Ubuntu installation guide ( New method )

Another installation guide for newer Ubuntu port.

This document is a guide for installing Ubuntu Linux on your Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 with the latest mainline kernel.

We don’t take any responsibility for any damage done to your device. By following this guide, you agree to take full responsibility of your actions.

PLEASE READ SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY!! BE SURE TO UNDERSTAND THE ENTIRE GUIDE BEFORE STARTING!!

Don’t run all commands at once and don’t rerun the commands if you interrupt the process. You need to be familiar with command line interfaces beforehand and you must not commit any typo with any commands. You may permanently break your device!

Fork the repository

This repository is currently maintained by map220v on GitHub:

LogoGitHub - map220v/ubuntu-xiaomi-nabuGitHub

Open your browser and search GitHub, then login your account, click the link above.

A screenshot showing map220v's GitHub repository.

Click the "Fork" button to fork this repository. Once it forked, head to the next part of this guide, we'll build a custom system image for our further installation.

Build system image

Thanks to GitHub Actions, the build sections are all finished automatically, so we don't need to compile them manually. After you forked this repository, go to "Actions" tab, find the "rootfs" section in sidebar, then click "Run workflow" to build a kernel and system image. It will takes you about 23 minutes and 42 seconds to finish this build.

The Actions sections showing in my forked repository.

Once the build process is finished, click the "rootfs" in your workflow table. Scrolling down the page, you'll find the "Artifacts" section.

Here are your build files, download the xiaomi-nabu-debs_6.7-working and rootfs package. Either rootfs_lomiri_6.7-working or rootfs_ubuntu-desktop_6.7-working is OK.

WARNING: DO NOT download 6.8 packages as 6.8 kernel is known to have a broken screen framebuffer, it will show nothing on screen (even the console) after you installed them.

From now on, follow the old installation guide until the "Install new system" chapter.

Partition the UFS

This procedure will not erase your Android data files, since Android will automatically fixing the userdata partition.

To modify the partitions on the UFS, we'll need to download a 3rd-party recovery environment called "Orangefox Recovery" Link is here below:

Logoxiaomi-nabu-orangefox.imgGoogle Docs

Once you've downloaded, open a terminal and type the following commands:

This will start booting recovery image. Once the screen is on, use the terminal to continue processing. We well use adb shell command to finish the rest of this guide. Enter this command in your terminal, it well help you to check the userdata partition's location:

In this example, the userdata partition is located in the 31st partition of the whole disk. It has the biggest size, compared with other partitions. So this is the key for requiring new space for our Ubuntu installation.

To resize the userdata partition, we'll need to use the parted command tools to do this. Now let's open adb shell again and start typing parted in the terminal.

Enter print command to list all partitions for /dev/block/sda :

If you are using newer recovery like TWRP or PBRP Recovery, you need to download parted and use adb command to copy it to internal storage. Run these commands to finish this:

Then you will see your current partition table with userdata being the last partition Below is an example of output:

Now let’s continue partitioning: Here the size of userdata can be decided by yourself.

Delete partition 31 and again make sure it is not deleted incorrectly.

126GB is the End value for the new userdata partition. Since the starting point for userdata is 10.9GB, the new size would be 126G - 10.9G = 115G.

Check the results:

Note the end of the last partition in the above list, 10.9GB, this number will be used as the start of the new userdata partition, followed by the end of the partition. Let say that we want to make an approx 40GB userdata partition using the following command:

Between userdata and 10.9GB are 3 spaces, one of them replace the partition type flag, it is important to use 3 spaces at this step.

Run print again to see the results.

Exit the parted tool finally.

Now userdata resizing is done. Restart your tablet to apply changes.

Here comes a fun thing:

Android stores your data inside the userdata partition. When you reset your Android device to its factory default settings, your data will be erased. This is because factory reset is equal to format the userdata partition using ext4 filesystem. However, if you delete the userdata partition and recreate it without formating, your data will be saved after a reboot. Probably because Android can fix this problem automatically.

Assign new EFI partition

Follow this chapter to assign EFI partition.

Install new system

Enter fastboot mode and repeat the previous steps.

We'll use the free space for our Ubuntu installtion:

The output will look like this:

Exit the parted tool and reboot once again.

Now we need to check which slot Android is installed.

NOTE: The concept of "slot" probably unfamiliar for you, since it was included in Android 10 as a feature, which called "Dynamic Partitions". Dynamic partitions are a userspace partitioning system for Android. About its further infomations, located here.

You can check this infomation via fastboot . Command is listed below:

Force select Slot A as active slot:

Now, we are ready to flash the system image. But before we start, we need to disable Android Verified Boot (AVB) feature, otherwise it will prevent booting Ubuntu system.

AVB is implementation of verified boot process, current version (since Android 8 Oreo) is called AVB 2.0. Verified boot is a process of assuring the end user of the integrity of the software running on a device. It typically starts with a read-only portion of the device firmware which loads code and executes it only after cryptographically verifying that the code is authentic. It also helps in implementing rollback protection.

More information and technical details, located here.

Flash the vbmeta with vbmeta_disabled.img to disable this feature:

Then, flash rootfs images:

Chrooting new system

NOTE: These steps can be done on a regular Android system, but you need to get your device ROOTED. Either Magisk or KernelSU is OK.

To finish installing our system, we need to use chroot container to continue our setup.

According to Wikipedia and Arch Wiki, a chroot is an operation that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and their children. A program that is run in such a modified environment cannot access files and commands outside that environmental directory tree. This modified environment is called a chroot jail.

Download Orangefox or TWRP recovery first: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gCNtoDMNCAmMR61xegvCC3mxv28gMJbi/view?usp=drive_link

Now, let's boot recovery image temporally:

Once the recovery is booted, you are ready to setup a new chroot container. Go to "Advanced" tab, tap "Terminal" to enter terminal, and you are ready to go.

Prepare new root location

The chroot target should be a directory which contains a file system hierarchy.

In Android recovery, this directory would be /mnt. However, on Android, the /mnt directory is occupied by other several important directories, so you'll need to create another empty folder for chrooting.

Run lsblk and note the partition layout of your installation. It will be usually something like /dev/sdXY.

Mount the file system:

If you have an EFI system partition and need to make changes in it (e.g. updating the vmlinuz or initramfs images):

Then, continue on your recovery ( or Android ) session.

Usage

First, let's mount the temporary API Filesystems:

Warning: When using --rbind, some subdirectories of dev/ and sys/ will not be unmountable. Attempting to unmount with umount -l in this situation will break your session, requiring a reboot. If possible, use -o bind instead.

Next, to change root into /path/to/new/root using default sh shell:

Then, we need to fix the permission issues to get chroot fully working under Android or Android recovery:

Simply remount root filesystem:

Finally, chroot into your system:

Since this method require UEFI firmware to boot your system, you need to compile the UEFI firmware for your tablet. Follow this guide to do so.

If you have compiled UEFI firmware, you still need to install a bootloader ( e.g. GRUB ) to load the kernel and start the system. On your chroot container, enter this command to install bootloader:

sudo apt install grub-efi grub2-common efibootmgr

Then, type exit to exit chroot, and type reboot bootloader to reboot your tablet.

Now, flash your UEFI firmware and reboot your tablet:

Ensure that the paths and commands are correctly adjusted to fit your system configuration. Once the bootloader installation is complete, verify that the UEFI firmware and bootloader are functioning by rebooting the device and selecting the appropriate boot option from the UEFI menu. This will confirm a successful setup and enable your tablet to boot into the new system environment.

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