Samsung Galaxy S5 (klte)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S5 (Klte)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S5 (klte)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 14.1 (Android 7.1 (Nougat))

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 14.1 (Android 7.1 (Nougat))

Notes

WARNING:

DO NOT USE THIS GUIDE ON VERIZON OR ATT DEVICES! These carriers enforce boot image signing and attempting to use this guide will end in misery/tears.

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: With the device powered off, hold Volume Up, Home & Power. When the blue text appears, release the buttons.
  • Download: With the device powered off, hold Vol Down & Home & Power.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_samsung_klte
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_samsung_klte
Galaxy S5 Specifications
Codename: klte
Also known as: SM-G900F, SM-G900M, SM-G900T, SM-G900W8
Vendor: Samsung
Release date: 11 April 2014;
Type: phone
LTE freq: 800, 850, 900, 1,800, 2,100 and 2,600 MHz
Platform: Qualcomm Snapdragon 801
CPU: 2.5 GHz quad-core Krait 400
GPU: Adreno 330
RAM: 2GB
Weight: 145 g (5.11 oz)
Dimensions: 142 mm (5.59 in) H
72.5 mm (2.85 in) W
8.1 mm (0.31 in) D
Screen size: 130 mm (5.1 in)
Resolution: 1920×1080
Screen density: 432 ppi
Screen type: Full HD Super AMOLED
Internal storage: 16 GB, 32 GB
SD Card: up to 128 GB
Bluetooth: 4.0 BLE
Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Main camera: 16MP, flash: LED
Secondary camera: 2MP
Power: 2800 mAh Li-ion battery, removable
Peripherals: Fingerprint recognition, Heart rate sensor, Motion Coprocessor,Accelerometer, Gesture sensor, Gyroscope, Proximity sensor, Compass, Barometer, Hall effect sensor, Magnetic sensor, RGB ambient light, Infrared (IR) LED sensor
CM supported: 12, 12.1, 13, 14.1

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Samsung Galaxy S5 (klte)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Important Notes

WARNING:

DO NOT USE THIS GUIDE ON VERIZON OR ATT DEVICES! These carriers enforce boot image signing and attempting to use this guide will end in misery/tears.

Installing a custom recovery

Samsung devices come with a unique boot mode called Download Mode which is very similar to Fastboot Mode on some devices with unlocked bootloaders. Heimdall is a cross-platform, open source tool for interfacing with Download Mode on Samsung devices. The preferred method of installing a custom recovery is through this boot mode. Rooting the stock firmware is neither recommended nor necessary.

  1. Download and install the Heimdall Suite
    • Windows: Extract the Heimdall suite and take note of the directory holding heimdall.exe. You can verify Heimdall is working by opening a command prompt in this directory and typing heimdall version. If you receive an error, be sure that you have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable Package (x86/32bit) installed on your computer.
    • Linux: Pick the appropriate installation package based on your distribution. The -frontend packages are not required for this guide. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Mac: Install the dmg package. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Building from source: The source code for the Heimdall Suite is available on Github. For more details about how to compile the Heimdall Suite, please refer to the README file on Github under the relevant operating system directory. You can also refer to the Install and compile Heimdall instructions on this wiki.
  2. Download recovery — you can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit TWRP site to check for the latest version of recovery for your device (if your device can be found there). For general info about recoveries click here.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: 0a1dcca46a9f084a29efe779e672a7ee
  3. Power off the Galaxy S5 and connect the USB adapter to the computer but not to the Galaxy S5, yet.
  4. Boot the Galaxy S5 into download mode. With the device powered off, hold Vol Down & Home & Power. Accept the disclaimer on the device. Then, insert the USB cable into the device.
  5. Windows (only) driver installation – Skip this step if you are using Linux or Mac
    A more complete set of the following instructions can be found in the Zadig User Guide.
    1. Run zadig.exe from the Drivers folder of the Heimdall Suite.
    2. Choose Options » List All Devices from the menu.
    3. Select Samsung USB Composite Device or MSM8x60 or Gadget Serial or Device Name from the drop down menu. (If nothing relevant appears, try uninstalling any Samsung related Windows software, like Samsung Windows drivers and/or Kies).
    4. Click Replace Driver (having selecting “Install Driver” from the drop down list built into the button).
    5. If you are prompted with a warning that the installer is unable to verify the publisher of the driver, select Install this driver anyway. You may receive two more prompts about security. Select the options that allow you to carry on.
  6. At this point, familiarize yourself with the Flashing with heimdall notes below so that you are prepared for any strange behaviour if it occurs.
  7. On the computer, open a terminal (or Command Prompt on Windows) in the directory where the recovery image is located and type:
    heimdall flash --RECOVERY recovery.img --no-reboot
    Tip: The file may not be named identically to what’s in this command. If the file is wrapped in a zip or tar file, extract the file first, because heimdall isn’t going to do it for you.
  8. A blue transfer bar will appear on the device showing the recovery being transferred.
  9. Unplug the USB cable from your device.
    • NOTE: Be sure to reboot into recovery immediately after having installed the custom recovery. Otherwise the custom recovery will be overwritten and the device will reboot (appearing as though your custom recovery failed to install).
  10. Manually reboot the phone into recovery mode by performing the following. With the device powered off, hold Volume Up, Home & Power. When the blue text appears, release the buttons.
  11. The Galaxy S5 now has a custom recovery installed. Continue to the next section.

Note: Flashing with heimdall

  • In Windows 7 UAC (User Account Control) may need switching off. Once Heimdall is finished it can be re-enabled.
  • Protocol initialization can fail if the device is connected via a USB hub – connect the USB cable directly to the PC
  • It may be necessary to run the heimdall flash command as root in Linux or Mac OS X: sudo heimdall flash [...]. Typical symptoms of this are:
    • a blue bar doesn’t show up after the process has finished
    • Failed to confirm end of file transfer sequence!
  • It may be necessary to capitalize the name of the partition on some devices. Try --KERNEL instead of --kernel and/or --recovery instead of --RECOVERY.
  • If on Linux 64bit you get “unable to execute ./heimdall: No such file or directory”, try the 32bit version and make sure to run it with sudo: reference.
  • On Mac OS X you may see this message: “ERROR: Claiming interface failed!”. If so, you need to disable the default USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDC;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMControl;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMData;
    If you have installed Samsung Kies, you may further need to unload those USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungComposite;
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMData
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMControl
  • Using Heimdall version 1.4.0 (the latest version available for download on the Glass Echidna website) you may see this message or one similar to it:
    Error: Failed to confirm end of PIT file transfer!
    If you experience this error, follow the instructions for compiling Heimdall from source to get the latest version on GitHub with the issue patched.

