Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 (lavender) - LineageOS ROMs (2024)

Install LineageOS on lavender

Basic requirements

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Important: Please read through the instructions at least once before actually following them, so as to avoid any problems due to any missed steps!

  1. Make sure your computer has adb and fastboot. Setup instructions can be found here.
  2. Enable USB debugging on your device.

Unlocking the bootloader

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Note: The steps below only need to be run once per device.

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Warning: Unlocking the bootloader will erase all data on your device! Before proceeding, ensure the data you would like to retain is backed up to your PC and/or your Google account, or equivalent. Please note that OEM backup solutions like Samsung and Motorola backup may not be accessible from LineageOS once installed.

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Tip: It is highly recommended to have the latest official MIUI weekly package installed on the device, before proceeding with unlock.

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Note: The following instructions require a machine running Windows 7 or newer.

  1. Create a Mi account on Xiaomi’s website.

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    Tip: A Mi account is required to unlock the bootloader. Beware that one account is only allowed to unlock one unique device every 30 days.

  2. Add a phone number to your Mi account.
  3. Insert a SIM into your phone.
  4. Enable developer options in Settings > About Phone by repeatedly tapping MIUI Version.
  5. Link the device to your Mi account in Settings > Additional settings > Developer options > Mi Unlock status.
  6. Download the Mi Unlock app (Windows is required to run the app).
  7. Run the Mi Unlock app and follow the instructions provided by the app.

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    Note: The app may tell you that you have to wait up to 30 days. If it does so, please wait the quoted amount of time before continuing to the next step.

  8. After device and Mi account are successfully verified, the bootloader should be unlocked.
  9. Since the device resets completely, you will need to re-enable USB debugging to continue.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

  1. Download a custom recovery – you can download Lineage Recovery. Simply download the latest recovery file, named something like lineage-17.1-20201116-recovery-lavender.img.

  2. Connect your device to your PC via USB.
  3. On the computer, open a command prompt (on Windows) or terminal (on Linux or macOS) window, and type:
    adb reboot bootloader

    You can also boot into fastboot mode via a key combination:

    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Down + Power. Keep holding both buttons until the word “FASTBOOT” appears on the screen, then release.
  4. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC finds it by typing:
    fastboot devices

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    Tip: If you see no permissions fastboot while on Linux or macOS, try running fastboot as root.

  5. Flash recovery onto your device:
    fastboot flash recovery <recovery_filename>.img

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    Tip: The file may not be named identically to what stands in this command, so adjust accordingly.

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    Tip: Some devices have buggy USB support while in bootloader mode, if you see fastboot hanging with no output when using commands such as fastboot getvar .. , fastboot boot ..., fastboot flash ... you may want to try a different USB port (preferably a USB Type-A 2.0 one) or a USB hub.

  6. Now reboot into recovery to verify the installation:
    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Up + Power. Keep holding both buttons until the “MI” logo appears on the screen, then release.

Installing LineageOS from recovery

  1. Download the LineageOS installation package that you would like to install or build the package yourself.
    • Optionally, download additional application packages such as Google Apps (use the arm64 architecture).
  2. If you are not in recovery, reboot into recovery:
    • With the device powered off, hold Volume Up + Power. Keep holding both buttons until the “MI” logo appears on the screen, then release.
  3. Now tap Factory Reset, then Format data / factory reset and continue with the formatting process. This will remove encryption and delete all files stored in the internal storage, as well as format your cache partition (if you have one).
  4. Return to the main menu.
  5. Sideload the LineageOS .zip package:
    • On the device, select “Apply Update”, then “Apply from ADB” to begin sideload.
    • On the host machine, sideload the package using: adb sideload filename.zip
  6. (Optionally): If you want to install any additional add-ons, repeat the sideload steps above for those packages in sequence.

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    Note: Additional add-ons aren’t signed with LineageOS’s official key, and therefore when they are sideloaded, Lineage Recovery will present a screen that says Signature verification failed, this is expected, please click Continue.

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    Note: If you want Google Apps on your device, you must follow this step before booting into LineageOS for the first time!

  7. Once you have installed everything successfully, click the back arrow in the top left of the screen, then “Reboot system now”.

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Warning: Depending on which recovery you use, you may be prompted to install additional apps and services.
We strongly advise you to opt out of installing these, as they may cause your device to bootloop,
as well as attempt to access or corrupt your data.

Update to a newer build of the same LineageOS version on lavender

Updating your device

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Note: LineageOS strongly recommends using our builtin Updater app. Alternative methods are supported, however.

Using the LineageOS Updater app

  1. Open Settings, navigate to “System”, then “Updater”.
  2. Click the Refresh Icon in the top right corner.
  3. Choose which update you’d like and press “Download”.
  4. When the download completes, click “Install”. Your device will reboot to recovery and install the update, then reboot to the updated installation.

