postmarketOS on F(x)tec Pro¹ (SD845/msm8998)

readme.md

postmarketOS and mainline kernel on F(x)tec Pro¹

Below are the steps required to flash postmarketOS (port made by Danct12 based on earlier work by Notkit) and mainline kernel (work done by Kholk and the github.com/somainline group) on the Pro1 msm8998:

2022-03-10. As of today, Danct12's port has not been merged yet, hence there are a couple extra steps to manually apply patches to pmaports. Beware that this is all work in progress and there will be bugs and missing functionality. 2022-03-12. device-fxtec-qx1000-nonfree-firmware added to the port, meaning support for model, WLAN and GPU.

1. pip3 install --user pmbootstrap
2. pmbootstrap init and choose edge and whatever device (I chose qemu and aarch64, but it should not matter, we'll redo it later).
3. cd /path/to/work/directory/you/chose/above/cache_git/pmaports
4. wget https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/2984.patch && git apply 2984.patch Don't worry about the warnings.
5. pmbootstrap init and select fxtec and qx1000. I tested gnome and i3wm as WM, they both worked.
6. pmbootstrap install (optionally, use pmbootstrap install --fde to enable full disk encryption).
7. Connect Pro1 in bootloader/fastboot mode (Volume Down + Power) to USB2 port.
8. pmbootstrap flasher flash_rootfs
9. pmbootstrap flasher flash_kernel
10. fastboot set_active b
11. fastboot erase dtbo_b
12. Boot, type in your FDE passphrase (with keyboard, touchscreen is crazy), and you'll quickly see the touchscreen is mad at you. Use sudo modprobe -r goodix_ts to disable it temporarily (it'll be back after a reboot). If you can't open a terminal before disabling the touchscreen, you can still ssh into the device while it's connected to USB. For me the IP was 172.16.42.1, I assume it will be the same for others; in any case it is shown in the terminal output at the end of step 9 above.
13. Optional: to clear up space on your computer afterwards, use pmbootstrap -y zap -hc -d -p -m -o -r.

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Relevant tweets from developers: Angelo (Kholk) some months ago and Danct12 a few days ago.