Redmi Note 8T (Ginkgo) stuck in fastboot mode after eOS 2.1 update (from 1.21)

@aibd I’m not sure how to “dirty flash recovery”. I have tried (standard…clean?) flashing and booting from both TWRP and the /e/ recovery and just end up back at the fastboot screen. I would prefer to roll back if possible. For now.

@Xxpsilon is this guide going to see me through going via your route?
https://xiaomiui.net/how-to-flash-fastboot-rom-on-xiaomi-9902/

Once again, thank you so much for your help both of you!

This is one of several possibilities.

I prefer flashing via flash_all.bat (unzip the downloaded .zip first)

Yes, this phone has been a bit unlucky with respect to /e/. First we had broken builds for maybe half a year and hence were locked out of security updates, then one update sent Bliss Launcher into a crash loop for a month or two for me, making it temporarily unusable, and now this 2.0 update.

I think the issue is just that the development team doesn’t have a phone of this model to test on. I guess community devices will get more stable as the project grows.

I went back to 1.21 for now by first flashing the old recovery and then the old version, plus a few other things. This allowed me to keep all data. I detailed the process in this post. Backups are still highly recommended of course.

I did the flashing from Linux (Mint) since it’s way too annoying to deal with Windows and trying to get it to recognize drivers and such. If you run into too much trouble on Windows, a live version of your favorite Linux distribution that you can boot from a USB thumbdrive would probably suffice.

Yes, I agree with your assessment.


/e/ supports around 250 devices. That is enormous and very commendable. But /e/ has far too little man power to offer reliable bug-fixing and generally reliable support. Of course, there are numerous devices that work very well, but - any update without prior data backup is always an increased risk.

Hey, thank you for this. I tried flashing the /e/ 1.21 recovery, rebooted and returned to fastboot. I used fastboot erase cache and tried again, still nothing. Have I gone wrong somewhere?

  • At this point, I may have extracted and flashed boot.img from the /e/ 1.21 image, but maybe that’s not necessary

@nanabanaman what do you mean here?

Thanks again

You can’t lose anything more than your data, so it’s worth a try.

I would install via fastboot (images from V1.21)

boot.img
vbmeta.img
recovery.img

Erm…what are the commands to do that? (Sorry I need the basics)

fastboot devices
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash vbmeta vbmeta.img
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
fastboot reboot

OK, that’s what I’d tried and it didn’t work. So, does this mean my only option is to completely reinstall the Android 11 firmware?

Thank you all once again @Xxpsilon @aibd & @nanabanaman :pray: very much appreciated

Yes, because all my other rescue attempts (like yours) have failed. By the way: crDroid 10.5 with MinMicroG works perfectly on my “willow”.

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I got this error message after running the .bat file:
fastboot getvar product 2>&1 | findstr /r /c:"^product: *willow" || echo Missmatching image and device

Have I missed a step somewhere?

In that step, I took boot.img from the ZIP file with the installation image that is offered for download and flashed the boot.img file manually using fastboot flash boot ./boot.img because I couldn’t boot into the /e/ recovery to flash the entire zip file using adb sideload since the 1.21 recovery had been replaced with the possibly broken 2.0 /e/ recovery. But I don’t think what I did there contributed anything to solving the issue, I was just trying random things at that point, in fact, it may have done more harm than good.

As I described, I ultimately got it working by first flashing the /e/ recovery for version 1.21 and after that I was able to get into recovery by doing fastboot reboot recovery. Once I was in recovery, I could see the error message about the cache partition.

Willow / ginkgo

My memory is that Lineage / /e/OS managed to “combine” the two devices but Xiaomi released them as individual models.

Retail Branding,Marketing Name,Device,Model
Redmi,Redmi Note 8T,willow,Redmi Note 8T
Xiaomi,Redmi Note 8,ginkgo,Redmi Note 8

If you let a .bat file work for you, you cannot overlook any steps because you cannot intervene directly in the process.

Missmatching image and device strongly suggests that you do not have a Redmi Note 8T (willow) in operation, but a Redmi Note 8 (gingko).

To check, please enter in fastboot mode:

fastboot devices #Check whether the device is detected and recognized by the computer

fastboot getvar product #get product name

What is the response?

That’s exactly how it is.

That’s why there are two stock firmware versions,

but still only one CustomROM version

/e/OS R builds to be stopped
With Google stopping security patches and LOS also dropping support for A11 …

As much as I like /e/ OS, with what happened recently I would like to use another ROM.

… but again the system only booted into fastboot mode .

Hey,

a belated thank you to everyone who helped me with this. I lost my data and moved to crDroid in the end (via the official Redmi ROM as advised above). So, I was able to get my phone working again for my trip - big, BIG thanks!

Has anyone been able to get /e/ 2.1 working on the Gingko/Willow yet?

Cheers