Helpful Tip

  • The stock ROM may overwrite your custom recovery on boot. To prevent this, boot immediately into recovery after leaving Download Mode instead of letting the ROM boot up normally. If your recovery is overwritten, simply redo the steps you followed above and catch it before it boots next time.
  • Note for upgrades from gingerbread to jellybean remember the recovery is changed. This means once you install do NOT restore to old-gingerbread-stock ROM from cwm-recovery.
  • To upgrade from stock/CM7/CM9/CM10.1.2/CM10.1.3 to CM10.2, you must first boot into recovery and wipe data, cache, and dalvik cache (factory reset). Due to the new partition layout in CM10.2, failing to perform these steps will result in a bootloop. See here for details; more about repartitioning here. If you missed this step before installing, boot to recovery and factory reset, then reinstall CM10.2.
  • Some users have reported connection errors if the device is connected to a USB hub. If you experience such errors it is recommended that you try connecting your device to a USB port on the motherboard.
  • Antivirus software may prevent Heimdall from connecting properly. Disable your antivirus before proceeding.
  • When Heimdall fails to connect, the Download mode may get stuck, making all further attempts fail too. To retry, you may need to restart the Download mode: turn off the phone by holding Power for 5-10 seconds (or by pulling out the battery), then boot into Download mode and run Heimdall again.
  • If Heimdall fails to connect (errors related to initializing the protocol, or transferring data):
    if you just installed the driver, try rebooting your computer and trying again.
    if you still have troubles after reboot, in Zadig try installing the libusbK driver rather than the WinUSB driver.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Up, Home & Power. When the blue text appears, release the buttons.
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Samsung Galaxy S5 (klte)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Galaxy S5, unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Galaxy S5
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Galaxy S5 (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

$ curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast klte

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast klte

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Galaxy S5 is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/samsung/klte directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/samsung/klte if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch klte

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make klte should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/klte/cm_klte-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-klte.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-klte.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Google HTC Nexus 9 (flounder)

Cyanogenmod ROM Google HTC Nexus 9 (flounder)

Cyanogenmod ROM Google HTC Nexus 9 (flounder)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 13.0 (Android 6.0/6.0.1 (Marshmallow))

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: With the device powered off, hold Volume Down & Power, then use the menu to select Recovery.
  • Bootloader: With the device powered off, hold Volume Down & Power, then use the menu to select Fastboot.
  • Fastboot: With the device powered off, hold Volume Down & Power, then use the menu to select Fastboot.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_htc_flounder
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_htc_flounder
Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) Specifications
Codename: flounder
Vendor: Google
Manufacturer: HTC
Release date: 2014 November 3
Type: tablet
Platform: NVIDIA Tegra K1
CPU: 2.3 GHz dual-core Denver (ARMv8 64-bit)
GPU: 192-core Kepler DX1
RAM: 2GB
Weight: 15.0 oz (425 g)
Dimensions: 228.25 mm (8.99 in) (h)
153.68 mm (6.05 in) (w)
7.95 mm (0.31 in) (d)
Screen size: 226 mm (8.9 in)
Resolution: 2048×1536
Screen density: 281 ppi
Screen type: IPS LCD
Internal storage: 16/32 GB
SD Card: none
Bluetooth: 4.1
Wi-Fi: 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2×2 MIMO 2.4/5 GHz dual-band
Main camera: 8 MP, flash: LED
Secondary camera: 1.6 MP
Power: Non-removable lithium-ion polymer 6700 mAh
Peripherals: Accelerometer, ambient light sensor, gyroscopic sensor, magnetometer
CM supported: 12, 12.1, 13

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Google Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) (flounder)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Unlocking the bootloader

WARNING:

Unlocking the bootloader will automatically wipe all device data.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Enable USB debugging on the device.
  3. Enable OEM unlock in the Developer options settings on the device. (Note: Not all devices have this setting, so continue with next step if yours does not.)
  4. Connect the device to the computer through USB.
  5. From a terminal on a computer, type the following to boot the device into fastboot mode:
    adb reboot bootloader
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissions fastboot”, try running fastboot as root.
  7. From the same terminal, type the following command to unlock the bootloader:
    fastboot oem unlock
  8. A disclaimer will display on the device that must be accepted. Use the volume keys to cycle through the options. Pressing the power button should confirm your selection.
  9. If the device doesn’t automatically reboot, reboot it from the menu. It should now be unlocked. You can confirm this is the case if you see an unlocked icon at the bottom of the Google boot screen during reboots.
  10. Since the device resets completely, you will need to re-enable USB debugging on the device to continue.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

See All About Recovery Images for more information about custom recoveries and their capabilities.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Download recovery — you can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit twrp.me to obtain the latest version of Team Win Recovery Project for your device.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: acce30d4969297bb10dc80a1368cc7e8
  3. Connect the Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) to the computer via USB.
  4. Make sure the fastboot binary is in your PATH or that you place the recovery image in the same directory as fastboot.
  5. Open a terminal on your PC and reboot the device into fastboot mode by typing
    adb reboot bootloader
    or by using the hardware key combination for your device while it is powered off.
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing
    fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissionsfastboot”, make sure your UDEV rules are setup correctly.
  7. Flash recovery onto your device by entering the following command:
    fastboot flash recovery your_recovery_image.img
    where the latter part is the filename of the recovery image.
  8. Once the flash completes successfully, reboot the device into recovery to verify the installation. Boot to recovery instructions: With the device powered off, hold Volume Down & Power, then use the menu to select Recovery.
    • Note: Some ROMs overwrite recovery at boot time so if you do not plan to immediately boot into recovery to install CyanogenMod, please be aware that this may overwrite your custom recovery with the stock one.

