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Hello,
Could you add in the /e/OS install guide for Motorola devices that activating the option “OEM unlock” under developer options on the phone is required to unlock the bootloader.
More importantly, this option is greyed for new phones and it will only been ungreyed after many days of phone activity with a wifi connection active. (it is unclear how long the phone has to be operated that way before the option is ungreyed, sources says it’s 72hours, others says it up to 1 week).
This information is not provided on the Motorola website page for unlocking the bootloader (Login| Motorola Support US) and result in many users ending up with a void warranty (when Motorola generate the unique key for unlocking) and still having to wait many days before being able to effectively unlock the bootloader.
Thanks,
Some hours ago I just installed /e/OS on a moto g84 following the installation instructions
This is the fifth device where I installed /e/OS and thanks to my experience with the previous devices I was able to do it without big problems. But there is always some confusion on how to do it correctly as some of the installation instruction steps are a bit unclear.
Here are my suggestions to improve the install description.
Section “Requirements”
- The sentence “Make sure that your model is listed in the Smartphone Selector…” should be moved on top of the list because if the device model is not supported all following steps are obsolete.
- The sentence “Enable USB debugging…” should be moved to section “Unlocking the bootloader” because it is not an actual requirement that has to be checked before starting the installation but it is one of the steps to do while the installation.
Instead there should be a note that some steps (enabling “OEM unlock”) might take some time (as mentioned by @nablo). - Additonally it should be mentioned in this section that unlocking the bootloader will require a Motorola account.
Section “Unlocking the bootloader”
- To unlock the bootloader the user has to go to the Motorola Bootloader Unlock website and follow the instructions there. The link is provided in step 5.
All previous steps of that section are redundant and it makes no sense to do them before going to the motorola website. - Step 6 concerning “re-enabling USB debugging” is a bit short: After the reset I had to go through the whole initialisation setup process of the stock rom again and then re-enable the developer mode and there then the USB debugging.
Section “Flashing additional partitions”
Currently (for /e/OS 3.1.1-a15) the recovery image is not a zip file but a single img file. Therefore the additional partitions are actually missing and have to be downloaded from the LineageOS website as mentioned: “users can try and download them from the LineageOS wiki install page specific to this device and OS build”.
- First problem: Where to find the builds?
On the bottom of the installation description I found a link to “install LineageOS on bangkk”. And there in the fourth step there is the link - Second problem: How to find out which builds are the correct ones?
LineageOS version numbering differs from official Android and /e/OS version numbers.
I had to go to the release notes to find out that /e/OS 3.1.1-a15 uses the latest changes of LineageOS 22.2 until 2025-07-14 (which was visible in the linked list of the changes). Unfortunately I found no builds corresponding to that date and therefore tried the latest ones of october (so far it seems to work).
My recommendation is to always bundle the additionally required partitions to a recovery image zip! At least the links to the LineageOS download page and a explanation of the relation of the version numbers should be added to the description.
Confusion about switching device on/off and connecting it to the PC
Most installation steps can be done one after the another and there is no need to switch the device off or disconnect it between. But there are many instructions where the user is advised to proceed “With device powered off”. That’s confusing because it can be interpreted that the device has to be switched off before. I would recommend to remove these corresponding sentences or change them in a way to clarify that this has only be done if the device is powered off at the moment.
Same for the sentence “Connect your device to the PC via USB”: This request makes only sense when the device isn’t already connected to the PC. It suggests that the device has to be disconnected before.
Additionally it is often easier to use adb reboot bootloader instead of using the Volume-Down + Power to get into the “Recovery mode” - especially when the previous steps with fastboot or adb were already done on the command line of the PC.
I can no longer download the vendor_boot.img and dtbo.img files for Lineageos 22.2 because the files are not found. Is it okay to use the files from the 23.0 version, and if not, where can I find the older files?
If you follow the link I provided in my previous post you will find the lineageOS 22.2 files listed low down on the bottom. I don’t remember if these were exactly the files I used for installation.
I don’t know whether the files of version 23.0 are also ok.
As I already mentioned it would be great if all required images will be bundled into one zip instead of relying on the availabilitiy on other download sources. If the files are removed on the lineagOS site then it is probably not more possible to install /e/OS on the bangkk!
Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately, those files were just removed. Can anyone provide me with a copy?
That’s really strange: 3 hours ago I checked the availability and the files were there…
Concerning the copy of the files I will write you a PM.
Hello to the community, EOS Moto G84 5G users.
I just installed EOS 3.3-a15-2025121556761-community-bangkk.
I’m using Ubuntu 24.04 as my installation machine with the Android Debug Bridge platform-tools version 1.0.41.
Version 34.0.4-debian
Installed as /usr/lib/android-sdk/platform-tools/adb
Running on Linux 6.8.0-90-generic (x86_64).
An important detail for me is to always navigate to the folder containing the downloaded files, namely:
–» recovery-IMG-e-3.3-a15-20251213556761-community-bangkk
–» e-3.3-a15-20251213556761-community-bangkk.zip
The command: fastboot oem unlock only works on boot 7 days after obtaining the unique bootloader unlock key.
Many thanks to the e/os community. The smartphone seems to be working very well.
Hey everyone,
Just got through the install process on the motorola g84 5G. I had a few small challenges, so thought I’d write them up.
Getting unlocked bootloader:
-
I waited quite a while for the Unlock OEM option to become available. I probably waited 8 or 9 days, then I found this post where a “Senior Moto Agent” suggested you should complete all upgrades and log in with a google account. I’d already done most of the upgrades, but I logged in with my spam google account and lo and behold the OEM unlock option was available the next morning. Can’t be sure if that was just time, or if the google account makes all the difference, but thought it’s worth noting here.
-
When using the motorola website to get the unlock code, register with a real email address (or be very quick about the whole process). I used one of those 10min emails to register because I don’t really want any emails from motorola, but the process is they will email you the unlock code rather than display it in the browser, so you’ll need access to the email address for a while.
-
First attempts to unlock the bootloader failed. I didn’t capture the output from that, but..
-
After a bit more fiddling the output changed to:
(bootloader) Not allowed by current Virtual A/B state! (bootloader) Pls check: fastboot getvar snapshot-update-status (bootloader) Failed to erase userdata FAILED (remote: '') fastboot: error: Command failed -
Some searching suggested that this may be due to an unfinished update. Apparently the “Virtual A/B state” is a temporary partition that motorola use to snapshot the system and allow rollback when installing updates. I got around this by starting the phone into the OEM ROM/system and leaving it for 10mins or so. When I tried again it worked.
Sending the dtbo, vendor boot, and recovery files worked as per the install guide. However, after that I couldn’t load the OS directly. Initially I got this:
* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
adb: sideload connection failed: no devices/emulators found
adb: trying pre-KitKat sideload method...
adb: pre-KitKat sideload connection failed: no devices/emulators found
I thought the ROM .zip file might have an issue, so downloaded a fresh copy and got this:
adb: sideload connection failed: device unauthorized.
This adb server's $ADB_VENDOR_KEYS is not set
Try 'adb kill-server' if that seems wrong.
Otherwise check for a confirmation dialog on your device.
adb: trying pre-KitKat sideload method...
adb: pre-KitKat sideload connection failed: device unauthorized.
This adb server's $ADB_VENDOR_KEYS is not set
Try 'adb kill-server' if that seems wrong.
Otherwise check for a confirmation dialog on your device.
Turns out you have to restart the phone in between loading the initial files (dtbo, vendor boot, recovery) and attempting to load the OS. Once I restarted it and attempted to sideload the os, everything worked, and my heart rate went back to normal.
Hope that helps anyone in the future.