to wifi was troublesome. the networks will show up but connections didn't last/work. a hack that wasn't necessarily endorsed is mentioned in the wiki. this seemed to save my issues. "If WiFi networks show up but you can't connect to them, you can try using the nvram for samsung-m3/i9305."

How to:

cd /lib/firmware/brcm

sudo mv brcmfmac4334-sdio.samsung,i9300.txt brcmfmac4334-sdio.samsung,i9300.txt.bak

sudo ln -sf brcmfmac4334-sdio.samsung,i9305.txt brcmfmac4334-sdio.samsung,i9300.txt

Trouble with phone shutting down often and randomly even when charging:

What seemed to fix it was to in config toggle 'auto-suspend' and 'auto-screen-off' off

(Walkthroughs: Testing)

Oneplus One

Partial 3D, broken USB OTG, broken audio & camera

Installation through pmbootstrap:

sudo apt install pmbootstrap

pmbootstrap init

3. Configuration questions

Work path: return

channel: choose edge (return)

device: oneplus-bacon

UI: use console

Rest hit return

4. Bring phone into flashing mode

While OFF, hold volume up and power until the device vibrates

5. Flash

pmbootstrap flasher boot
pmbootstrap flasher flash_rootfs --partition userdata

Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime

1. Download lk2nd-msm8916.img from Releases page on Github

2. Boot your phone to bootloader (Odin/Download) mode by holding Volume Down and Home while powering up.

3. Follow lk2nd instructions to install lk2nd.

Basically flash it to the boot partition heimdall flash --BOOT lk2nd-msm8916.img

4. Follow Qualcomm_Snapdragon_410/412_(MSM8916) Installation to install postmarketOS.

Post Installation Steps

SSH

By default, SSH is disabled. To start the SSH daemon run the following command:

sudo service sshd start

To start the SSH daemon automatically when your phone starts, enable the service:

sudo rc-update add sshd

Connect to device

Find your IP XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

ip a

Connect by running

sudo user@ipadress