Updating the vendor.img

The /vendor partition on the Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) contains important proprietary binaries. CyanogenMod installation does not touch that partition, therefore it is the user’s responsibility to keep the proprietary binaries up to date. To do that, you can extract the vendor.img from the newest factory image for the Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi), located here. See note below about matching build id to ensure you download and flash the correct one. Then flash the vendor.img using one of these two methods:

  • Using TWRP recovery: Select Install -> Install Image -> select the vendor.img -> select the Vendor Image partition -> swipe to flash.
or
  • Using fastboot: Put the device into fastboot mode and enter the following command in a terminal on your PC: fastboot flash vendor vendor.img

Note: The vendor.img build id (e.g. MTC19V) must match the device specific build id of your rom. If they do not match you may experience bugs/issues, and you will see this message when your device boots up into android, “There’s an internal problem with your device. Contact your manufacturer for details”

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Down & Power, then use the menu to select Recovery.
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Google Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) (flounder)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi), unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi)
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Unlocking your Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi)

What does “unlocking” mean?

Note:

If you’ve already installed CyanogenMod or another ROM on your Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi), your device is already unlocked. Assuming you also have adb and fastboot installed on your computer, you can skip this whole section and proceed to the HOW TO BUILD section below.

The first step in putting any custom operating system on your Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) is to unlock the bootloader. A bootloader is the very first program that runs when you turn on your device. The bootloader initializes some hardware and then loads the kernel and ramdisk, and gets the boot process going. If the bootloader is in locked mode, it will ensure that only the stock operating system can run. Since you will be installing your own operating system, you need to turn this off. Luckily, Google and htc make it easy.

Note: A Warning About Unlocking

THE PROCESS OF UNLOCKING THE BOOTLOADER WILL ERASE ALL YOUR PERSONAL DATA FROM THE DEVICE.

Okay. I’m in. What do I need to do this?

To unlock your bootloader, you’ll first need a program on your computer called fastboot. One way to get fastboot is to download and install the Android SDK (Software Developer Kit) from Google. The SDK is used by app developers when they’re writing programs for Android, and who knows, you may want to write apps someday. But the SDK also contains two great tools that are useful even to non-developers. They are:

  • adbAndroid Debug Bridge – this is a program that lets your computer “talk” to your Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) while the device is running. Among the many things you can do with adb– you can push files from your computer to the device or pull files from the device to your computer, you can get a running real-time log of Android activity (which is very useful for debugging or having others help you debug), you can create an interactive “shell” session (similar to Linux or OS X) to type commands to your device, and much more.

  • fastboot – fastboot works a little bit like adb, except it’s often used at a much earlier point in the boot process, even before Android or any operating system loads. You can put your Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) into a “fastboot” mode, whereby, if you are connected via USB cable, you can copy entire partitions from your computer (usually in the form of an image file, such as boot.img or recovery.img) over to the device, wiping over whatever happened to be there. Fastboot is able to do more than that, however. It’s also used to send special commands to the device to do things such as unlock your bootloader.

How do I do the actual unlocking?

So this should be a one time thing…

Install the Android SDK

To unlock your Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi), you will need fastboot installed. Go ahead and download the SDK, per the steps on Google’s web page. Then install it by following the specific instructions for your computer.

Note:

Google’s instructions may be out of date for 12.04. The Sun JDK isn’t available anymore as a dpkg AND they say Eclipse 3.6 isn’t available as a package. Well, 3.7.X is now available. Doing a “$ sudo apt-get install eclipse” will now install the proper Eclipse and JDK (OpenJDK 6).

Unlocking the bootloader

WARNING:

Unlocking the bootloader will automatically wipe all device data.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Enable USB debugging on the device.
  3. Enable OEM unlock in the Developer options settings on the device. (Note: Not all devices have this setting, so continue with next step if yours does not.)
  4. Connect the device to the computer through USB.
  5. From a terminal on a computer, type the following to boot the device into fastboot mode:
    adb reboot bootloader
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissions fastboot”, try running fastboot as root.
  7. From the same terminal, type the following command to unlock the bootloader:
    fastboot oem unlock
  8. A disclaimer will display on the device that must be accepted. Use the volume keys to cycle through the options. Pressing the power button should confirm your selection.unlock the bootloader:
    {{{device_oem_unlock_command}}}
  9. If the device doesn’t automatically reboot, reboot it from the menu. It should now be unlocked. You can confirm this is the case if you see an unlocked icon at the bottom of the Google boot screen during reboots.
  10. Since the device resets completely, you will need to re-enable USB debugging on the device to continue.

Troubleshooting

If you have issues with fastboot or adb not being found, make sure that the Android SDK folder /platform-tools, which contains the adb and fastboot files, are in the path of execution for commands typed at the terminal. Usually typing something like

# PATH=$PATH:/your/specific/path/to/android/sdk/platform-tools/

will work for that terminal session.

Note:

The above command requires a bash-like shell. If you’re running a linux distribution which uses a shell such as csh or tcsh, first run /bin/bash to start a bash shell. See http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-do-i-find-out-what-shell-im-using.html or google for more help on that. You will need bash later as well, when using the “. build/envsetup.sh” command.

Note: Linux Mint users

If you have problems with adb (“file not found”) and you’re using 64-bit linux (I don’t know much about Mint, so maybe it’s all 64-bit?) try doing this to see if adb works better:

$ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

You’ll be using fastboot again to install a custom recovery.

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

$ curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast flounder

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast flounder

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/htc/flounder directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/htc/flounder if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/htc directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/htc directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch flounder

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make flounder should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/flounder/cm_flounder-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-flounder.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

See All About Recovery Images for more information about custom recoveries and their capabilities.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  1. Connect the Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) to the computer via USB.
  2. Make sure the fastboot binary is in your PATH or that you place the recovery image in the same directory as fastboot.
  3. Open a terminal on your PC and reboot the device into fastboot mode by typing
    adb reboot bootloader
    or by using the hardware key combination for your device while it is powered off.
  4. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing
    fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissionsfastboot”, make sure your UDEV rules are setup correctly.
  5. Flash recovery onto your device by entering the following command:
    fastboot flash recovery your_recovery_image.img
    where the latter part is the filename of the recovery image.
  6. Once the flash completes successfully, reboot the device into recovery to verify the installation.
    • Note: Some ROMs overwrite recovery at boot time so if you do not plan to immediately boot into recovery to install CyanogenMod, please be aware that this may overwrite your custom recovery with the stock one.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-flounder.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Samsung Galaxy S3 (Verizon) (d2vzw)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 (Verizon) (d2vzw)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 (Verizon) (d2vzw)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 14.1 (Android 7.1 (Nougat))

