Motorola Moto Z Play — Mobile NixOS

Building and installing

There are multiple installation methods for your Motorola Moto Z Play. They all rely on flashing one or more partitions on your device.

Warning

All installation methods can lead to data loss.

Flashing a partition will erase everything on the partition. Additionally, the common backups methods, e.g. TWRP, will not backup the userdata partition, which may be the installation target.

Make backups.

Using Fastboot

This will produce a folder with a flashing script, and the partition images for your Motorola Moto Z Play.

$ nix-build --argstr device motorola-addison -A build.android-fastboot-images

Alternatively, you can build a specific partition image:

$ nix-build --argstr device motorola-addison -A build.android-bootimg
$ nix-build --argstr device motorola-addison -A build.rootfs

The device will need to be booted in its bootloader, or fastboot, mode.

The boot images can be installed using the following command, assuming the android-fastboot-images output was used.

$ result/flash-critical.sh

If you have a system image (system.img) built, you can use fastboot to flash it to the device. Note that it might be too big to fit over the system partition. In such case, it can be flashed on the userdata partition.

$ fastboot flash userdata system.img

Using a flashable zip

An alternative installation method is to use a flashable zip. The flashable zip can be built for your Motorola Moto Z Play using one of the following commands:

$ nix-build --argstr device motorola-addison -A build.android-flashable-bootimg
$ nix-build --argstr device motorola-addison -A build.android-flashable-system
$ nix-build --argstr device motorola-addison -A build.android-flashable-zip

The first two will flash only a specific partition. The last one contains the partitions of the two previous one.

The zip can either be copied to the device and selected in a compatible Android recovery, or sent to the device through adb sideload.

$ adb sideload /nix/store/eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-flashable-motorola-addison-boot.zip

By default it will flash to the system partition. Some configurations may change this to flash to the userdata partition. In that case, no warning is given before flashing.

Device-specific notes

Firmware for Wi-Fi

This particular phone keeps the firmware files on a partition named modem.

To make use of the Wi-Fi capabilities of this phone you will need to make them available to the firmware derivation.

The files can be acquired through different methods. You can use an alternate recovery like TWRP, mount the partition (identified using blkid) and copy the files.

Another way is to do it using an installed Mobile NixOS system, where, too, you mount the partition and copy them:

$ sudo mount -o ro /dev/disk/by-partlabel/modem /mnt
$ cp -r /mnt ./modem
$ sudo umount /mnt

The copy of the firmware files will be in the modem directory, in the current working directory, ready to be referred to.