Sony Xperia XA2 (2020)
Installing LineageOS 18.1

Currently (2021-06-30), Selen has LineageOS 17.1. It needs to get upgraded to 18.1, which has been out for several months. The update nanny checks periodically (every few days) and notifies you when a new minor revision comes out, or you can launch it from Settings-System-Advanced-Updater (all items are at the bottom of their containers).

According to the Info link, the updater cannot install this version because it can't do major version upgrades. See the Pioneer upgrade page for instructions. Jimc's notes (with supplements) on the procedure:

• LineageOS-18.1 is based on Android-11. (17,1 from Android-10.)

• This procedure is similar (but not identical) to installing LOS for the first time. The main difference is, assuming you have the old version of Google Apps installed already, you don't wipe data.

• I plan to install an instance of LOS that is two to three weeks back version, then immediately update it to the current version, using the updater, to learn and gain confidence in the procedure. Then I can install ongoing minor updates.

• Download the LOS install package. to your desktop machine. (See the link on that page for how to check the signature.) You will need …nightly-pioneer-signed.zip (about 620Mb, varies from week to week). As this is written, the latest version is dated 2021-06-24 and I'm downloading 2021-06-10. It's all going into jacinth:/s1/selen-los-18.1. …recovery-pioneer.img (about 22Mb) is available and may be needed for some screwup recovery, but I did the whole upgrade without using it.

• For verifying the zip file (but not the recovery image), the linked-to page gives these instructions:
  git clone https://github.com/LineageOS/update_verifier
  cd update_verifier
  pip3 install -r requirements.txt
  python3 update_verifier.py lineageos_pubkey /path/to/zip

  Jacinth lacked pip and its friends. With OpenSuSE Tumbleseed,we have python38, and so should install python38-pip. Once installed, the command pip3 (among other variations) can be used to install requirements.

  The zip file was verified successfully.

• Now we need Google Apps for arm64 (not plain arm), the nano collection. (It does not include e.g. Google Maps, which you can install/update later from the app store.) The linked-to collection, size about 185Mb, has no variants differentiated by size, and I'm assuming this is the right one. Almost certainly OK, because the one I got from Open GApps for LOS-17.1 is the same size. (No checksum is posted.)

• Checking and initting ADB:

  • Yes, Jacinth has adb installed and working.
  • On Selen, Android Debugging and Rooted Debugging are both on.
  • Connect the USB (3.0) type A to type C cable from Jacinth's USB-2.0 hub to Selen.
  • On Jacinth execute adb devices. On Selen confirm ADB access. Jacinth's adb prints XXXXXXX device (with Selen's unique identifier).
  • The wiki says to turn on System-Developer Options-Root Access Options-ADB Only. But I don't have that item. Before the upgrade, Selen has LOS 17.1 and is not rooted.
  • On Jacinth, do adb root. Confirm on Selen. No error messages; I'm pretty sure Selen's adbd was successfully restarted su'd to root.

• On Jacinth: adb reboot sideload
  What it did: 10sec black, relock bootloader (ignore it), Sony splash screen, LOS Recovery (shows ADB Sideload in red). You don't have to click it; the message at the bottom of the screen says to…

• On Jacinth, adb sideload ./lineage-18.1-20210610-nightly-pioneer-signed.zip It downloads the package very fast, then verifies it (slow), Progress report only goes up to 47%. Installing. Finished after 190sec.

• Do Not accept the suggested action Reboot System Now. You still need to sideload Google Apps. Follow these steps:

  • Click on Advanced.
  • Click on Reboot to Recovery. It goes through the splash screens detailed above ending with LOS Recovery.
  • Click on Apply Update (not Reboot System Now).
  • Click on Apply from ADB. Our active slot is currently A.
  • Repeat from the previous step (like the note at the bottom of the screen says, on the host do adb sideload $file.zip).
  • Like on the upgrade to 17.1, it says Signature verification failed; install anyway? This time I'm going to tell it yes. Cross fingers. We're still in slot A. On LOS-17.1 I switched over to TWRP Recovery, installed GApps, and the signature was verified, but associated thrashing made a mess that I didn't want to repeat. Experience testing the Google Apps was positive, although a truly paranoid sysop would not touch a package whose signature could not be verified.
  • The installer installed successfully, so it says.
  • Hit the left arrow at the upper left corner, and finally, click on Reboot System Now.