Notes

Note: Deprecated in favor of unified build on CM 11

For CM 11, this carrier specific device was deprecated in favor of a new unified device: d2lte. Please visit the d2lte page for information on building and installing CyanogenMod 11. This page is for < CM 10.1 or >= CM 12.1

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  • Download: Hold Home, Volume Down & Power.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_samsung_d2vzw
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_samsung_d2
Galaxy S III (Verizon) Specifications
Codename: d2vzw
Vendor: Samsung
Release date: 2012 June 28 (USA)
Carrier: Verizon
Type: phone
CDMA freq: Dual-band CDMA 800 1900 MHz
1xEV-DO 2000 MHz
LTE freq: 700MHz
Platform: Qualcomm MSM8960
CPU: 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4
GPU: Adreno 225
RAM: 2GB
Weight: 134 g (4.7 oz)
Dimensions: 137 mm (5.4 in) (h)
71 mm (2.8 in) (w)
7.6 mm (0.299 in) (d)
Screen size: 122 mm (4.8 in)
Resolution: 1280×720
Internal storage: 16GB
SD Card: up to 64GB
Bluetooth: 4.0
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n
Main camera: 8MP w/ LED flash
Secondary camera: 1.9MP
Power: 2100 mAh
Peripherals: capacitive touchscreen, proximity & light sensors, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, digital compass, A-GPS, NFC
CM supported: 10, 10.1, 10.2, 11, 12.1, 13, 14.1

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

WARNING:

This guide is for advanced users and does not come with support. It is provided as a means to install CyanogenMod. A working adb connection as well as adb being in your PATH is required for this guide and users should not proceed without this. Additionally, you must be a 4.2.2 or older build or this will not work. In fact, if you try to use this method on a newer revision, you will almost certainly brick your device. Seriously don’t try it. Downgrading won’t work either. If you’ve updated, a qfuse is already tripped and any attempt to downgrade will also result in a brick.

Flash alternate bootloader and custom recovery

Samsung devices come with a unique boot mode called Download Mode which is very similar to Fastboot Mode on some devices with unlocked bootloaders. Heimdall is a cross-platform, open source tool for interfacing with Download Mode on Samsung devices. The preferred method of installing a custom recovery is through this boot mode. Rooting the stock firmware is neither recommended nor necessary.

In order to use CyanogenMod on the Verizon variant of the Galaxy S3 you need to load an older bootloader.

  1. Download the following files:
  2. Download the Heimdall Suite:
    • Heimdall Suite Download
    • NOTE: The windows version of Heimdall Suite requires the Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable Package to be installed on the computer, which can be downloaded here.
    • Building From Source: The source code for the Heimdall Suite is available on Github. For more details about how to compile the Heimdall Suite, please refer to the README provided on Github.
  3. Boot to download mode on the Galaxy S3 (Verizon) by holding Volume Down, Home, & Power. Connect device via USB.
    • Optional: Once in download mode, verify Heimdall can detect the device and read its PIT file:
      • heimdall detect --no-reboot
      • heimdall print-pit --no-reboot
  4. Flash the aboot.mbn file from VRALEC.bootloader.tar.md5 with Heimdall:
    • heimdall flash --ABOOT aboot.mbn --no-reboot
  5. Flash the older kernel from VRALF2.boot.tar.md5 with Heimdall:
    • heimdall flash --BOOT boot.img --no-reboot
  6. You should now be able to download and flash recovery:
    • TWRP Recovery: download
      • md5sum:b4e99684f7e4b71af5972892601d7e9e
    • heimdall flash --RECOVERY your_recovery_image.img --no-reboot
  7. Unplug USB cable. Boot to recovery mode on the Galaxy S3 (Verizon) by holding Volume Up, Home, & Power.
    • Flash the VRALE6.bootloader.zip in recovery
      • Install zip from sdcard
      • Choose zip from external sdcard
      • Select VRALE6.bootloader.zip
      • Confirm installation
      • Reboot

The device is now ready to flash CyanogenMod.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • Volume Up, Home, & Power
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Samsung Galaxy S III (Verizon) (d2vzw)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Galaxy S III (Verizon), unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Galaxy S III (Verizon)
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Galaxy S III (Verizon) (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

$ curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast d2vzw

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast d2vzw

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Galaxy S III (Verizon) is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/samsung/d2vzw directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/samsung/d2vzw if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch d2vzw

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make d2vzw should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/d2vzw/cm_d2vzw-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-d2vzw.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-d2vzw.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Samsung Galaxy S3 (T-Mobile) (d2tmo)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 (T-Mobile) (d2tmo)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 (T-Mobile) (d2tmo)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 14.1 (Android 7.1 (Nougat))

Notes

Note: Deprecated in favor of unified build on CM 11

For CM 11, this carrier specific device has been deprecated in favor of a new unified device: d2lte. Please visit the d2lte page for information on building and installing CyanogenMod 11. This page is for < CM 10.1 or >= CM 12.1

WARNING: Firmware update notice

CM10.1 and newer are not compatible with ICS bootloaders on this device. Update your device’s firmware or you will get assert failures in recovery.

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  • Download: Hold Home, Volume Down & Power.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_samsung_d2tmo
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_samsung_d2
Galaxy S III (T-Mobile) Specifications
Codename: d2tmo
Vendor: Samsung
Release date: 2012 June 21 (USA)
Carrier: T-Mobile, Mobilcity, Wind, Videotron
Type: phone
GSM freq: Quad-band GSM 850 900 1800 1900 MHz GPRS/EDGE
Quad-band UMTS 850 1700 1900 2100, and HSPA+
Platform: Qualcomm MSM8960
CPU: 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4
GPU: Adreno 225
RAM: 2GB
Weight: 134 g (4.7 oz)
Dimensions: 137 mm (5.4 in) (h)
71 mm (2.8 in) (w)
8.6 mm (0.339 in) (d)
Screen size: 122 mm (4.8 in)
Resolution: 1280×720
Internal storage: 16GB
SD Card: up to 64GB
Bluetooth: 3.0
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n
Main camera: 8MP w/ LED flash
Secondary camera: 1.9MP
Power: 2100 mAh
Peripherals: capacitive touchscreen, proximity & light sensors, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, digital compass, A-GPS, NFC
CM supported: 10, 10.1, 10.2, 11, 12.1, 13, 14.1

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Samsung Galaxy S III (T-Mobile) (d2tmo)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Important Notes

Note: Deprecated in favor of unified build on CM 11

For CM 11, this carrier specific device has been deprecated in favor of a new unified device: d2lte. Please visit the d2lte page for information on building and installing CyanogenMod 11. This page is for < CM 10.1 or >= CM 12.1

WARNING: Firmware update notice

CM10.1 and newer are not compatible with ICS bootloaders on this device. Update your device’s firmware or you will get assert failures in recovery.

