{"id":1559,"date":"2017-01-01T23:21:59","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T03:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/?p=1559"},"modified":"2017-01-01T23:21:59","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T03:21:59","slug":"installing-custom-firmware-on-nexus-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/2017\/installing-custom-firmware-on-nexus-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Installing custom firmware on Nexus 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Until very recently the phone in my pocket was\u00a0a Nexus 4<\/a> that I bought used 2+ years ago, it’s seen a couple of battery changes and a full brain transplant (motherboard) swap. \u00a0It’s running Android Marshmallow<\/a>, but there is a Nougat<\/a> version available – so it still feels current. Phones feel like they’ve hit the same plateau that computers have, sure there are newer and faster models — but for most needs models a couple of years old are just fine.<\/p>\n

The Nexus 5<\/a> hit my magic price point of ~$160 on the used market, even for the 32Gb version – making it too tempting an upgrade for me to pass on. The stock firmware<\/a> only offers 6.01 (Marshmallow) but the Nexus 5 is still a well supported device in the custom ROM space. I’m a big fan of CyanogenMod<\/a> but that’s come to a fairly spectacular end<\/a> recently. I’m eagerly waiting for it’s successor LineageOS<\/a> to get their infrastructure in place and regular builds happening.<\/p>\n

Installing custom firmware on the Nexus 5 is similar to any well supported Nexus device, Google really did a good thing allowing the hardware to be friendly to developers. Read on for the detailed steps.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Two key references: The CM details on the phone (hammerhead)<\/a>\u00a0and the CM install instructions for hammerhead<\/a>\u00a0– and thank goodness for archive.org<\/a>\u00a0helping preserve the internet.<\/p>\n

We’ll assume that this phone is fully stock, and the bootloader is still locked. Also, that you’re computer is running Ubuntu<\/a> (16.04).<\/p>\n

To start, we need to get the phone into the bootloader (fastboot mode).\u00a0Hold down power button and volume down button until we get to the bootloader screen. [yes, the picture shows the unlocked state – it was taken after we did these steps]<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On your Ubuntu machine, you need to install the fastboot tools.<\/p>\n

$ sudo apt-get install fastboot<\/pre>\n
Plug your phone into the Ubuntu machine, and issue the following command to unlock the bootloader.<\/p>\n
$ sudo fastboot oem unlock<\/pre>\n
<\/p>\n
Now that the bootloader is unlocked, we can install a recovery image. I like TWRP<\/a>, so we’ll get the version of that for hammerhead<\/a> and install that. Always verify the digital signature of the download, it’s easy and avoids hard to diagnose issues. Installing is done from the Ubuntu machine using fastboot.<\/p>\n
$ sudo fastboot flash recovery twrp-3.0.2-0-hammerhead.img\r\n\r\ntarget reported max download size of 1073741824 bytes\r\nsending 'recovery' (14524 KB)...\r\nOKAY [  0.798s]\r\nwriting 'recovery'...\r\nOKAY [  1.119s]\r\nfinished. total time: 1.917s<\/pre>\n
At this point I took a mis-step, or something went sideways. You can skip this section (bullets)\u00a0but I’ll still document what I did.<\/p>\n