Development [ROM] PostmarketOS Linux boot on Xiaomi Pad 5 (nabu)

[AlexeyGuskov]

As far as i can see you wiped out your Android.

I probably did, but i don't really care about android. And as long as fastboot is working i can always reinstall android, right?

That said, kernel seem to be only installed on slot a, and i install rootfs on userdata partition, so i think some backups are still there. The only concern is dtbo partition that i wipe, otherwise kernel wont boot.

 

[serdeliuk]

I probably did, but i don't really care about android. And as long as fastboot is working i can always reinstall android, right?

That said, kernel seem to be only installed on slot a, and i install rootfs on userdata partition, so i think some backups are still there. The only concern is dtbo partition that i wipe, otherwise kernel wont boot.

Well, you don't care, but as you see some others care about what is in there, if you decide to make a howto install stuff you should take into consideration how to not wipe all, or at least let others know your result, some does not understand what and how is done and will lose all they have, and if they follow your steps do not know that everything on their device will go away and will find soon that hey lost at least their photos, documents, emails, etc....

Kernel is not installed, kernel is a part of boot.img that is placed on your boot partition, your dtbo and vbmeta are wiped out as well as userdata, if you can find boot, dtbo and vbmeta on the original firmware archive, the userdata is unique unfortunately.....

 

[AlexeyGuskov]

Well, you don't care, but as you see some others care about what is in there, if you decide to make a howto install stuff you should take into consideration how to not wipe all, or at least let others know your result, some does not understand what and how is done and will lose all they have, and if they follow your steps do not know that everything on their device will go away and will find soon that hey lost at least their photos, documents, emails, etc....

Kernel is not installed, kernel is a part of boot.img that is placed on your boot partition, your dtbo and vbmeta are wiped out as well as userdata, if you can find boot, dtbo and vbmeta on the original firmware archive, the userdata is unique unfortunately.....

Not sure I'm getting your point. If someone wants to try a vague instructions from internet about installing experimental unsupported linux distribution built from sources on their mobile device i would totally expect them to understand a possibility that their photos would be wiped.

If you have any better instructions feel free to share it with us

 

[serdeliuk]

Not sure I'm getting your point. If someone wants to try a vague instructions from internet about installing experimental unsupported linux distribution built from sources on their mobile device i would totally expect them to understand a possibility that their photos would be wiped.

If you have any better instructions feel free to share it with us

Well... my point was to explain that using your incomplete steps could lead to data loss and even more, if you want to find if i have better instructions you may want to read all replies from this thread, or open your own thread on how to install PostmarketOS on nabu and wait for others to reply about their achievements using your steps.

 

[vincele6]

Yeah really, people that can find the instruction here on XDA better know (a bit) what they are doing. If someone wipes his photos, that's tough, but should have been expected...

 

[serdeliuk]

Yeah really, people that can find the instruction here on XDA better know (a bit) what they are doing. If someone wipes his photos, that's tough, but should have been expected...

Data loss is one of the key element when you create a step by step how to do something that may alter others data, is a must to exists in the steps, when you provide steps that may damage others devices that is another story, the ones who read the entire thread will understand why i didn't build the how to install yet.....

 

[serdeliuk]

I have android and windows installed. Can i tripleboot this? I cant split userdata more (i have 128gb, 64/64 now). Can i install it in B system slot?

I forgot to mention, if you need to add a new partition you will have a surprise, the maximum allowed primary partitions is reached and you may need to use my TWRP/OrangeFOX thread to find an image that has all the required tools that may help you to add a new partition on your nabu. At some point i will write a dedicated post on how to achieve this. Or wait until i am done writing the wiki on how to use my PostmarketOS will contain all the required details about this and tripleboot, which right now is not that easy.

 

[russanandres]

I forgot to mention, if you need to add a new partition you will have a surprise, the maximum allowed primary partitions is reached and you may need to use my TWRP/OrangeFOX thread to find an image that has all the required tools that may help you to add a new partition on your nabu. At some point i will write a dedicated post on how to achieve this.

I know. I already installed windows and learn parted. But idk how to resize windows partition for add 10GB free space without loose any data and without fixing anything.

