Hey all, I have been trying to revitalize a Galaxy S5. I installed Lineage 17 and while the performance is AMAZING and I mean that seriously, I can’t figure out how to root. I got Magisk, but it’s asking me to patch a file. I don’t know what now. Prior to Lineage, I rooted the stock android with a rooting tool that was extremely quick and easy. Just sent a file in Odin while in download mode and it did the rest. But I’m fairly sure that same utility can’t be used on Lineage as it’s a whole new system.

What I would like is either help doing this, or if anyone knows a better rom to use that comes with root ability - and also the ability to move apps to the SD. For some reason, Lineage won’t do this adequately, and stock android has no problem with it whatsoever. That’s a step down in my opinion just because of dev’s personal philosophy but whatever.

Anyway. Thanks if anyone can help.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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    26 days ago

    Magisk needs to patch the boot.img file somehow.

    Here’s how I did it:

    • Download the Magisk apk from Github
    • Rename it from Magisk.apk to Magisk.zip
    • Reboot into Lineage recovery on your device
    • Sideload Magisk.zip and let it install
    • Boot back into Lineage
    • Open Magisk and it’ll likely tell you it needs to install.
    • Click through, and it should patch the boot partition in-place
    • Reboot
    • Open Magisk and make sure it shows as installed.
    • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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      26 days ago

      I will try this, thank you!! I appreciate the fast response, too!

      Question: sideload how? Sorry, I am not completely familiar… should I just adb push it onto the internal disk? Also, should I leave the existing installation on there?

      One last question: why is the latest shown on github as 27 yet the app downloads 28 to update?

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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        26 days ago

        Sideloading should be the same way you installed Lineage, assuming you used the official instructions and Lineage recovery.

        I’m doing this from memory, so the steps may vary a bit.

        Boot to recovery, click “Install”, then choose “ADB Sideload”.

        From your PC, run adb sideload Magisk.zip (assuming Magisk.zip is in your working directory).

        Then the phone should show progress; ignore anything pertaining to inability to verify. That’s normal since the app you’re installing isn’t signed by Lineage.

        • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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          26 days ago

          Hey, dude or dudette, This worked perfectly! Thank you so much. On XDA forums these people write instructions like their abbreviating stuff on a grocery list. All it said for root was “get the latest magisk.zip from GitHub and install.” Um - first of all, there’s no zip from there, you need to rename the apk to zip - which he made no mention of. Second, saying to install an app is normally just running the apk in a file manager. Piss poor instructions from those guys. And that’s consistent with pretty much almost all instructions I’ve seen over the past like year… YOU should be writing instructions on those pages FFS. And this you provided to me from memory! Dude/Dudette, you’re AWESOME. Thank you.

          And it’s crazy also because I do not understand what the aging fuck I just did, and yet I’ve run my own IT company for nearly two decades. I think it’s because mobile devices are so much in their own little pocket tech world. I dealt mostly with hardware and OS such as Windows and Linux, and software and network engineering and support. Mobile phones are such a separate cosmos.

          Anyway, thank you again, a million times! I appreciate your help so much. I would gladly return the favor if you ever need something that I can provide. Peace out.

          P.S. the only difference was in TWRP now you don’t go to install, they have a separate ADB Sideload button. Other than that, literally step by step it was perfect instructions and took all of like 3 minutes in total. Most of that was the reboots lol.

          • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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            26 days ago

            Glad I could help!

            TBH, my instructions were just my own phrasing of what I earlier read on XDA. I love XDA forums, and I’ve learned so much from there, but yeah, they do gatekeep pretty hard.

            Ah, yeah. I haven’t used TWRP for a while since my last couple devices weren’t supported and I had to use Lineage’s own recovery.

            • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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              26 days ago

              Hey do you think you can recommend a good utility to move apps to the SD card? I understand that performance is a major issue and I’ve even seen apps not work properly when run off there, which is why I only ever move things like Icon Packs or other referential apps, not stuff that needs to function in realtime and stay loaded. But Lineage does not allow this, even if you turn it on in developer options. Pretty sure that even being there is only an oversight. But the device I’m toying with only has 16GB internal, and icon packs are huge and absolutely don’t need to be on internal.

              • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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                26 days ago

                Hey do you think you can recommend a good utility to move apps to the SD card?

                Not really, unfortunately for a couple of reasons.

                My devices running Lineage have sufficient internal storage that I haven’t really needed to mess with it on those or look for / familiarize myself with a solution.

                My daily-driver device running do-googled stock Android only has 16 GB, but it does allow moving apps to SD. Sadly, I’ve had lots of issues with using the SD card in “extended storage” mode. Like, consistently, after each reboot, all my app launcher icons were gone from the home screen for anything that was on SD. Another time (and this is what made me say hell with it lol), I rebooted and the SD card was just wiped.

                I’ve side-stepped the issue by using app-level options to store data on SD (with the apps still being on internal storage). e.g. I’ve got Organic Maps set to store the map files on SD, Nextcloud uses the SD card for its app data, camera defaults to the SD card, etc. It also helps that I don’t run a lot of apps in general; pretty much most of my “apps” are just pinned web apps.

                • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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                  24 days ago

                  Oh, yeah the extended storage mode is iffy. They’re all iffy to be sure, and I’ve seen icons be faded upon boot also but immediately they catch up and show solid.

                  Ironically, at least in my experience it is better to leave the SD as external, and use developer options to allow moving app to external even if not in the manifest. It’s all about what apps you choose to move, less about the performance. Like I said, I don’t move apps that need to run realtime and read and write data regularly, but stuff like icon packs, books, stuff like that, really anything that loads data only occasionally.

                  Right now, my real phone is still iPhone, but I’m thinking I’ll change to android eventually. But I use several android devices as additional pocket computers.

                  I can’t fathom why lineage devs made it like, not feasible. That should be up to the user. I did try to integrate some SD cards as extended internal storage but it fails every time with some java error and reports the SD corrupted. Lol three brand new chips are not corrupted dumbass Lineage lol. Good ones, too! So yeah, they effectively wrote it off as not an option. That’s the one problem I have at the moment that I strongly disapprove. Other than that, the performance is insane! Similar with Cyanogen.

                  I still want to try out stuff like ResurrectionRemix, Havoc, /e/ and maybe Rising. For now I’m content mostly with Lineage on this Galaxy S5 but I really want to get something working that will let me move apps to the SD.

                  Thank you for all the replies and your insights. Greatly appreciated!

            • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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              26 days ago

              do gatekeep pretty hard.

              Yeah, what the hell is up with that?? It seems like they go out of their way to provide the content, but be ambiguous as they can about getting it to use. Who are they trying to impress? Some people have speculated it’s just plain laziness, which I would not discount, but it seems like uniform laziness which would be weird. The instructions to install Lineage on this device were only the second set of instructions I’ve found that were coherent and comprehensive. I have tried to understand many others but they were really just plain incomplete!