Installing a custom recovery

Samsung devices come with a unique boot mode called Download Mode which is very similar to Fastboot Mode on some devices with unlocked bootloaders. Heimdall is a cross-platform, open source tool for interfacing with Download Mode on Samsung devices. The preferred method of installing a custom recovery is through this boot mode. Rooting the stock firmware is neither recommended nor necessary.

  1. Download and install the Heimdall Suite
    • Windows: Extract the Heimdall suite and take note of the directory holding heimdall.exe. You can verify Heimdall is working by opening a command prompt in this directory and typing heimdall version. If you receive an error, be sure that you have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable Package (x86/32bit) installed on your computer.
    • Linux: Pick the appropriate installation package based on your distribution. The -frontend packages are not required for this guide. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Mac: Install the dmg package. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Building from source: The source code for the Heimdall Suite is available on Github. For more details about how to compile the Heimdall Suite, please refer to the README file on Github under the relevant operating system directory. You can also refer to the Install and compile Heimdall instructions on this wiki.
  2. Download recovery — you can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit TWRP site to check for the latest version of recovery for your device (if your device can be found there). For general info about recoveries click here.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: 429e64529a616249c5a1573edaaaca27
  3. Power off the Galaxy S III (T-Mobile) and connect the USB adapter to the computer but not to the Galaxy S III (T-Mobile), yet.
  4. Boot the Galaxy S III (T-Mobile) into download mode. Hold Home, Volume Down & Power. Accept the disclaimer on the device. Then, insert the USB cable into the device.
  5. Windows (only) driver installation – Skip this step if you are using Linux or Mac
    A more complete set of the following instructions can be found in the Zadig User Guide.
    1. Run zadig.exe from the Drivers folder of the Heimdall Suite.
    2. Choose Options » List All Devices from the menu.
    3. Select Samsung USB Composite Device or MSM8x60 or Gadget Serial or Device Name from the drop down menu. (If nothing relevant appears, try uninstalling any Samsung related Windows software, like Samsung Windows drivers and/or Kies).
    4. Click Replace Driver (having selecting “Install Driver” from the drop down list built into the button).
    5. If you are prompted with a warning that the installer is unable to verify the publisher of the driver, select Install this driver anyway. You may receive two more prompts about security. Select the options that allow you to carry on.
  6. At this point, familiarize yourself with the Flashing with heimdall notes below so that you are prepared for any strange behaviour if it occurs.
  7. On the computer, open a terminal (or Command Prompt on Windows) in the directory where the recovery image is located and type:
    heimdall flash --RECOVERY recovery.img --no-reboot
    Tip: The file may not be named identically to what’s in this command. If the file is wrapped in a zip or tar file, extract the file first, because heimdall isn’t going to do it for you.
  8. A blue transfer bar will appear on the device showing the recovery being transferred.
  9. Unplug the USB cable from your device.
    • NOTE: Be sure to reboot into recovery immediately after having installed the custom recovery. Otherwise the custom recovery will be overwritten and the device will reboot (appearing as though your custom recovery failed to install).
  10. Manually reboot the phone into recovery mode by performing the following. Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  11. The Galaxy S III (T-Mobile) now has a custom recovery installed. Continue to the next section.

Note: Flashing with heimdall

  • In Windows 7 UAC (User Account Control) may need switching off. Once Heimdall is finished it can be re-enabled.
  • Protocol initialization can fail if the device is connected via a USB hub – connect the USB cable directly to the PC
  • It may be necessary to run the heimdall flash command as root in Linux or Mac OS X: sudo heimdall flash [...]. Typical symptoms of this are:
    • a blue bar doesn’t show up after the process has finished
    • Failed to confirm end of file transfer sequence!
  • It may be necessary to capitalize the name of the partition on some devices. Try --KERNEL instead of --kernel and/or --recovery instead of --RECOVERY.
  • If on Linux 64bit you get “unable to execute ./heimdall: No such file or directory”, try the 32bit version and make sure to run it with sudo: reference.
  • On Mac OS X you may see this message: “ERROR: Claiming interface failed!”. If so, you need to disable the default USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDC;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMControl;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMData;
    If you have installed Samsung Kies, you may further need to unload those USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungComposite;
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMData
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMControl
  • Using Heimdall version 1.4.0 (the latest version available for download on the Glass Echidna website) you may see this message or one similar to it:
    Error: Failed to confirm end of PIT file transfer!
    If you experience this error, follow the instructions for compiling Heimdall from source to get the latest version on GitHub with the issue patched.

Helpful Tip

  • The stock ROM may overwrite your custom recovery on boot. To prevent this, boot immediately into recovery after leaving Download Mode instead of letting the ROM boot up normally. If your recovery is overwritten, simply redo the steps you followed above and catch it before it boots next time.
  • Note for upgrades from gingerbread to jellybean remember the recovery is changed. This means once you install do NOT restore to old-gingerbread-stock ROM from cwm-recovery.
  • To upgrade from stock/CM7/CM9/CM10.1.2/CM10.1.3 to CM10.2, you must first boot into recovery and wipe data, cache, and dalvik cache (factory reset). Due to the new partition layout in CM10.2, failing to perform these steps will result in a bootloop. See here for details; more about repartitioning here. If you missed this step before installing, boot to recovery and factory reset, then reinstall CM10.2.
  • Some users have reported connection errors if the device is connected to a USB hub. If you experience such errors it is recommended that you try connecting your device to a USB port on the motherboard.
  • Antivirus software may prevent Heimdall from connecting properly. Disable your antivirus before proceeding.
  • When Heimdall fails to connect, the Download mode may get stuck, making all further attempts fail too. To retry, you may need to restart the Download mode: turn off the phone by holding Power for 5-10 seconds (or by pulling out the battery), then boot into Download mode and run Heimdall again.
  • If Heimdall fails to connect (errors related to initializing the protocol, or transferring data):
    if you just installed the driver, try rebooting your computer and trying again.
    if you still have troubles after reboot, in Zadig try installing the libusbK driver rather than the WinUSB driver.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Samsung Galaxy S III (T-Mobile) (d2tmo)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Galaxy S III (T-Mobile), unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Galaxy S III (T-Mobile)
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Galaxy S III (T-Mobile) (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

$ curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast d2tmo

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast d2tmo

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Galaxy S III (T-Mobile) is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/samsung/d2tmo directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/samsung/d2tmo if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch d2tmo

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make d2tmo should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/d2tmo/cm_d2tmo-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-d2tmo.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-d2tmo.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Samsung Galaxy S3 (Sprint) (d2spr)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 (Sprint) (d2spr)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 (Sprint) (d2spr)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 14.1 (Android 7.1 (Nougat))

Notes

Note: Deprecated in favor of unified build on CM 11

For CM 11, this carrier specific device has been deprecated in favor of a new unified device: d2lte. Please visit the d2lte page for information on building and installing CyanogenMod 11. This page is for < CM 10.1 or >= CM 12.1

WARNING: Firmware update notice

CM10.1 and newer are not compatible with ICS bootloaders on this device. Update your device’s firmware or you will get assert failures in recovery.

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  • Download: Hold Home, Volume Down & Power.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_samsung_d2spr
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_samsung_d2
Galaxy S III (Sprint) Specifications
Codename: d2spr
Vendor: Samsung
Release date: 2012 June 28 (USA)
Carrier: Sprint
Type: phone
GSM freq: Quad-band GSM 850 900 1800 1900 MHz GPRS/EDGE
Tri-band UMTS 850 1900 2100 MHz, and HSPA+
LTE freq: 1900MHz
Platform: Qualcomm MSM8960
CPU: 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4
GPU: Adreno 225
RAM: 2GB
Weight: 134 g (4.7 oz)
Dimensions: 137 mm (5.4 in) (h)
71 mm (2.8 in) (w)
7.6 mm (0.299 in) (d)
Screen size: 122 mm (4.8 in)
Resolution: 1280×720
Internal storage: 16GB
SD Card: up to 64GB
Bluetooth: 3.0
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n
Main camera: 8MP w/ LED flash
Secondary camera: 1.9MP
Power: 2100 mAh
Peripherals: capacitive touchscreen, proximity & light sensors, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, digital compass, A-GPS, NFC, Barometer
CM supported: 10, 10.1, 10.2, 11, 12.1, 13, 14.1

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Samsung Galaxy S III (Sprint) (d2spr)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Important Notes

Note: Deprecated in favor of unified build on CM 11

For CM 11, this carrier specific device has been deprecated in favor of a new unified device: d2lte. Please visit the d2lte page for information on building and installing CyanogenMod 11. This page is for < CM 10.1 or >= CM 12.1

WARNING: Firmware update notice

CM10.1 and newer are not compatible with ICS bootloaders on this device. Update your device’s firmware or you will get assert failures in recovery.

Installing a custom recovery

Samsung devices come with a unique boot mode called Download Mode which is very similar to Fastboot Mode on some devices with unlocked bootloaders. Heimdall is a cross-platform, open source tool for interfacing with Download Mode on Samsung devices. The preferred method of installing a custom recovery is through this boot mode. Rooting the stock firmware is neither recommended nor necessary.

  1. Download and install the Heimdall Suite
    • Windows: Extract the Heimdall suite and take note of the directory holding heimdall.exe. You can verify Heimdall is working by opening a command prompt in this directory and typing heimdall version. If you receive an error, be sure that you have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable Package (x86/32bit) installed on your computer.
    • Linux: Pick the appropriate installation package based on your distribution. The -frontend packages are not required for this guide. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Mac: Install the dmg package. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Building from source: The source code for the Heimdall Suite is available on Github. For more details about how to compile the Heimdall Suite, please refer to the README file on Github under the relevant operating system directory. You can also refer to the Install and compile Heimdall instructions on this wiki.
  2. Download recovery — you can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit TWRP site to check for the latest version of recovery for your device (if your device can be found there). For general info about recoveries click here.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: d1df4320321e4b21495a0d0c9ad38e42
  3. Power off the Galaxy S III (Sprint) and connect the USB adapter to the computer but not to the Galaxy S III (Sprint), yet.
  4. Boot the Galaxy S III (Sprint) into download mode. Hold Home, Volume Down & Power. Accept the disclaimer on the device. Then, insert the USB cable into the device.
  5. Windows (only) driver installation – Skip this step if you are using Linux or Mac
    A more complete set of the following instructions can be found in the Zadig User Guide.
    1. Run zadig.exe from the Drivers folder of the Heimdall Suite.
    2. Choose Options » List All Devices from the menu.
    3. Select Samsung USB Composite Device or MSM8x60 or Gadget Serial or Device Name from the drop down menu. (If nothing relevant appears, try uninstalling any Samsung related Windows software, like Samsung Windows drivers and/or Kies).
    4. Click Replace Driver (having selecting “Install Driver” from the drop down list built into the button).
    5. If you are prompted with a warning that the installer is unable to verify the publisher of the driver, select Install this driver anyway. You may receive two more prompts about security. Select the options that allow you to carry on.
  6. At this point, familiarize yourself with the Flashing with heimdall notes below so that you are prepared for any strange behaviour if it occurs.
  7. On the computer, open a terminal (or Command Prompt on Windows) in the directory where the recovery image is located and type:
    heimdall flash --RECOVERY recovery.img --no-reboot
    Tip: The file may not be named identically to what’s in this command. If the file is wrapped in a zip or tar file, extract the file first, because heimdall isn’t going to do it for you.
  8. A blue transfer bar will appear on the device showing the recovery being transferred.
  9. Unplug the USB cable from your device.
    • NOTE: Be sure to reboot into recovery immediately after having installed the custom recovery. Otherwise the custom recovery will be overwritten and the device will reboot (appearing as though your custom recovery failed to install).
  10. Manually reboot the phone into recovery mode by performing the following. Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  11. The Galaxy S III (Sprint) now has a custom recovery installed. Continue to the next section.