• First boot of the new image: 34:10. Black for 5sec, unlock bootloader, Sony, 34:44 LOS boot animation to 35:56 (72sec), it's alive!

Checkout and Cleanup

• Let it go through autonomous initialization steps. Then attend to immediate notifications:

  • Discover Trust. I already read it; dismiss.
  • Unsupported Samsung SD card. Looks like it's complaining about the ext4 filesystem on it. Tap to Windows-ize it. Fortunately I was never able to make it useful, so it's OK to trash it.

• Updating apps for LOS 18.1 (Android 11 Radish).

  • From support.google.com: Open the Play Store (yuck) app. Click the profile icon (picture of you) at the upper right. Hit Manage Apps. It checks inventory. 2 updates available. Click on See Details and review them.
  • Android Accessibility: some UI improvements for the screen reader. Braille keyboards for Spanish and Arabic. Etc.
  • Huge Digital Clock: An ongoing bugfix campaign.
  • Surprising, it didn't want to update anything else for Android-11. But earlier this year there was a big push to get developers to update pro-actively for Android-11, and I guess they all compiled (or all the devs whose apps I use).

• Before I do a lot of work checking out stuff, I'm going to run the updater and install the latest minor version. Remember that I did the major upgrade with a slightly back-version instance. Launch updater. Clock on Download for the version you want. Download is taking a long time to start, but eventually got to 1%. Speed of arthritic snail. Image size is 653Mb. Confirmed (with tcpdump) that it's downloading over Wi-Fi, not cellular data. 86kB/sec (with 28% downloaded), predicted total 7593sec, 2.1hr. I didn't get a precise completion time but elapsed time was about 2 hours. In the future, when I'm going to update I'll start the download at bedtime. (A later minor update took only about 3min to download.)

Checking the Apps

Well, given how slow the download is going, I'm going to check out user apps now. These are everything in the app drawer. (There are core apps that are not launchable by the user, which are not going to get tested.) 82 launchable apps + 15 infrastructure, 97 total. Legend of decorations:

• (AO) = AOSP app, recognized by an app name of com.google…
• (LO) = LineageOS app, recognized by org.lineageos…
• A few apps are decorated with their app names, to distinguish them from same-named AO or LO apps.

