Root Let's Get CM Onto Avant!

[Sparhawk76]

Finally making a build. Sorry it's taken so long. School + work + girlfriend. Kinda holds you back time wise. I'll let you know if it works out and have someone test

I am excited to see someone working on a custom rom for the avant, and hopeful that it will possibly work for my Samsung Galaxy Core LTE (sm-g386w/afyonltecan) that I got from Fido in Canada. So far I rooted the phone with the root tool for avant, and also found the twrp for Aant, runs perfectly on my Core LTE.

 

[crutchcorn]

I am excited to see someone working on a custom rom for the avant, and hopeful that it will possibly work for my Samsung Galaxy Core LTE (sm-g386w/afyonltecan) that I got from Fido in Canada. So far I rooted the phone with the root tool for avant, and also found the twrp for Aant, runs perfectly on my Core LTE.

Can you run the avant stock firmware on your phone?

 

[Sparhawk76]

Havent tried yet, will have to hunt down a copy and try it. Just got the phone less than a week ago, and already want the Samsung software gone. Too many little things piss me off compared to cyanogenmod, which I have running on my Nexus 5, unfortunately it has a cracked screen or I'd still be using it.

Edit: Waiting for the Avant firmware to download ... got about an hour left till I can try to install it on my phone. Also figure I'd mention, that if you get a build that you need tested, I'm happy to give it a go on my phone. Not too worried about losing anything on it, as everything important is already synced to my pc, and I can always use my cracked screen nexus if the worst happens.

 

[crutchcorn]

Havent tried yet, will have to hunt down a copy and try it. Just got the phone less than a week ago, and already want the Samsung software gone. Too many little things piss me off compared to cyanogenmod, which I have running on my Nexus 5, unfortunately it has a cracked screen or I'd still be using it.

Edit: Waiting for the Avant firmware to download ... got about an hour left till I can try to install it on my phone. Also figure I'd mention, that if you get a build that you need tested, I'm happy to give it a go on my phone. Not too worried about losing anything on it, as everything important is already synced to my pc, and I can always use my cracked screen nexus if the worst happens.

Sounds good. I'm hoping that it works - make sure you have a backup.

 

[Sparhawk76]

Well ... no luck on that. Refuses to flash with a Fail Auth error. From the research I've done it looks like the bootloader is blocking the install. I have a feeling that if I had a way to disable the Secure Download setting in the bootloader I could get it to run.

 

[crutchcorn]

Well ... no luck on that. Refuses to flash with a Fail Auth error. From the research I've done it looks like the bootloader is blocking the install. I have a feeling that if I had a way to disable the Secure Download setting in the bootloader I could get it to run.

Indeed. Is there any other known phones that have found a work around with this?

 

[Sparhawk76]

On another note, my research into why it was failing brought to my attention loki, https://github.com/djrbliss/loki ... looks like it might exploit the bootloader to get it to boot an unsigned kernel.

 

[crutchcorn]

On another note, my research into why it was failing brought to my attention loki, https://github.com/djrbliss/loki ... looks like it might exploit the bootloader to get it to boot an unsigned kernel.

Good to note! I might need to work on a kernel for the device before a rom. (the rom wasn't playing nice)

 

[Sparhawk76]

From what I gather the loki_tool basically puts a header specific to your aboot ahead of a boot.img or recovery.img, to bypass the secure boot check.

 

[Masterchief87]

Just putting my two cents in here. If you were able to flash cf auto root and twrp that means that your bootloader is already unlocked and Loki probably is pointless. It probably wouldn't flash the avant firmware because there is a possibility of bricking your phone. Something to remember is that the firmware contains not just the ROM but many other partitions that may not be compatible. A better idea would be to try flashing the avant slim ROM that's on xda to test since it only messes with the system and boot partitions.

 

[crutchcorn]

Just putting my two cents in here. If you were able to flash cf auto root and twrp that means that your bootloader is already unlocked and Loki probably is pointless. It probably wouldn't flash the avant firmware because there is a possibility of bricking your phone. Something to remember is that the firmware contains not just the ROM but many other partitions that may not be compatible. A better idea would be to try flashing the avant slim ROM that's on xda to test since it only messes with the system and boot partitions.

That's a good point about it being unlocked... I actually meant the slim rom when I had said to flash it and try it - just never was able to find it myself

 

[Sparhawk76]

Unfortunately all the links to slimrom on xda that I can find are to an expired link. I did however manage to track down another copy I have downloading now, hoping it works out. If anyone is intersted I found it at: https://www.androidfilehost.com/?w=files&flid=23791

 

[crutchcorn]

Unfortunately all the links to slimrom on xda that I can find are to an expired link. I did however manage to track down another copy I have downloading now, hoping it works out. If anyone is intersted I found it at: https://www.androidfilehost.com/?w=files&flid=23791

Do you know who the developer is? Maybe I can speak with them

 

[Sparhawk76]

The slim rom I linked installed and booted fine. Data via Fido works, wifi on the other hand doesn't, but from what I read on one post I found in my google search the slim rom for avant had wifi issues anyways.