 

[serdeliuk]

I know. I already installed windows and learn parted. But idk how to resize windows partition for add 10GB free space without loose any data and without fixing anything.

Even you will be able to shrink the windows partition to make some free space you will not be able to add a new partition in that space, for this is required something extra, my version of sgdisk from my orangefox image

 

[russanandres]

Even you will be able to shrink the windows partition to make some free space you will not be able to add a new partition in that space, for this is required something extra, my version of sgdisk from my orangefox image

Here is my partition table:

Spoiler: partitions

Number	Start	End	Size	File system	Name	Flags
31	10.9GB	11.4GB	527MB	fat32	esp	boot, esp
32	11.4GB	86.0GB	74.6GB	ntfs	win	msftdata
33	86.0GB	126GB	39.6GB		userdata

i think, if i separate win partition to 64.6GB and 10Gb, i can create linux partition between win and userdata.
And i already edited gpt for create 64 partitions.

 

[serdeliuk]

Here is my partition table:

Spoiler: partitions

Number	Start	End	Size	File system	Name	Flags
31	10.9GB	11.4GB	527MB	fat32	esp	boot, esp
32	11.4GB	86.0GB	74.6GB	ntfs	win	msftdata
33	86.0GB	126GB	39.6GB		userdata

i think, if i separate win partition to 64.6GB and 10Gb, i can create linux partition between win and userdata.
And i already edited gpt for create 64 partitions.

You can check the limit with sgdisk, if you already increased the partition table size then you will not have any issues.


Resizing the windows partition without losing data is a bit tricky, also you added the windows partition before your userdata which is not very useful, you may need to save your userdata and windows partitions to files, for example

adb pull /dev/block/sda32 win.large.img

Then on your computer use gparted to shrink them as needed, then create partitions for them and flash the images with fastboot.
Also, after you save the images you can create new smaller empty partitions and copy them too as images, then mount old and new images and copy files in between them.

 

[Tech Home]

@serdeliuk did you made some progress already?

 

[serdeliuk]

@serdeliuk did you made some progress already?

Unfortunately i did not had much time those days, hopefully this weekend i will be able to build a preview image and write a "how to" about how to repartition internal storage, install PMOS, and dual boot Android and PostmarketOS on nabu

 

[Tech Home]

Unfortunately i did not had much time those days, hopefully this weekend i will be able to build a preview image and write a "how to" about how to repartition internal storage, install PMOS, and dual boot Android and PostmarketOS on nabu

Would be awesome! So you also release the kernel changes?

 

[serdeliuk]

Would be awesome! So you also release the kernel changes?

I will release the source code for my project as patches (patch files) added to PostmarketOS source code available on GitLab creating a new device, this will follow to the release of the images of the preview as it is required a lot of extra work. I am publishing the source code as patches to let others quickly port them to newer kernels later.

 

[underlines]

I will release the source code for my project as patches (patch files) added to PostmarketOS source code available on GitLab creating a new device, this will follow to the release of the images of the preview as it is required a lot of extra work. I am publishing the source code as patches to let others quickly port them to newer kernels later.

You my friend are a hero.

 

[Tech Home]

I will release the source code for my project as patches (patch files) added to PostmarketOS source code available on GitLab creating a new device, this will follow to the release of the images of the preview as it is required a lot of extra work. I am publishing the source code as patches to let others quickly port them to newer kernels later.

That's nice. Maybe we can also help you to create CI Workflows for build.

 

[Nicknackpaddywack101]

Sorry to interrupt...
What is the difference between this and other Linux distros such as Ubuntu?

 

[serdeliuk]

Sorry to interrupt...
What is the difference between this and other Linux distros such as Ubuntu?

In regards to my work and my device, the main difference is that PostmarketOS works and other ones not at this stage. If you want to see the OS level differences then you may need to ask this question elsewhere, as i never used Alpine Linux and do not have much info, at first glance i can say that use a different package manager, a different startup service SysvInit while Ubuntu and newer OSes uses systemd, not sure about security patches, at this stage does not matter anyways.

 

[vincele6]

PMOS is (still) for hackers & tinkerers whereas ubuntu is more for everyone (else ?)