Droidian for the Xiaomi Mi A2

A collection of tips on how to install and use Droidian on the Xiaomi Mi A2 (jasmine_sprout)

Requirements

• A computer with fastboot and adb access to the phone
• A USB 2.0 port/hub with actual USB 2.0 controller is recommended (fastboot on USB 3 can be problematic with Mi A2)
• Unlocked bootloader
• Backup all your data, as your phone will be WIPED
• It is also recommended to take a note of your Acces Point Name in Android Settings before starting the procedure (you will need it for setting up mobile data)

Installation

0. Download files

• Droidian rootfs and devtools for arm64 (nightly releases include devtools)
• Adaptation
• Android 9 Pie Firmware
• Latest TWRP image

1. Boot into TWRP

• Boot to fastboot mode by pressing the Vol- and Power buttons until the phone vibrates
• Check that the phone is recognized by running fastboot devices
• Boot to TWRP by running fastboot boot twrp-*-jasmine.img

2. Install Droidian in TWRP

TWRP:

• Go to Wipe and Format data (type yes)
• IMPORTANT: Do the 'Boot into TWRP' step again

PC:

• Connect the phone via USB
• The internal storage is now available over MTP from the PC
• Copy the downloaded files to the internal storage of the phone

TWRP:

• Go to the Reboot menu and see which slot is active
• If it says Slot A, then select Slot B to be the active slot, and boot TWRP again

With Slot B as active:

• Install zip file: jasmine_sprout_stock_android9.zip
• Now switch back to Slot A and boot TWRP again (must boot again, switching is not enough)

With Slot A as active:

• Install zip file: droidian-rootfs-api28gsi_arm64_YYYYMMDD.zip
• Install zip file: droidian-devtools_arm64_YYYYMMDD.zip
• Install zip file: jasmine-adaptation-YYYYMMDD.zip
• Go back to the main menu and reboot to System
• The first boot may take longer, and at least one spontaneous reboot is expected during the process
• If all goes well, your phone will boot to the Droidian lock screen, the unlock code is 1234
• Installation is complete
• Flashing the devtools zip enabled SSH over USB. To use it, connect your phone to your computer and type:

ssh droidian@10.15.19.82

The password is 1234

Notes

Porting status

You can check out the status of the port here

Applications

You can find a list of mobile-friendly Linux applications at LinuxPhoneApps

Update to bookworm

You can upgrade to the latest bookworm version of Droidian after doing all available updates from the Software application. Run this on the device itself:

sudo apt install droidian-upgrade-bookworm
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt clean
systemctl reboot

Mobile data

Mobile data should work, but it needs some manual tweaking. The good part is that the configuration is persistent, so you need to do this only once.

• Open the Settings app and tap Mobile, then tap Access Point Names
• Tap the + in the top right corner of the pop-up
• Fill out the textboxes based on your settings in Android. The Name can be anything, e. g., the name of your carrier. The APN is likely some sort of an URL, like internet.carrier.net or something similar. If you didn't see a Username and Password in Android, you can skip these.

In most cases, rebooting your phone or turning mobile data on and off a few times is enough. Otherwise we'll have to give the same settings to oFono as well.

• Open the King's Cross terminal app or use SSH and type sudo apt install ofono-scripts && cd /usr/share/ofono/scripts

• To check your current setup, type ./list-contexts, look for the first context, called [ /ril_1/context1 ]

• Notice that context has Name, Type, AccessPointName, Username, and Password attributes among others, we'll need to change these to match the valid settings taken from Android.

• Now deactivate this context to be able to make changes to it: ./deactivate-context 1

• And now make your changes like this: ./set-context-property 1 $ATTRIBUTE $VALUE, where the 1 is for [ /ril_1/context1 ], the $ATTRIBUTE is one of the attributes listed above, and the $VALUE will be the value you need to enter. make sure that the Name and AccessPointName match the Name and APN you entered in the settings menu. If an attribute needs to be empty, set it to "".

• When you make your changes, you can use ./list-contexts to see them.

• When everything looks good, activate the updated context: ./activate-context 1

• If all went well, by running./list-contexts again you should see that the Active attribute is now 1, and under the Settings attribute you can see the network parameters (Address, Netmask, Gateway, etc.) assigned by your carrier. If you get an error, try rebooting the phone and turning mobile data on and off a few times, and try running the /usr/share/ofono/scripts/activate-context 1 script again.

• In the end, mobile data should be working now.

• Pro tip: once you configured everything, you can type history to see your previous commands. Save them to a script that does all of this for you next time.

Credit

Shouko

Kisekinopureya

Droidian

Mobian

UBports

For further assistance, visit Shouko's Lab and the Droidian Telegram groups.