From your PC via the push_update script (Linux/macOS only)

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb. Setup instructions can be found here.
  2. Enable USB debugging on your device. Additionally, open Settings, then “System”, then “Developer Options”, and then either check “Rooted Debugging” (LineageOS 17.1 or above) or select “Root Access Options”, then “ADB Only”.
  3. Run adb root
  4. Run wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LineageOS/android_packages_apps_Updater/lineage-16.0/push-update.sh && chmod +x push-update.sh
  5. Run: ./push-update.sh /path/to/zip
  6. Open Settings, navigate to “System”, then “Updater”. Then proceed to click “Install” on the newly pushed update to commence installation. Your device will reboot to recovery and install the update, then reboot to the updated installation.

Sideloading from Recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb. Setup instructions can be found here.
  2. Enable USB debugging on your device. Additionally, open Settings, then “System”, then “Developer Options”, and then either check “Rooted Debugging” (LineageOS 17.1 or above) or select “Root Access Options”, then “ADB Only”.
  3. Run: adb reboot sideload
  4. Run: adb sideload /path/to/zip

  5. Click the back arrow in the top left of the screen, then “Reboot system now”.

Upgrade to a higher version of LineageOS (e.g. lineage-15.1 -> lineage-16.0) on lavender

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Important: Please read through the instructions at least once completely before actually following them to avoid any problems because you missed something!

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Warning: These instructions only apply to version upgrades. If you wish to downgrade to an earlier version of LineageOS, follow your device’s instructions for installing LineageOS the first time.

Manually upgrading LineageOS

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Tip: In some cases, a newer LineageOS version may not install due to an outdated recovery.
Follow your device’s installation guide to see how you can update your recovery image.

The updater app does not support upgrades from one version of LineageOS to another, and will block installation to any update for a different version. Upgrading manually requires similar steps to installing LineageOS for the first time.

  1. Download the LineageOS install package that you’d like to install or build the package yourself.
    • Optionally, download additional application packages such as Google Apps (use the arm64 architecture).
  2. Make sure your computer has working adb. Setup instructions can be found here.
  3. Enable USB debugging on your device.
  4. Run adb reboot sideload.

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    Important: The device may reboot to a blank black screen, fear not, this is a known bug on some recoveries, proceed with the instructions.

  5. Run adb sideload /path/to/zip (inserting the path to your LineageOS package).
  6. (Optionally): If you want to install any additional add-ons, click Apply Update, then Apply from ADB, then adb sideload /path/to/zip those packages in sequence.

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    Note: If you previously had any Google Apps package installed on your device, you must install an updated package before the first boot of Android! If you did not have Google Apps installed, you must wipe the Data partition (or perform a factory reset) to install them.

  7. Once you have installed everything successfully, click the back arrow in the top left of the screen, then “Reboot system now”.

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Warning: Depending on which recovery you use, you may be prompted to install additional apps and services.
We strongly advise you to opt out of installing these, as they may cause your device to bootloop,
as well as attempt to access or corrupt your data.

Build for lavender

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Xiaomi Redmi Note 7, unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download
the required tools as well as the very latest source code for LineageOS (based on Google’s Android operating system) for your device. Using these, you can build both
a LineageOS installation zip and a LineageOS Recovery image and install them on your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the extremely uninitiated,
these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily.
Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through
just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :).
And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to
build a full operating system from code and install it to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation,
or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Xiaomi Redmi Note 7.
  • A relatively recent 64-bit computer (Linux, macOS, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 200 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache
    or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take. Aim for 16 GB RAM or more, enabling ZRAM can be helpful. Using SSDs results in considerably faster
    build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7.
  • A decent internet connection and reliable electricity. 🙂
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery.
    It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd, which stands for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, and that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

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Tip: If you are not accustomed to using Linux, this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free – just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as
VirtualBox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well).
Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version is recommended. There are plenty of instructions on setting up VirtualBox to run Ubuntu, so we’ll leave that to you.

Let’s begin!

Build LineageOS and LineageOS Recovery

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Note: You only need to do these steps once. If you have already prepared your build environment and downloaded the source code,
skip to Prepare the device-specific code

Install the platform-tools

If you haven’t previously installed adb and fastboot, you can download them from Google.
Extract it running:

unzip platform-tools-latest-linux.zip -d ~

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Tip: The file may not be named identically to what stands in this command, so adjust accordingly.

Now you have to add adb and fastboot to your PATH. Open ~/.profile and add the following:

# add Android SDK platform tools to pathif [ -d "$HOME/platform-tools" ] ; then PATH="$HOME/platform-tools:$PATH"fi

Then, run source ~/.profile to update your environment.

