Pre-Devember | Working Toward Moto E6 Ubuntu Touch

Community Blog
#1

Ok so I’ll just start this post early to get some eyes paying attention again, but I decided I’m going to do this one way or another.

Anyways, the Moto E6, UBPorts, and You

What is the point of porting UBP to the E6? Well, namely, you can go to the store (in the americas) right now, probably find this device, and its probably sickeningly inexpensive. It runs android 9, has some good features, and could easily be assembled into a roughly modern phone. Add a Qi charger, and a different screen maybe, and you’re good to go.

Feature list

A/B Partition Support
SD Storage and removeable battery
4c8t Armv8 a53 based chip, with OC!, pin compatible with moto G5 supposedly
GSI’s
Postmarket already running on someone’s device
universal moto hack for rooting
If I blow one up I can buy 2 more for the same price, more than likely

Why this device? / What are you after

Plain and simple? I want a backup phone I can flash with an app in 20 seconds and not give a fuck about the stock rom at all. I think the e6 is very capable, and is exactly the kind of phone that needs ubports. It meets installation candidate status in my books just because of specs vs price. Though its based off of hardware from 7.1, having AB and some other nicities (GSI’s) will help A LOT.

I have somehow ended up with three of these fucking things, so pray I DON’T need to buy more. ATM it looks like a security update actually ruined the phone that I have opened, so I’ll have to get the other one opened up so I can root it and test stuff.

more to come. I’m very likely to put time into this every day as I need shit to do.

#2

Things Needed Pre-Project

Currently I am working on building a new office space for myself. This space also doubles as the storage room for the house, so I’m tackling a few things at once here.

After my space is somewhat tamed, I need a computer powerful enough to reliably work on this. ATM the only machines that I have that operate are 3rd gen and back thinkpads, some ppc stuff, an ultrasparc 3i box, and some servers that don’t want me to install anything to them. At the moment, I have a GPU bridge in the mail to hook up to my thinkpad X230T. I don’t know if I can just use an RX480 as a processor, but in the event theres a C compiler built to run on a GPU or something, I’m keeping that option open.

In the event I can get a server to cooperate with me, I’ll use one of them for building and testing, but atm my best option that I know how to set up is to take my G5’s, put them on the network, and have them run as crosscompilers with the X230T. I’ve done this before, though I remember it taking me a while to figure out. Meh.

Someone also offered me some mobos with some ram and a chip. I don’t know where thats at as of now, but I am waiting to hear more info. In the event I get something like X79 I’ll be ripping a 2690 out of the R620 and dropping it in there. I have a wanton for 12 cores in my desktop. It’ll just be too useful.

It was also pointed out to me that skylake chips are about to hit the 50 dollar and under mark used. My only thing with using skylake is I want a translated mobile chip so I can OC it out the wazoo.

After that, the only thing left is setting up a git source of some sort, whether hub or lab.

What am I doing now?

ATM I am doing a little research into a moto device exploit that came out a while ago. Its pretty much ubiquitous with all moto devices up to 2020, and allows you to bypass a lot of security checks to pop root. My registered E6 has gotten security updates, so it won’t let me root because of them, I think. I have an unupdated one thats unopened that I’ll try the basic unlock on, and if it doesn’t end up working I’ll be making an autounroot tool for the E6.

As my devices are Tracfone devices, theres no garuntee that I can actually hack anything with them, however, an XT2005DL is a XT2500DL, theres no magic here other than the tracfone symbol on the back.

I am also trying to tune my thinkpad a little bit. I doubt that there is quad rank ram, or X4 for that matter, but 2RX8 isn’t hard to find, and with some wiggle work I can have 32GB of ram. Bit of a pain in the ass though. However, its now fully loaded with 3X SSD’s (128GB MSATA, 128GB SATA cd slot in dock, 500GB internal slot) and I’m trimming out ho wI want things set up. ATM it just has PopOS, however I think I am going to install VOID and W10, as long as getting things working will not be a major pain.

Lastly, I am putting some effort on the side for some local note taking. Nothing crazy or anything, but I want devnotes saved somewhere. Just a though.

God damn spiro makes me sit in the bathroom half the day tho so ech

#3

Moto E6 - TCL A3

This is KILLING me right now. I looked at the e6 for my mom a while ago. I remember seeing a youtube video covering that these were the same devices. So, while it has motorola firmware, its a TCL made device. So, the motojack exploit can’t be done. I think thats what it was called, I don’t remember. Basically what you had to do to root the Z3 play. It had something to do with the chipset having an efuse that wouldn’t blow if certain arb parameters weren’t met and depending on what order things were done you could avoid incrementing anything and having an unflashable device.

At the time, because of this, for the z3 at least, this made flashing roms a pain in the ass. Now theres TWRP, and I want one of those devices again. Hell I want a V20 too but that’ll be some time. Theres plenty unboxed of each of these devices anyways so I’ll probably be fine lol.

Right Now

I am wrenching some server things. I want to get my stuff up and running and ready to go. A 2690v2 by itself is kinda meh. But a 2690 with a few G5’s, X5650’s, and potentially a GRID K2? Yeah that’ll do.

I am pretty tired rn via arthritis cause of the weather changing and having recently been sick off and on, so this is all coming along as I can get to it. I’m going to be ripping the server closet down here in a few minutes and setting it up properly (wiring, ventilation, etc) and potentially flashing OS’s. IDK what I’ll have running, I still have to decide.

More soon