Official LineageOS 17.1 for Fairphone 3/Fairphone 3+

[helios]

@kinjiru

Actually, now that I read this, I remembered I don’t use full microG right now
I just use the standalone microG UnifiedNLP for a faster location fix (offline backend)

So I guess the best approach for me is to get the official LOS17.1 as soon as it’s available and install UnifiedNLP (No GApps) on that.

I’ve seen this howto and an older FP forum topic about this.
Anyone knows whether this adb method is still necessary for system registration, or does the current 17.1 build support UnifiedNLP installation in userspace from F-Droid?

That might be interesting. With Fairphone 2 I found it usually found the location fast enough even with Fairphone OpenOS. It took a bit longer at times but especially if I select the area I am in in OSMAnd it usually had it within half a minute or minute. Without mobile network or WLAN connection that is. I used that together with the F-Droid app LocationPrivacy, just allowing OSMAnd access. But I do not remember why I installed LocationPrivacy.

Anyway, first thing is to backup the few photos I made while using the unofficial image and then to flash the official image, now that it is there. Thanks again. A happy, peaceful and healthy new year to you all!

[MartiniMoe]

Anyone knows whats going on with the MicroG Lineage builds? On the website they claim to provide weekly OTAs, but looking at the download section no device received an update since 11th of december and even before that there were only monthly updates.

I just dont want to get stuck on a rom that does not receive updates. Are the MicroG Lineage Roms safe to receive updates? At least monthly? Thanks.

[officer_k]

Yes it’s finally there! Are there any good guides on the installation procedure coming from FairphoneOS?

[t_aus_m]

It gets updated every month, you can be sure about that.

[t_aus_m]

The procedure described for the old, unofficial LineageOS ROM should still work.
You can find it over here: [ROM][UNOFFICIAL] LineageOS 16.0 for FP3
The steps to unlock your FP3s bootloader can be found here: https://www.fairphone.com/en/bootloader-unlocking-code-for-fairphone-3/

[Micka]

@maba007

When you boot into the bootloader, you see the text at the bottom “SECURE BOOT - disabled” This is what I was referring to.

Secure boot cannot be enabled (as far as I know).

There are other steps you can take to increase the security:

• lock the boot loader
• sign builds with your own keys (instead of the google test keys)
• enable verity mode (disabled in LOS)
• create a ‘user’ build (instead of ‘userdebug’)

But keep in mind that security will always be limited by the disabled secure boot and the fact that EDL mode is easily accessible.

[MartiniMoe]

I’m interested in verity mode. Do you have resources on why it is disabled in LOS? How can I enable it in my own build and what are the consequences? Thanks

[Inzingor]

Hi there! First of all, thank you for your work Daniel! I’ve been using Lineage 17 since today and everything works so far. But I get the feeling that not everything is running as smoothly as with version 16 - who else has the problem? I deleted everything before the installation and then reinstalled version 17 via recovery.

Cheers

[Micka]

@MartiniMoe

I’m interested in verity mode. Do you have resources on why it is disabled in LOS? How can I enable it in my own build and what are the consequences? Thanks

You can enable it by commenting out this line.

As for why LOS disables it, I believe because of the reason @dk1978 stated above: to allow the sideloading of additional packages on top of LOS (like gapps).

So the main consequence is that you cannot do that - anything that modifies the protected partitions will break the verity check. This means that any changes you want to make (other than ‘normal’ user changes, which modify the userdata partition), you need to make at build time.

See Android Verified Boot 2.0 for the details.

[MartiniMoe]

Thanks for the detailled explanation

[Alex.A]

@officer_k

Are there any good guides on the installation procedure coming from FairphoneOS?

The official installation procedure :
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/FP3/install

[officer_k]

I followed those at first but it didn’t work out tbh. The phone somehow never booted to recovery when I followed the procedures exactly. It worked better with this guide

The procedure described for the old, unofficial LineageOS ROM should still work.
You can find it over here: [ROM][UNOFFICIAL] LineageOS 16.0 for FP3

There’s also a mistake in the official guide, as it says in “5. Note”:

if fastboot fails to flash to boot__a, you must flash to boot_a

Maybe the procedure text needs an overhaul in LOS wiki.