• aCalendar -- Works well. Need to decide which calendar app I'm really going to settle on.
• AndFTP -- Works.
• Andoku 3 -- Works. (Game.)
• AudioFX (LO) -- Not tested.
• Barcode Scanner -- Works, reads barcode, but there's a notice that it's for a back-version API. Replaced by QRbot (q.v.)
• Bible Offline -- Works.
• Bitwarden -- Works, including filling login boxes for apps.
• Blue Monitor (Bluetooth) -- Claims to be working but could not find Xena.
• Browser (LO jelly) -- Not tested, don't add a profile and browser cache for an app I'm not going to use.
• Calculator (AO) -- Works (but I like RealCalc a lot better)
• CalDAV-Setup -- With ownCloud web GUI, I created a calendar event. Not yet visible on Selen. Hit sync, event appears. Edited the event on Selen. (Invisibly auto synced.) Refreshed the web page: the change is visible. This calendar provider is working.
• Calendar (orange month page) (com.simplemobiletools.calendar.pro) -- Works. (Uninstalled, using aCalendar.)
• Calendar (30 with 2 red dots) (LO etar) -- Not bad, but I like aCalendar better.
• Calendar Pruning (hand on a calendar page) -- Works.
• Camera (LO snap) -- Works, a cursory run-through suggests that it's pretty complete, but I'm used to OpenCamera.
• CardDAV-Setup -- See CalDAV Setup for an analogous test. In this one I looked at my test contact, then altered it on the ownCloud web GUI. My contact app doesn't have a sync menu item, so I used Settings-Accounts-CardDAV-Sync-Sync Now (in traffic light). The alteration is seen on Selen. Now editing it on Selen, which did not trigger syncing, so I needed to get back in Settings and Sync Now. The change is propagated to ownCloud, although Home (for an e-mail address) on Selen ends up as Internet on ownCloud.
• Clock (AO) -- Works. Probably its most useful aspects are the Timer (down counter) and the Stopwatch (up counter).
• Contacts (multiple smilies) (AO) -- Works. It also has a page to configure your profile on Gmail, which I didn't do, and to post emergency information.
• Contacts (orange) (com.simplemobiletools.contacts.pro) -- Works. (Doesn't have profile and emergency setting pages.) (Uninstalled.)
• Dialer (com.simplemobiletools.dialer) -- Works. (Uninstalled, using Phone(AO).)
• DNS Forwarder -- Requires root, could not test.
• Domoticz -- Works.
• Droid Examiner -- Works, but would work better on a rooted device.
• Google Earth --Works.
• Files (AO) -- Works, simple in features.
• Firefox -- Works.
• FM Radio (com.caf.fmradio) -- Not tested yet. Requires wired headphones or earbuds to be an FM antenna.
• Gallery (AO) -- Works.
• Google (Assistant) -- 580Mb, biggest app, twice the size of Firefox. Not a chance that I'll even start this program.
• Google Pay (GA) -- Not yet tested.
• GPS Status -- Works (with GPS fixup).
• Hacker's Keyboard -- Works.
• Huge Digital Clock -- Works.
• IP Webcam -- Works. NiM Webserver is using port 8080, got to give a different port to IP Webcam.
• iRobot (Roomba) -- Works.
• Isotope Browser (from IAEA) -- Works.
• Jog Tracker -- Works (with GPS fixup).
• Jota+ (editor) -- Works.
• JuiceSSH -- Works.
• Kindle (Amazon) -- Works.
• Kitchen Timer -- Works.
• LTE Discovery -- Works but really needs root.
• Google Maps (GA) -- Works, better with GPS fixup. (This is not in the nano collection of Google Apps.)
• Messaging (AO) -- works.
• Music (LO eleven) -- Works, but it either doesn't recognize Ogg Vorbis tracks or couldn't find the onboard music.
• MyChart -- Works (video not tested).
• Network Tools (by HE) -- Works. Ping is OK. DNS gets a network error. This is a knwon feature.
• NiM Webserver -- Works.
• OI Safe -- Works. See below; I'm using Bitwarden and I need to get rid of this safely.
• Open Camera -- Works.
• OpenVPN for Android -- Cannot access the Android Keychain Certificates… because of a firmware upgrade… I re-selected the certs. However, it cannot read the keychain at all!
• ownCloud -- Works: I uploaded a file and it arrived.
• Periodic Table -- Works
• Phone (AO dialer) -- Works.
• Pixlr (photo editor) -- Not tested yet.
• Play Store -- Not on the official app list! But it's launchable. Its purpose is to find and install new apps and to update existing apps.
• QRbot (by TeaCapps) -- New app replacing Barcode Scanner. Works.
• RealCalc -- Works.
• Recorder (LO) (audio and video) -- Not tested.
• Ring (security cameras) -- Works.
• Sd Card Scanner Pro (sdcard.scanner.free.vn) -- I think this is useless, for scanning internal storage (for what?)
• Sensors -- Works.
• Settings -- Works.
• ShakeAlert -- Requires an earthquake to test this.
• SimpleSSHD -- Works.
• Sky Map (com.google.android.stardroid) -- Donated by Google. Works.
• Smart Time -- Works (with GPS fixup).
• Solitaire Classic -- Works.
• Sound Analyser -- Works.
• strongSwan (IPSec VPN) -- Can't get user certificate, same problem as with OpenVPN For Android.
• Sudokyuu -- Works.
• Survival Manual -- Works.
• Tasks -- Works
• TCC (Total Comfort Connect, Honeywell thermostats) -- Works.
• Total Commander (file manager) -- Works. I didn't test every feature, but it could show directories, hand off a file to an external app (editor), and delete a file.
• Visual Voicemail (by T-Mobile) -- Successfully synced (I currently have no voicemail).
• VLC -- Works.
• Voice Search (goes with Google Assistant) -- Not waking sleeping dragons, not tested.
• Whole Foods app -- Works.
• WiFi Analyzer -- Works.
• X509 Certificate Viewer -- (1) Could not read the keystore. (2) Hung when trying to view a PKCS#12 (.p12) file.
• Xabber (XMPP client) -- Works, but the account is screwed up.
• Zoom (video chat) -- Not tested.

