Android 8.1 flash on Hikey960

Products Support HiKey 960
#1

Dear all,
Does anybody know how to flash AOSP 8.1 image to Hikey 960?
I followed the install guide on 96 board and AOSP official website, downloaded AOSP 8.1 image from Hikey 960 image snapshot, flashed with ./install-all.sh command and the fastboot indicates me all images are successfully downloaded, however, I could not boot Android 8.1 totally.
I can flash Android P and event Q to Hikey 960 and can boot correctly into Android launcher, but with Android 8.1, I failed everytime.
Would someone please tell me what to be especially take care of when flashing Android 8.1 image to Hikey960, thanks a lot.

Thanks.
#2

Can you indicate where you got the image from and how you found them? I wasn’t aware of any docs pointing to 8.1 images.

#3

Thanks for reply
I downloaded the AOSP image from Linaro Snapshots in which the snap shot made before April 2018 are image of Android 8，while after s are Android 9.
I flashed one of the snapshot image eg. built on 19th March 2018 with the download link below
https://snapshots.linaro.org/96boards/hikey960/linaro/aosp-master/446/ , but could not boot

#4

Firstly we should probably be clear that these are AOSP snapshots, they are not Android 8 and are not Android 9. They are the AOSP master branch and are generally the publicly available code targeting the forthcoming Android release (obviously they are impacted by the occasional big jump when code Google has developed in private lands in the tree). In particular they are never Android 8.1 since that is a maintenance branch forked that was forked from the development tree around the point 8.0 is released.

It is also the case that being a development branch the snapshots do not always work… perhaps you have just picked a date where the tree was broken.

If you are doing this kind of archaeology you might find some clues about known working dates from https://github.com/96boards/aosp-known-good-manifests .

#5

Thanks a lot. Great help.

#6

How recently did you buy your 960? If it’s very new, it will require a much newer kernel than April due to hardware changes made since then.

#7

Yes, I bought this 960 this Jan. so do you mean there is no suitable kernel packaged with AOSP 8.X in image snapshot list ?
Thanks

#8

Or is it possible to build boot.img out of Android kernel source and flash together with system.img build from Android 8.1 ? Have someone tried this ?

#9

That is what I mean. There will be no 8.1-ish kernel that will boot your board. The kernel is open source though, so if you are intent on doing this, you could work out a compatible kernel that would boot an 8.1, but I’m not aware of anyone doing this. There isn’t really anything to gain from it. Why not just run a recent build?

#10

Many thanks.
I have a Android 8.1 compatibility test with our own product on Hikey 960.
Thanks, I will suggest my manager trying on other EVB and also trying Android P or Q compatibility test with 960.
Thanks again.