DSU & GSI for Android devices

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DSU is to allow developers to conveniently run GSIs of different system versions in order to perform development work such as application testing. This article is aimed at ordinary users who have a certain basic knowledge of flashing. If there are any errors, please comment and point them out.

📢

No one will be responsible for your data lost or device bricked

Basics

💡

Use Treble Info to check whether your device supports DSU and which kind of GSI.

DSU: Dynamic System Update, a system feature introduced in Android 10, can boot GSI as a guest OS. allowing it to run any Android image without destroying the original system and data

GSI: Generic System Image. Just like Windows can be installed on any x86 platform, GSI can be run on various Android devices. Therefore, its functions that rely on manufacturer drivers like fingerprints may not work. GSI can be side-loaded or directly flashed into the device.

Precautions

⚠️

Must unlock BL when installing a 3-party GSI, otherwise the device may be damaged!

Before side-loading DSU, ensure that the remaining space on the device is ≥ 40%, otherwise the installation maybe failed.

GSI will use the original boot image when started. It means that if Magisk is installed on the original system, then GSI can also use root permissions by Magisk APP.

DSU is not completely safe. If GSI is running abnormally, restart device immediately and discard it.

📝 GSI Installation Guide

Native solution - Quick trial

☝

Want to quickly experience native Android on a modern device? Just 3 steps to do it

Requirements:

Device that supports DSU, No need to unlock BL

Device remaining space ≥ 40%

Steps:

Activate developer options, find DSU Loader

Select a GSI to automatically download and install, name with GMS means include Gapps

After the installation is complete, a notification will pop up, click Restart to enter the installed GSI

Advanced solution - Install any GSI

💡

The native solution only provides native GSI. You need to use 3-party app if you want to try other ROMs,

⚠️

To flash the 3-party GSI, you must unlock BL. If you do not unlock, the device may be damaged, or other special situations may occur…

Requirements:

BL unlocked device with DSU supported.

Device remaining space ≥ 40%

Root or ADB permissions

GSI package

Steps：

Use DSU Sideload, choose your GSI package

Grant Root or execute ABD command according to the prompt to get DSU permission

After the installation is complete, a notification will pop up. click Restart to enter the installed GSI

Don’t use unless necessary - Overwrite directly

🔥

On some strange Android devices, the original system may have limited functions or be quite lame. In order to better utilize the hardware, you can choose to directly overwrite the original system

Requirements:

BL unlocked device, No need to support DSU

Self-prepared GSI package

Steps:

Restart the device to Fastboot, unzip the GSI package and extract img files.

Flash all img files to the corresponding partition

Clear the data

Reboot the device

shell


fastboot flash system system.img #Flash img
fastboot erase userdata #Clear data
fastboot reboot #reboot

🔍 GSI Acquisition Guide

Naming rules

plain


{arm|a64|arm64}_{a|b}{v|g}{N|S}-{signed|vndklite|personal}
|               |    |    |     |
|               |    |    |     signed: Signed with maintainer's keys
|               |    |    |     vndklite: For VNDKLite devices,
|               |    |    |               or for writeable /system on regular devices
|               |    |    |     personal: With personal mods, for reference
|               |    |    |     (secure): Superuser removed and system props spoofed
|               |    |    |               (not offered here)
|               |    |    |
|               |    |    N: No Superuser
|               |    |    S: With PHH Superuser
|               |    |    (Z): With Dynamic Superuser (not offered here)
|               |    |
|               |    v: Vanilla, i.e. no GAPPS
|               |    g: With regular GAPPS
|               |    o: With Android Go GAPPS
|               |    (f): With MicroG and FLOSS replacements of GAPPS
|               |         (not offered here)
|               |
|               a: "A-only", i.e. system-as-system (deprecated)
|               b: "AB", i.e. system-as-root
|
arm: ARM 32-bit (deprecated)
a64: ARM 32-bit with 64-bit binder
arm64: ARM 64-bit

Andy Yan-Naming rules

If your phone uses AB/VAB partition, select A/B GSI; if device supports System as Root (SAR), select A/B GSI. If both are not supported, you should choose A-only GSI, this is usually the device before Android 12

VNDK: Vendor native development kit, supported devices can use any GSI android version higher than the original OS version, otherwise can only use the same version with original OS.

VNDK lite: Some devices is in VNDK lite mode (independent of A/B and A-only). In this case, you should choose the GSI with the word “vndklite” in the name.

If the GSI package name includes “silm”,”vanilla”,”bvN”, means it’s not include Gapps. Other like “bgN”,”GMS” means includes Gapps, and package is also larger. Choose based on your purpose.

