Building and installing
There are multiple installation methods for your Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017). 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 Make backups. |
Using Heimdall
This will produce a folder with a flashing script, and the partition images for your Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017).
$ nix-build --argstr device samsung-a5y17lte -A build.android-fastboot-images
Alternatively, you can build a specific partition image:
$ nix-build --argstr device samsung-a5y17lte -A build.android-bootimg $ nix-build --argstr device samsung-a5y17lte -A build.rootfs
The device will need to be booted in its bootloader, or odin, 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 heimdall
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.
$ heimdall 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 Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) using one of the following commands:
$ nix-build --argstr device samsung-a5y17lte -A build.android-flashable-bootimg $ nix-build --argstr device samsung-a5y17lte -A build.android-flashable-system $ nix-build --argstr device samsung-a5y17lte -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-samsung-a5y17lte-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
Force-rebooting
To force-reboot the device, hold Volume Down
+ Home
+ Power
for a couple
of seconds.
Odin mode
Holding Volume Down
+ Home
+ Power
during power-up will go to the Samsung
specific bootloader mode.
Recovery
Holding Volume Up
+ Home
+ Power
during power-up will boot the recovery
boot image.
Flashing system image
Using heimdall
to flash system.img
, either on the USERDATA
or on the
SYSTEM
partition seems to fail, for unclear reasons.
One can use TWRP to flash the partitions:
$ adb shell dd of=/dev/block/platform/13540000.dwmmc0/by-name/SYSTEM bs=8M < .../system.img
$ # or
$ adb shell dd of=/dev/block/platform/13540000.dwmmc0/by-name/USERDATA bs=8M < .../system.img