[Alex.A]

Oh, yes, you are right, the instructions on the wiki page are wrong! (or so I believe)

@dk1978 please correct the wiki page ASAP. It currently tells to flash the recovery to the boot partition (???) And the 5. title shouldn’t state “temporarily flash” but “temporarily boot” a recovery.
The right command would be

fastboot boot <recovery_filename>.img

and not

fastboot flash boot <recovery_filename>.img

Or did I really miss something here? (Edit: I did)

Edit: Checked in web.archive.org and it was like this before, so I guess it’s normal. But I still miss something important here.

Edit2: Okay, sorry, my bad. Wikis for other devices have the same procedure (and the same error about boot_a that should be boot_b).

[dk1978]

@officer_k

There’s also a mistake in the official guide, as it says in “5. Note”:

if fastboot fails to flash to boot__a, you must flash to boot_a

That is not a mistake, look carefully and count the number of underscores in the text.

[Ingo]

But isn’t there one error in the instructions, though?

There is a whole section called "Temporarily booting a custom recovery using fastboot" and item 5. in it says "Temporarily flash a recovery on your device by typing: fastboot flash boot <recovery_filename>.img"

Shouldn’t that be fastboot boot <recovery_filename>.img?

[dk1978]

No, I think the recovery flashing (rather than just booting directly) is intended. I don’t know the full background and the history of this stuff yet, but I do expect it to work. With the “temporary” flashing you end up with the LineageOS boot partition image in both slots, and that may be beneficial when the system is up and starts checking for updates.

[MrPasty]

I got the error “Couldn’t parse partition size ‘0x’” when running the “fastboot flash” command as per the official instructions. It worked fine using “fastboot flash:raw” instead so I hope this didn’t cause anything bad to happen. This was when switching from an /e/ OS install.

[ung00gle]

Hey, welcome to the community
I also found this solution on the web… I use fastboot flash boot_a boot.img or fastboot flash boot_b boot.img instead, don’t know what’s better. BTW A and B are some kind of different slots where you can install your system on, as far as I know.

I think I ran into some trouble. I was on 16.0 and some days or hours ago I saw there is an upgrade to 17.1. Thus, I went to the wiki of lineage OS and performed like it is intended. Thinking of everything seems easy and it’s rapidly done, I did not backup before… now I’m in a boot loop and don’t know what to If I don’t wanna loose my data.

OK first, I was on 16.0 with magisk and without gapps. I did the adb sideload thing like described, not realizing that its the lineageos recovery… as I was done I did a reboot, as I don’t use gapps and went into the bootloop. “oh snap! Probably it’s becaus of the recovery” thus, I fastbooted into twrp via fastboot flash boot <recovery_filename>.img to adb sideload and just did the upgrade again same problem. I thought perhaps its because of magisk therefore I went again to twrp via fastboot flashed the 17.1 again, without rebooting the system i booted again into twrp via fastboot and flashed the newest magisk. Bootloop again…

What options do I have. Can I at least backup some data of some apps via twrp to my computer or did I just overlook something easy?

EDIT: wipeing cache or dalvik chache does result in the loss of my personal data, wright?
Is it worth to try the ‘fix recovery bootloop’ function in twrp > advanced?
When I perform a backup via twrp which partition do I have to select for saving messages, contacts, notes and so on?

[Ingo]

@ung00gle

EDIT: wipeing cache or dalvik chache does result in the loss of my personal data, wright?

That one I can answer: no

[kinjiru]

My FP3+ is running LOS 17.1 now too, first time flashing LOS for me

A few things I ran into:

Sideloading the F-Droid privileged OTA zip didn’t work (nothing installed after boot)

This seems to be a problem with the zip expecting different mountpoints during recovery according to this LOS issue
The workaround from F-Droid forum seems to work for me (unzipping and pushing the files with adb root)

Another thing I noticed is that on my FP3+ the “Night Light” feature doesn’t work, no visible “redshift” when turning on/off or using the intensity slider. I couldn’t find a LOS issue about this, does anyone else here have this too?
(adaptive brightness does work)

And a minor thing in the installation instructions:
Maybe good to mention that between the Fairphone unlock actions and flash/booting the LOS recovery, I had to unlock with fastboot oem unlock
I found this in the /e/ install guide
They also mention to lock the bootloader again after install, which I also did.