[HOWTO] ✏ Compiling Fairphone Open OS / Rooting

Ok, then probably not the virtualization, as at least to people are using KVM for their VMs…

@fp1_wo_sw_updates, I was running memcheck during the night and it completed without any errors… So the physical memory seems to be ok. Which is good to know, but doesn’t bring me closer to a solution… :frowning:

Another compiler like 4.8.5 :wink: Because the only real error I ever saw in your logs was a compiler crash.

I’ll see to find a manual how to update it to 4.8.5. But to be honest I cannot believe that it will change anything as I did my last try on a completely new vm and other people have successfully built using 4.8.4.

Edit: I installed gcc 4.8.5 from toolchain test builds PPA and started a new build try.

Great, I keep my fingers crossed. I would have suggested just using another distro version, but changing the gcc is the last thing that came to mind after seeing your segfault.

Hello there,
thanks for the reply! To be honest, I’m not so sure about the “just” in “just try it”.
While I know my way around Linux, this is my first Android phone, so I have no clue about the stuff going on here.

The only thing I found on the forums is this thread:

It leads me to believe that I need a recovery thingy to be able to unpack the zip I get from the openGAPPS website. But I don’t understand whether all the steps described there are necessary and/or if I can just use the recovery image provided in the thread. It doesn’t include the blobs, and I don’t know if that restricts the functionality of the FP.
I guess I should ask these questions in the thread, but if you have some advice I would love to hear it.

Well, Ubuntu 14.04 is the recommended OS I believe. And actually it is already my third distribution version I’m trying. First attempt failed on Ubuntu desktop 15.10, the vm running ubuntu desktop 14.04 failed as well, and the freshly installed ubuntu server 14.04 failed yesterday as well. Let’s see if it works this time. Tomorrow morning I’ll be able to tell more.

Build it from the source with the blobs, best also build & install TWRP as a recovery and install openGAPPS. But I’m not using openGAPPS so I can help here right now :frowning: But I can tell you that the self-build images work. But maybe it’s best to wait until the FP project offers an easier way to get the “open” images for your phone (they still use the blobs, by the way).

Hi there,

thanks for the effort. I’ve read the main post and some comments. Strangely, it doesn’t seem so hard for a newbie. According to your experience, what are the statistics of success on this operation? What are the chances to get it right (and not brick it) with low/no dev knowledge (therefore, just following the steps, without any “backup plan”)?

Thanks in advance,
oekoniko

Hi @oekoniko. What’s your operating system? Are you familiar with the terminal?

Well, is it strange? You don’t have to write program code yourself, this has already been done. In the end, you “just” have to compile it. :wink: Therefore, it’s enough to be (or become) a little familiar with terminal commands.

For statistics you need a significant amount of people and solid data. Neither is present in this case. Also, this really depends a lot on previous knowledge of all the people who should be included in the statistics. Hence, I would never dare to state any probability or chances.

I’d only say the following: If you follow the steps carefully and without mistakes, all should work well as it did for most of the people here (there are exceptions as @sjjh who seems to have a lot of bad luck). If you have questions about some steps, feel free to ask!

Even if flashing will not work and you will have softbricked your phone, you could try recompiling (maybe you made a mistake or had a wrong software version of gcc for example) or flash the stock ROM. I wouldn’t say that it’s impossible to completely brick your phone (e.g., I don’t know what happens if you accidentally cut USB connection during the flashing process), but at least it’s quite hard:

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Talking about bad luck, the latest build try failed again for me. :frowning: Neither in the console output nor in the build log, I can find any helpful error message.
I always run the build via make -j1 2>1 | tee ~/build.log to have the output both visible and in the file. But I’m wondering if I somehow omit the error message… And I still have no clue how to debug the issue.
Anybody an idea? :-/

Seems you’re piping the error output into the nirvana.
Try the following (mind the ampersand [&]):

make -j1 2>&1 | tee ~/build.log

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@tphysm: Thanks for the reply and pieces of information!

I’ve already done a few things on console, and as long as i just need to follow steps, it went ok. I’m just afraid of the mistake with no return point… But i guess, I’ll give it a shot and hope i do everything right!

I’ll let you know,
Thanks again,
oekoniko

It worked! now i can use cerberus completely! Thanks to everyone involved in these clear explanations! I also slightly changed the main article to add a small advice for newbies :wink:

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So, I tried building again and failed again. The build log shows a segmentation fault (as previous attempts showed as well). The set-up is the same as in the last try/tries.
Anybody an idea how to debug?

It may still be a hardware problem. Since memtest doesn’t really tax the whole system, it might complete successfully even when there’s an issue that comes up when the system is heavily loaded. Sorry I can’t help you more.

Might be. But shouldn’t I then expect (other) problems (in other situations) as well? Cannot remember that I had freezes, unexpected shut downs or the like.
The physical hardware is as Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12 less than a year old.

The log is complete this time, good. The gcc died. Normally this should not happen, so it’s a gcc bug. What gcc version were you using this time? Have you started with a clean “out” dir?
Have you ever tried building on the “bare metal” hardware without any emulation? I would suggest building on the pure os without any emulation and with gcc 4.8.5. And check your logs for hardware issues.

gcc 4.8.5 (but I also tried 4.8.4, which is the default of ubuntu 14.04)

I started with a make clean, before continuing with building the envsetup.

Well yes, but only under ubuntu 15.10 and gcc 5.2.1 (which was “expected” to fail.)

I don’t want to reinstall the whole system, but I can try to downgrade gcc…

Well, the build is a really heavy process, so you might not encounter any issues with normal use. Of course it could be an issue with the virtualization layer or whatever too. You could e.g. try running the VM with VirtualBox to see if it makes any difference. At least I’ve successfully built the FPOSOS with Ubuntu running under VirtualBox with a Mac OS X host.

It could also still be a symptom of running out of memory if you only have 6 GB of RAM regardless of swap. I don’t know how gcc uses the memory, but I can imagine memory being locked so it doesn’t get swapped out in some situations.