To-do list for the apps:

• Barcode Scanner -- Find one with an up-to-date API. I got QRbot by TeaCapps. It can generate QR codes; can send and receive vCards.
• Blue Monitor -- Put some more work into Bluetooth comms with Xena.
• Calendar, Contacts, Dialer -- I have the LO and SimpleMobileTools versions of all these apps and also aCalendar by Tapir Labs. I need to prune this family. [Done]
• OI Safe -- Toss (safely); we've switched to Bitwarden now. [Done]
• OpenVPN for Android -- Can't read the Android Keychain. StrongSwan has the same problem. Fixed: in the upgrade the keychain was wiped, and the apps choke on an empty keychain.
• Phone Dialer -- I'm having trouble with cellular data, very low signal. Not the app's fault.
• Sd Card Scanner Pro -- Check if this is actually useful, toss if not. [Done]
• X509 Certificate Viewer -- Is this working, or useful? Toss if not. [Done]

GPS Problems Fixed

After the upgrade to Android-10 (LOS-17.1) and continuing into the upgrade to Android-11 (LOS-18.1), my various GPS apps have stopped working, excepting Google Maps (which may be using cell tower tricks).

Conclusion first: There's nothing wrong with the GPS apps or with the Location service component that handles GPS. Probably starting with Android-10, the GPS driver has become more picky about signal strength, and when signals are poor, as on the ground floor of a house, the GPS lock drops out or is never established. When the ionospheric gods smile on us, GPS works just fine.

Here's an intervention that was helpful for Jimc. GPS not working with Android 10 (on Reddit), OP davalf, about 2020-02-xx. All his apps can't get a GPS lock. None of the usual interventions helped. So there's apparently an app called GPS Locker in the Play Store. Disable mobile data, run the app, then reenable mobile data. (Jimc got a good result without monkeying with mobile data.) But it keeps GPS running, hence eats battery.

I tried gps locker by SilentLexx UA (ad supported, $1.99 to lose the ads). A competitor, which I didn't try, is GPS Connected by Diogo Ferreria. It has a nice display of the signal strength per satellite. By holding open the connection to Location Service, it causes that service to maintain state and therefore to quickly :-) get back a lost GPS lock, assuming enough signal.

Numerous forum posters report interventions whose major component seems to be clearing data (cache included) of the Location service, now called Fused Location in Android-11. But GPS doesn't stay fixed. This is the best of these posts:

On XDA-Developers, OP gigaboss (2019-09-28) says, ever since I updated my phone [to Android-10] the GPS is not working… Respondent noobly_dangers had a similar issue but fixed it like this: Go to Settings-Apps&Notifications-See all. Click the traffic light (3 dots) in the upper right corner, tell it to show system apps. Click on Location Services. [It's Fused Location in Android-11.] Force stop, and clear cache and storage for this app. Reboot the phone. He thinks cached Android-9 data was messing it up.

Jimc tried this in LOS-18.1 (Android-11): it revived GPS and lasted about 14 hours, just in time for me to try to run my Jog Tracker app and fail. On the first try after you clear data, it will take about 30sec to the first fix because it has to download the ephemeris.

Here's another intervention: Samsung Support: What to do when GPS is hosed (2020-11-03) (title paraphrased). Among many interventions not relevent to this problem, this one looked useful: Settings-Location-App Permissions. Select each wanted app and set it to Allow All The Time.

Jimc's experience with this fix in Android-11: Use Location should be on. Click on App Access to Location for a list of all of them; there's also a list of recent culprits. Some including Google Maps have permission to use location at all times. Others have permission only when using the app. Click on an app. You can downgrade permissions, but can't upgrade them. Jimc found that fiddling with permissions did not bring GPS Status back to life.

Installing the Minor Update

Open Settings-System-Advanced-Updater. Hit refresh if nothing is shown. Pick a version, normally the latest one, and hit Download. The first time I tried this it was glacial, taking 2hr, but the next version came in much faster, 3min. The downloaded instance is now marked Install. Click the button. Confirm doing the update. It will do the installation in the background. There's a progress bar on the settings page, plus a notification (if you close the settings app). Installation took about 7min; it wants to reboot. It took about 150sec to reboot (which is usual; it's recompiling Java bytecode). There's a post-install phase when the phone finishes rebooting, 30 to 60sec, all in the background; there's a notification for it. Total elapsed time was about 10min. Remember to delete the downloaded file after installation; the updater's item will have a Delete button.