Note: Flashing with heimdall

  • In Windows 7 UAC (User Account Control) may need switching off. Once Heimdall is finished it can be re-enabled.
  • Protocol initialization can fail if the device is connected via a USB hub – connect the USB cable directly to the PC
  • It may be necessary to run the heimdall flash command as root in Linux or Mac OS X: sudo heimdall flash [...]. Typical symptoms of this are:
    • a blue bar doesn’t show up after the process has finished
    • Failed to confirm end of file transfer sequence!
  • It may be necessary to capitalize the name of the partition on some devices. Try --KERNEL instead of --kernel and/or --recovery instead of --RECOVERY.
  • If on Linux 64bit you get “unable to execute ./heimdall: No such file or directory”, try the 32bit version and make sure to run it with sudo: reference.
  • On Mac OS X you may see this message: “ERROR: Claiming interface failed!”. If so, you need to disable the default USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDC;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMControl;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMData;
    If you have installed Samsung Kies, you may further need to unload those USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungComposite;
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMData
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMControl
  • Using Heimdall version 1.4.0 (the latest version available for download on the Glass Echidna website) you may see this message or one similar to it:
    Error: Failed to confirm end of PIT file transfer!
    If you experience this error, follow the instructions for compiling Heimdall from source to get the latest version on GitHub with the issue patched.

Helpful Tip

  • The stock ROM may overwrite your custom recovery on boot. To prevent this, boot immediately into recovery after leaving Download Mode instead of letting the ROM boot up normally. If your recovery is overwritten, simply redo the steps you followed above and catch it before it boots next time.
  • Note for upgrades from gingerbread to jellybean remember the recovery is changed. This means once you install do NOT restore to old-gingerbread-stock ROM from cwm-recovery.
  • To upgrade from stock/CM7/CM9/CM10.1.2/CM10.1.3 to CM10.2, you must first boot into recovery and wipe data, cache, and dalvik cache (factory reset). Due to the new partition layout in CM10.2, failing to perform these steps will result in a bootloop. See here for details; more about repartitioning here. If you missed this step before installing, boot to recovery and factory reset, then reinstall CM10.2.
  • Some users have reported connection errors if the device is connected to a USB hub. If you experience such errors it is recommended that you try connecting your device to a USB port on the motherboard.
  • Antivirus software may prevent Heimdall from connecting properly. Disable your antivirus before proceeding.
  • When Heimdall fails to connect, the Download mode may get stuck, making all further attempts fail too. To retry, you may need to restart the Download mode: turn off the phone by holding Power for 5-10 seconds (or by pulling out the battery), then boot into Download mode and run Heimdall again.
  • If Heimdall fails to connect (errors related to initializing the protocol, or transferring data):
    if you just installed the driver, try rebooting your computer and trying again.
    if you still have troubles after reboot, in Zadig try installing the libusbK driver rather than the WinUSB driver.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Samsung Galaxy S III (Sprint) (d2spr)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Galaxy S III (Sprint), unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Galaxy S III (Sprint)
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Galaxy S III (Sprint) (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

$ curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast d2spr

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast d2spr

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Galaxy S III (Sprint) is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/samsung/d2spr directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/samsung/d2spr if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch d2spr

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make d2spr should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/d2spr/cm_d2spr-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-d2spr.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-d2spr.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Samsung Galaxy S3 (AT&T, Bell, Rogers, Telus) (d2att)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 (d2att) (AT&T, Bell, Rogers, Telus)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 (AT&T, Bell, Rogers, Telus) (d2att)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 14.1 (Android 7.1 (Nougat))

Notes

Note: Deprecated in favor of unified build on CM 11

For CM 11, this carrier specific device has been deprecated in favor of a new unified device: d2lte. Please visit the d2lte page for information on building and installing CyanogenMod 11. This page is for < CM 10.1 or >= CM 12.1

WARNING: Firmware update notice

CM10.1 and newer are not compatible with ICS bootloaders on this device. Update your device’s firmware or you will get assert failures in recovery.

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  • Download: Hold Home, Volume Down & Power.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_samsung_d2att
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_samsung_d2
Galaxy S III (AT&T) Specifications
Codename: d2att
Vendor: Samsung
Release date: 2012 June 28 (USA)
Carrier: AT&T, Bell, Rogers, Telus
Type: phone
GSM freq: Quad-band GSM 850 900 1800 1900 MHz GPRS/EDGE
Tri-band UMTS 850 1900 2100 MHz, and HSPA+
LTE freq: 700MHz
Platform: Qualcomm MSM8960
CPU: 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4
GPU: Adreno 225
RAM: 2GB
Weight: 134 g (4.7 oz)
Dimensions: 137 mm (5.4 in) (h)
71 mm (2.8 in) (w)
8.6 mm (0.339 in) (d)
Screen size: 122 mm (4.8 in)
Resolution: 1280×720
Internal storage: 16GB
SD Card: up to 64GB
Bluetooth: 3.0
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n
Main camera: 8MP w/ LED flash
Secondary camera: 1.9MP
Power: 2100 mAh
Peripherals: capacitive touchscreen, proximity & light sensors, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, digital compass, A-GPS, NFC
CM supported: 10, 10.1, 10.2, 11, 12.1, 13, 14.1

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Samsung Galaxy S III (AT&T) (d2att)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Important Notes

Note: Deprecated in favor of unified build on CM 11

For CM 11, this carrier specific device has been deprecated in favor of a new unified device: d2lte. Please visit the d2lte page for information on building and installing CyanogenMod 11. This page is for < CM 10.1 or >= CM 12.1

WARNING: Firmware update notice

CM10.1 and newer are not compatible with ICS bootloaders on this device. Update your device’s firmware or you will get assert failures in recovery.

Installing a custom recovery

Samsung devices come with a unique boot mode called Download Mode which is very similar to Fastboot Mode on some devices with unlocked bootloaders. Heimdall is a cross-platform, open source tool for interfacing with Download Mode on Samsung devices. The preferred method of installing a custom recovery is through this boot mode. Rooting the stock firmware is neither recommended nor necessary.