Install the build packages

Several packages are needed to build LineageOS. You can install these using your distribution’s package manager.

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Tip: A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software
(usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install
command directly in the Terminal.

To build LineageOS, you’ll need:

  • bc bison build-essential ccache curl flex g++-multilib gcc-multilib git gnupg gperf imagemagick
    lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-dev lib32z1-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5 libncurses5-dev
    libsdl1.2-dev libssl-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop pngcrush rsync
    schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc
    zip zlib1g-dev

For Ubuntu versions older than 20.04 (focal), install also:

  • libwxgtk3.0-dev

While for Ubuntu versions older than 16.04 (xenial), install:

  • libwxgtk2.8-dev

Java

Different versions of LineageOS require different JDK (Java Development Kit) versions.

  • LineageOS 16.0-17.1: OpenJDK 1.9 (included by default)
  • LineageOS 14.1-15.1: OpenJDK 1.8 (install openjdk-8-jdk)
  • LineageOS 11.0-13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (install openjdk-7-jdk)*

* Ubuntu 16.04 and newer do not have OpenJDK 1.7 in the standard package repositories. See the Ask Ubuntu questionHow do I install openjdk 7 on Ubuntu 16.04 or higher?”. Note that the suggestion to use PPA openjdk-r is outdated (the PPA has never updated their offering of openjdk-7-jdk, so it lacks security fixes); skip that answer even if it is the most upvoted.

Create the directories

You’ll need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

mkdir -p ~/binmkdir -p ~/android/lineage

The ~/bin directory will contain the git-repo tool (commonly named “repo”) and the ~/android/lineage directory will contain the source code of LineageOS.

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the repo binary and make it executable (runnable):

curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repochmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it existsif [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"fi

Then, run source ~/.profile to update your environment.

Configure git

Given that repo requires you to identify yourself to sync Android, run the following commands to configure your git identity:

git config --global user.email "[emailprotected]"git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Initialize the LineageOS source repository

The following branches are officially supported for the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7:

  • lineage-17.1

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

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Note: Make sure the branch you enter here is the one you wish to build!

cd ~/android/lineagerepo init -u https://github.com/LineageOS/android.git -b lineage-17.1

Download the source code

To start the download of the source code to your computer, type the following:

repo sync

The LineageOS manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync).
For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience
problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. On the other hand, -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch instead of all branches that are available on GitHub.

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Note: This may take a while, depending on your internet speed. Go and have a beer/coffee/tea/nap in the meantime!

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Tip: The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from LineageOS and Google. Remember it, as you may want to
do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Prepare the device-specific code

After the source downloads, ensure you’re in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/lineage), then type:

source build/envsetup.shbreakfast lavender

This will download your device’s device specific configuration and
kernel.

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Important: Some devices require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor
makefiles, jump down to Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded, and after completing you can rerunbreakfast

Extract proprietary blobs

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Note:
This step requires to have a device already running the latest LineageOS, based on the branch you wish to build for. If you don’t have access to such device, refer to Extracting proprietary blobs from installable zip.

Now ensure your Redmi Note 7 is connected to your computer via the USB cable, with ADB and root enabled, and that you are in the
~/android/lineage/device/xiaomi/lavender folder. Then run the extract-files.sh script:

./extract-files.sh

The blobs should be pulled into the ~/android/lineage/vendor/xiaomi folder. If you see “command not found” errors, adb may
need to be placed in ~/bin.

Turn on caching to speed up build

Make use of ccache if you want to speed up subsequent builds by running:

export USE_CCACHE=1export CCACHE_EXEC=/usr/bin/ccache

and adding that line to your ~/.bashrc file. Then, specify the maximum amount of disk space you want ccache to use by typing this:

ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This needs to be run once. Anywhere from 25GB-100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds
(for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build
for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this
into consideration.

You can also enable the optional ccache compression. While this may involve a slight performance slowdown, it increases the number of files that fit in the cache. To enable it, run:

ccache -o compression=true

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Note: If compression is enabled, the ccache size can be lower (aim for approximately 20GB for one device).

Start the build

Time to start building! Now, type:

crootbrunch lavender

The build should begin.

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Tip:
Want to learn how to sign your own builds? Take a look at Signing builds.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without errors (it will be obvious when it finishes), type the following in the terminal window the build ran in:

cd $OUT

There you’ll find all the files that were created. The two files of more interest are:

  1. recovery.img, which is the LineageOS recovery image.

  2. lineage-17.1-20201116-UNOFFICIAL-lavender.zip, which is the LineageOS
    installer package.

Success! So… what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and
hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 (lavender) - LineageOS ROMs (2024)

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