First off, I am only doing a manual install because the easy installer has a known bug (https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/backlog/-/issues/7099) so it is unable to install even though I downgraded to android 11 Oxygen OS.
I followed it to the part of flashing additional partitions. It says that “this platform requires additional partitions to be flashed for recovery to work properly” and says there should be two image files (“dtbo.img” and “vbmeta.img”)
After downloading the images and recovery img and build for the latest stable version (R 1.19.1 20240110372391) …the recovery img only contains 1 image file so I am not sure what to flash to dtbo and vbmeta.
I do not want to brick my device but I’m trying to get it setup ASAP before my work and school picks up later this week. Any ideas, insights, ??? Thanks for your time!
Pre-install instructions
In some cases slot b can be unpopulated or contain much older firmware than slot a, leading to various issues including a potential hard-brick. We can ensure none of that will happen by copying the contents of slot a to slot b. This step is NOT optional.
That explains it. Can I find android R instructions somewhere? Does that mean android R doesn’t require flashing dtbo and vbmeta?
The only thing that happened after sideloading was that there was no notification or anything to “Reboot system now”…just the screen in the uploaded photo.
Yes, it will no longer boot to recovery, but repeating the steps and flashing recovery again will get me back there.
I am on slot b now. I could follow instructions and copy b to a or a to b but my question then is: How may I ascertain which slot I should be on or does it not matter?
After reading through this more thoroughly, I am wondering if I should flash the stable Android 11 (R) builds and partitions and recovery and copy that or do a fresh MSM with android 11 and copy that.
So this points to the issue. You flashed Slot a (according to your recovery image) now you have Slot b.
… but …
… but the instructions include this wording !! (Of course I see you got no confirmation on the device.)
That would be the safest thing to do … it would be something of a guess what is actually on slot a and slot b right now (but you may be able to recover the situation, if you consider worst case is MSM).
Of course the other thing to consider is to use Android 13 (T) where you have the /e/OS instructions.
They are in the ROM and are required, but it is not required to flash them ahead of recovery.
So you can just download the script (the very same 2021-03-23 version) … perhaps read it to see what it intends to do … then sideload it, in the sequence explained in the instructions.