Some download-sites

Andy Yan's personal builds // GSI - Browse Files at SourceForge.net

请优先向下翻, 阅读版本命名规则若对自己设备的架构有疑问, 请使用Treble Info确认手机端下载文件时请点击“Try to download anyway”

https://sourceforge.net/projects/andyyan-gsi/files/

小米红米SGSI|GSI镜像下载 - FiimeROM

FiimeROM作为一家专业的小米红米原生周边全资源平台, 我们提供小米刷机系统的官方下载、详细教程和有效技巧, 帮助您高效、安全地刷机, 系统定制您的小米设备.

https://mi.fiime.cn/SGSI_GSI

⭐ DSU Try Rom & Make Simple GSI Pack

There are so many kinds of custom ROMs, If you hope to quickly find Rom that your prefer without cleaning data again and again, Using DSU is undoubtedly the best solution. Maybe you can find an official GSI package, but sometimes you still need to download a flash package suitable for your device and manually create a GSI package: Just take these five images from it, make a zip or gz file. Be careful not to use Windows11’s compression. Then you just get a simple GSI package.

vendor.img

system_ext.img

system.img

product.img

odm.img

Usually there are 3 kinds of flashing packages:

normal Fastboot package——unzip to get img files

Fastboot package include super.img——use MIO-KITCHEN-SOURCE to unpack super.img into img files

OTA package——use payload_dumper or MT manager to unpack payload.bin file to get img files.

This method only works on native Android. Do NOT make ROMs like MIUI into GSI by using this method. Because this may cause serious problems and crash in the system, Also may back to GSI every reboot. Even reflashing the original system will not fix problem, finally you can only clean all device data.

🛠️ DSU extracts the Boot image to root the device

📖

This method is the best solution to extract the boot.img and get the root when you can't find the ROM package and inconvenient to deep flash the device.

Here is a video demo by Chen Zhongjiang: The $138 knockoff phone is too hard to use? Doesn't matter, I'll take it! (Chinese only)

The Userdebug-GSI supports root permissions for command by simply turning on the switch in the developer options. GSI also uses the boot image of the original system to start, which makes it feasible to side-load GSI with DSU to extract the original system boot.

Condition: Unlocked BL device that supports DSU

First, use ADB to connect to the device and enter the shell to obtain root permissions

shell


adb shell #enter shell
su #obtain root permissions

Now extract boot.img via ADB command

Old eMMC device

UFS device

shell


find /dev/block/platform/ -name 'by-name' -type d #Determine the partition path
cd "The partition path obtained by the previous command" #open this path
ls -l boot #Find the boot partition
dd if="The partition path" of=/sdcard/boot.img #extract partition and save in/sdcard/boot.img

shell


#UFS device partition path is usually known
cd /dev/block/by-name/ #Open to the partition path
ls -l boot #Find the boot partition location
dd if="The partition path" of=/sdcard/boot.img #extract partition and save in/sdcard/boot.img

A_only device needs to extract boot

AB or VAB device needs to extract boot_a and boot_b

If device is shipped with Android 13 or 13+, you need to extract init_boot_a and init_boot_b

After the extraction is complete, use Magisk to patch the extracted images, and then use the command to flash them back to the corresponding partitions.

shell


dd if="patched boot.img" of="boot Partition" 
#ADB flash command
reboot

shell


fastboot flash boot "boot.img"
#Fastboot flash command
reboot

⌨️ DSU Related Commands

Enable sticky mode and enter the GSI system by default every time you boot the device

Disable sticky mode, the system will automatically execute if GSI fails to start

shell


adb shell gsi_tool enable

shell


adb shell gsi_tool disable

Check if the device supports Treble

shell


adb shell getprop ro.treble.enabled

Check whether the device supports cross-version installation. Need to find namespace.default.isolated in [vendor] of the output info.

shell


adb shell cat /system/etc/ld.config.version_identifier.txt \
| grep -A 20 "\[vendor\]"

Use ADB to start DSU, file name system_raw.gz, user space is set to 8GB

shell


adb shell am start-activity \
-n com.android.dynsystem/com.android.dynsystem.VerificationActivity  \
-a android.os.image.action.START_INSTALL  \
-d file:///storage/emulated/0/Download/system_raw.gz  \
--el KEY_SYSTEM_SIZE $(du -b system_raw.img|cut -f1)  \
--el KEY_USERDATA_SIZE 8589934592

End Notes

Even if the problem probability is low, be sure to backup.

Thank you for reading, it’s so fxxkin hard to translate…

Please let me know if you found any mistakes,thx.

Basics

Precautions

📝 GSI Installation Guide

Native solution - Quick trial

Requirements:

Steps:

Advanced solution - Install any GSI

Requirements:

Steps：

Don’t use unless necessary - Overwrite directly

Requirements:

Steps:

shell

🔍 GSI Acquisition Guide

Naming rules

plain

Some download-sites

⭐ DSU Try Rom & Make Simple GSI Pack

🛠️ DSU extracts the Boot image to root the device

shell

shell

shell

shell

shell

⌨️ DSU Related Commands

shell

shell

shell

shell

shell

End Notes

Fosvcat