Fastbootd and Android 11 Beta with DragonBoard 845c?

Products Support DragonBoard 845c
#1

Hi,

I need a dev board to test with fastbootd and Android 11 Beta. I am thinking about the 845c, but I want to make sure that both fastbootd is supported and that Android 11 Beta can be flashed using this method with the available Android 11 Beta GSIs from Google for arm64 devices.

I currently have an Intrinsyc HDK8150/Snapdragon 855 Mobile HDK and I emailed Intrinsyc support to see if I could use a GSI to flash Android 11. I’ve tried multiple times and failed and their support didn’t think it was possible at this time. They also said fastbootd was not supported :frowning:

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks for reading,

John

#2

AFAIU, the missing part is the fastbootd HAL which is not implemented for 845, not sure a generic one exists. But It’s certainly do-able.

Never tested GSI image, but it is worth to try, you can simply flash the GSI system partition via ‘normal’ fastboot.

#3

Thank you for your response!

From Moving Fastboot to Userspace:

To support fastbootd, the bootloader must implement a new boot control block (BCB) command of boot-fastboot.

Is there access to the bootloader to make this change on the 845c? I know Intrinsyc does not give users access to the bootloader.

#4

the second stage bootloader source code is open source and publicly available.

for DB845c, we release our own version of the ‘bootloader’. see “ABL” source code link here: http://releases.linaro.org/96boards/dragonboard845c/linaro/rescue/20.02/

the problem you will face is that the abl binary must be signed , otherwise it won’t be loaded by the first stage bootloader (XBL), which we can’t change (source code is not open).

We have the QCOM tools to sign the ABL binary that we build, but these tools are private… If you can’t get access to the signing tools, then you won’t be able to build your own. If you find an ABL branch that is ‘supposed’ to work on 845c with the support that is missing, we could create test binaries for you, but it isn’t the most efficient way to work…