 

[crutchcorn]

The slim rom I linked installed and booted fine. Data via Fido works, wifi on the other hand doesn't, but from what I read on one post I found in my google search the slim rom for avant had wifi issues anyways.

Then it looks like you've got an Avant in disguise. From what I've heard, the slim rom had those bugs. I really do want to speak to whoever worked on it last.

 

[Sparhawk76]

http://forum.xda-developers.com/general/help/discussion-galaxy-avant-t2845229 is the link to slimrom that was broken, In the same post was this line:
Directions on how to install Avant Slim Rom by kdkirk08: (post #607 )

and the slim rom I downloaded was published by the androidfilehost user kkirk, I'd assume the same person. Maybe you can contact him on xda.

 

[Masterchief87]

http://forum.xda-developers.com/general/help/discussion-galaxy-avant-t2845229 is the link to slimrom that was broken, In the same post was this line:
Directions on how to install Avant Slim Rom by kdkirk08: (post #607 )

and the slim rom I downloaded was published by the androidfilehost user kkirk, I'd assume the same person. Maybe you can contact him on xda.

Yeah its kdkirk08 who did it and it has several bugs because there are a lot of apps for the avant that are interdependent. For example, without the stock gallery app you can only use the wallpapers that are built in to the ROM.

 

[Sparhawk76]

At least it worked enough to prove my theory that my phone is an Avant in disguise. No idea if I'll have any luck, but I installed a builduntu vm, and am pulling down the cm11 sources now, got somewhat of a plan of attack to see if I can get cyanogenmod built. Any pointers would be helpful, I've only ever built it for an already supported device, and that was a year or so ago.

 

[codyedmonson]

At least it worked enough to prove my theory that my phone is an Avant in disguise. No idea if I'll have any luck, but I installed a builduntu vm, and am pulling down the cm11 sources now, got somewhat of a plan of attack to see if I can get cyanogenmod built. Any pointers would be helpful, I've only ever built it for an already supported device, and that was a year or so ago.

Good luck and if you need any help, google is your best friend lol. Don't be afraid to ask for help.

 

[Sparhawk76]

Figured I'd run my plan of attack by you, any input would be appreciated ... once my repo finishes syncing I will pull down the hammerhead (my other phone) configurations so I get the cyanogenmod version of kernel source. Then I plan to compare the kernel config files between the Samsung official opensource kernel config and that of the hammerhead to come up with a hopefully working kernel config to compile a cyanogenmod kernel for our device. From there try and build/test a recovery with the new kernel, then hopefully go on to build the full cm release.

 

[crutchcorn]

Figured I'd run my plan of attack by you, any input would be appreciated ... once my repo finishes syncing I will pull down the hammerhead (my other phone) configurations so I get the cyanogenmod version of kernel source. Then I plan to compare the kernel config files between the Samsung official opensource kernel config and that of the hammerhead to come up with a hopefully working kernel config to compile a cyanogenmod kernel for our device. From there try and build/test a recovery with the new kernel, then hopefully go on to build the full cm release.

Sounds good. You want to find devices with a similar if not same CPU/RAM/etc in specs. I can help if you'd like

 

[Sparhawk76]

I had a similar thought, and tried to track down a phone with a similar chipset that had been ported to cyanogenmod already, my search came up with the Moto G 4G (aka peregrine). It uses the same msm8926 chipset as our Avants. A fair number of the proprietary blobs searched for by the peregrine version of extract-files.sh are in the same place on our phones, or have easily recognisable equivalents.

 

[crutchcorn]

I had a similar thought, and tried to track down a phone with a similar chipset that had been ported to cyanogenmod already, my search came up with the Moto G 4G (aka peregrine). It uses the same msm8926 chipset as our Avants. A fair number of the proprietary blobs searched for by the peregrine version of extract-files.sh are in the same place on our phones, or have easily recognisable equivalents.

Sounds great! Have you made a fork on GitHub at all? I'd be willing to contribute.

 

[Sparhawk76]

I've been kinda wanting to get to the point where I have at least a booting recovery before I put it up on github. If I try to flash my recovery from twrp I get an immediate black screen (I'm guessing phone doesn't like recovery beng overwritten while running from recovery) ... only way out is to pull the battery, and when I boot the phone back up into recovery twrp loads, so nothing was flashed. I tried to also make a recovery.tar.md5 from the recovery.img, but when I boot to recovery after flashing that from odin, it says something to the effect of boot failed and takes me to the Odin Download mode of the phone.

 

[Sparhawk76]

Relatively new to github and working with git, but think I've got everything so far added there if you want to take a look. https://github.com/Sparhawk76

Edit: just realized I forgot one of the needed folders ... added to github now. Should be 4 projects in total.