@aibd helped me through the tricky flashing of star2lte to a S9+ SM-G965F/DS. I am in the USA so remember these phones are not built for the USA, Samsung does not make firmware for the USA on this phone and from what we believe, the updates they have pushed to this model put a regional lock on the RMM to prenormal once the phone communicates back via the internet that it is outside its intended geographical location. I purchased 2 of these phones off of ebay, S9+ SM-G965F/DS because the /e/ store was out of stock and I previously had no issue flashing eOS (Android 10) to a brand new S9 SM-G960F/DS using ODIN (I did update this phone OTA to Android 8>9>10). The phones were brand new out of the box, never used. On the first S9+ I allowed it to update over the air to the latest Android 10 (Q) with a security patch of March 1, 2021 because in /e/'s directions to flash via Heimdall I mistakenly thought this was the Android build I needed to be on, Android 10 (Q) (it should be on Android 8 then upgrade to > Android 10 after the eOS (Android 8) flash). This was a mistake because Knox does not allow this phone to be flashed back to Android 9 (Pie) or Android 8 (Oreo) once updated to 10 (Q) (at least here when in USA due to Knox RMM getting set to “prenormal”, we think due to a regional lock once the phone communicated back to Samsung/Knox over web). The other issue, Knox sets the RMM to “prenormal” and it cant be made “normal”. What this does is allows us to go into developer mode with “OEM Unlocked” however it blocks all “non-official” ROMs/bianary as well as official ROMs/Binary lower than Andorid 10 (Q) and thus I was stuck on this phone. I could not flash eOS to it due to Knox/RMM: prenormal and I could not flash it back to Android 8 so this phone sits with the stock ROM. A company named ChimeraTool offers software to remove RMM prenormal but they don’t have the ability to do this on anything past BIT2 (can be identified in the CSG/PDA line, if the 5th character from the right is 2 or 1 in the PDA/CSC line their software will remove RMM prenormal, once Andoid 10(Q) was installed this character was a “F” not a “1” or “2” so it is stuck with the stock ROM.
On the second phone I did not connect it to the web during the initial setup, it was loaded with Android 8 (Oreo). I could not get OEM unlock to appear on this phone so after disabling auto OS update I followed THIS to trick the OEM unlock to show. It did finally show but the RMM was still “prenormal” (likely due to my ip/geolocation so Knox/RMM does this). Everything was set here, I was on Android 8, had OEM unlocked, debugging enabled, Media Transfer Protocal (MTP) chosen, but… RMM was still in “prenormal”. So I used the ChimeraTool (had to pay them) and it did indeed remove the RMM prenormal issue (again, be sure to read previously in this post to verify your binary will work for this feature). After this was done I decided to utilize the easy installer. Everything ran great up till it was suppose to flash TWRP to the boot loader. The easy installer just stopped so I unplugged the phone and connected it to another computer and flashed TWRP via ODIN using the method in THIS post. After flashing TWPR I connected the phone back to the computer where the easy installer was still paused, easy installer recognized it and continued from the same point where it paused previously. From here the easy installer continued and finished without any issues. The phone is now up and running with eOS (Android 8, Oreo).
In hindsight I should have just waited till the eStore had the phones back in stock and purchased from them. Lesson learned. I will no longer buy Samsung hardware, they are locking these things down too much. Hope this helps.