  1. Download and install the Heimdall Suite
    • Windows: Extract the Heimdall suite and take note of the directory holding heimdall.exe. You can verify Heimdall is working by opening a command prompt in this directory and typing heimdall version. If you receive an error, be sure that you have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable Package (x86/32bit) installed on your computer.
    • Linux: Pick the appropriate installation package based on your distribution. The -frontend packages are not required for this guide. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Mac: Install the dmg package. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Building from source: The source code for the Heimdall Suite is available on Github. For more details about how to compile the Heimdall Suite, please refer to the README file on Github under the relevant operating system directory. You can also refer to the Install and compile Heimdall instructions on this wiki.
  2. Download recovery — you can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit TWRP site to check for the latest version of recovery for your device (if your device can be found there). For general info about recoveries click here.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: c2d2d787e3f914d651695a5fb6af1539
  3. Power off the Galaxy S III (AT&T) and connect the USB adapter to the computer but not to the Galaxy S III (AT&T), yet.
  4. Boot the Galaxy S III (AT&T) into download mode. Hold Home, Volume Down & Power. Accept the disclaimer on the device. Then, insert the USB cable into the device.
  5. Windows (only) driver installation – Skip this step if you are using Linux or Mac
    A more complete set of the following instructions can be found in the Zadig User Guide.
    1. Run zadig.exe from the Drivers folder of the Heimdall Suite.
    2. Choose Options » List All Devices from the menu.
    3. Select Samsung USB Composite Device or MSM8x60 or Gadget Serial or Device Name from the drop down menu. (If nothing relevant appears, try uninstalling any Samsung related Windows software, like Samsung Windows drivers and/or Kies).
    4. Click Replace Driver (having selecting “Install Driver” from the drop down list built into the button).
    5. If you are prompted with a warning that the installer is unable to verify the publisher of the driver, select Install this driver anyway. You may receive two more prompts about security. Select the options that allow you to carry on.
  6. At this point, familiarize yourself with the Flashing with heimdall notes below so that you are prepared for any strange behaviour if it occurs.
  7. On the computer, open a terminal (or Command Prompt on Windows) in the directory where the recovery image is located and type:
    heimdall flash --RECOVERY recovery.img --no-reboot
    Tip: The file may not be named identically to what’s in this command. If the file is wrapped in a zip or tar file, extract the file first, because heimdall isn’t going to do it for you.
  8. A blue transfer bar will appear on the device showing the recovery being transferred.
  9. Unplug the USB cable from your device.
    • NOTE: Be sure to reboot into recovery immediately after having installed the custom recovery. Otherwise the custom recovery will be overwritten and the device will reboot (appearing as though your custom recovery failed to install).
  10. Manually reboot the phone into recovery mode by performing the following. Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  11. The Galaxy S III (AT&T) now has a custom recovery installed. Continue to the next section.

Note: Flashing with heimdall

  • In Windows 7 UAC (User Account Control) may need switching off. Once Heimdall is finished it can be re-enabled.
  • Protocol initialization can fail if the device is connected via a USB hub – connect the USB cable directly to the PC
  • It may be necessary to run the heimdall flash command as root in Linux or Mac OS X: sudo heimdall flash [...]. Typical symptoms of this are:
    • a blue bar doesn’t show up after the process has finished
    • Failed to confirm end of file transfer sequence!
  • It may be necessary to capitalize the name of the partition on some devices. Try --KERNEL instead of --kernel and/or --recovery instead of --RECOVERY.
  • If on Linux 64bit you get “unable to execute ./heimdall: No such file or directory”, try the 32bit version and make sure to run it with sudo: reference.
  • On Mac OS X you may see this message: “ERROR: Claiming interface failed!”. If so, you need to disable the default USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDC;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMControl;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMData;
    If you have installed Samsung Kies, you may further need to unload those USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungComposite;
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMData
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMControl
  • Using Heimdall version 1.4.0 (the latest version available for download on the Glass Echidna website) you may see this message or one similar to it:
    Error: Failed to confirm end of PIT file transfer!
    If you experience this error, follow the instructions for compiling Heimdall from source to get the latest version on GitHub with the issue patched.

Helpful Tip

  • The stock ROM may overwrite your custom recovery on boot. To prevent this, boot immediately into recovery after leaving Download Mode instead of letting the ROM boot up normally. If your recovery is overwritten, simply redo the steps you followed above and catch it before it boots next time.
  • Note for upgrades from gingerbread to jellybean remember the recovery is changed. This means once you install do NOT restore to old-gingerbread-stock ROM from cwm-recovery.
  • To upgrade from stock/CM7/CM9/CM10.1.2/CM10.1.3 to CM10.2, you must first boot into recovery and wipe data, cache, and dalvik cache (factory reset). Due to the new partition layout in CM10.2, failing to perform these steps will result in a bootloop. See here for details; more about repartitioning here. If you missed this step before installing, boot to recovery and factory reset, then reinstall CM10.2.
  • Some users have reported connection errors if the device is connected to a USB hub. If you experience such errors it is recommended that you try connecting your device to a USB port on the motherboard.
  • Antivirus software may prevent Heimdall from connecting properly. Disable your antivirus before proceeding.
  • When Heimdall fails to connect, the Download mode may get stuck, making all further attempts fail too. To retry, you may need to restart the Download mode: turn off the phone by holding Power for 5-10 seconds (or by pulling out the battery), then boot into Download mode and run Heimdall again.
  • If Heimdall fails to connect (errors related to initializing the protocol, or transferring data):
    if you just installed the driver, try rebooting your computer and trying again.
    if you still have troubles after reboot, in Zadig try installing the libusbK driver rather than the WinUSB driver.

Backup nvdata

On this device, Samsung left the backup partitions blank for nvdata and a bug can occur where the device will restore these blank partitions over your working ones. For this reason it is recommended you run the following command:
adb reboot nvbackup

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • Hold Vol Up, Home & Power.
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Samsung Galaxy S III (AT&T) (d2att)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Galaxy S III (AT&T), unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Galaxy S III (AT&T)
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Galaxy S III (AT&T) (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

$ curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast d2att

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast d2att

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Galaxy S III (AT&T) is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/samsung/d2att directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/samsung/d2att if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch d2att

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make d2att should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/d2att/cm_d2att-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-d2att.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-d2att.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.