Flash the UFI003 base image

The UFI003 runs OpenStick release v1 (published 2022-02-08), a Debian 11 system. This page is the first step of the command-line install without Flasher; once the dongle is flashed, go back to UFI003 as the relay to install the device package and the relay. The recommended ways are to let an AI assistant install it or to install it yourself with Flasher: OpenXPlay Flasher does the steps on this page and backs up the four modem partitions automatically. The original bootloader can’t read those partitions, so on a first install from the stock system Flasher first replaces the bootloader and erases the boot partition, then makes the backup, and installs the system only once the backup has succeeded.

Before you flash

• The flash package replaces the partition table and the bootloader. The stock Android system won’t run afterwards, and OpenStick offers no way back.
• Back up the whole device before the first flash, and at the very least the partitions modemst1, modemst2, fsc and fsg: they hold modem calibration data unique to this device that can’t be recovered from anywhere else.
• Flashing erases everything on the device, including the CarPlay identity you added, the iPhone pairings and the Wi-Fi settings.

Download and check the files

OpenStick forbids commercial use, and OpenXPlay doesn’t redistribute these files: download them from OpenStick’s release page and check their SHA-256 (shasum -a 256 FILE on macOS, sha256sum FILE on Linux):

File	Purpose
debian.zip (about 377 MB)	The Debian 11 root file system rootfs.img, plus a copy of boot.img
boot-ufi001c.img	The kernel boot partition for the UFI003; not the same file as the generic boot.img in debian.zip
base-generic.zip	The bootloader and other low-level partitions with a flash script, needed only for the first flash from the stock system

SHA-256 checksums

File	SHA-256
debian.zip	8be6f100e8fc3f612e0b03c199d01f51d38b953a19343ad0f4cf7a2f7a57f603
boot-ufi001c.img	a2b527e98a5cee0a4c3cad5099af7ce0648246f19d20d13ef2c168e400c81b33
base-generic.zip	b609b91c94b07d7cde4141a578df5c1440fbe75140f0c645c7124356774e2418

The other boot-*.img and firmware-*.zip files on the release page are for other models; the UFI003 doesn’t need them.

First flash from the stock system

The first flash needs the bootloader and the flash script flash.sh from base-generic.zip. Don’t run the script as is, for the reasons below: run its commands line by line, and continue only once all four partitions have been read from your device and the files really were replaced.

Why not just run flash.sh?

flash.sh erases the boot partition and installs the new bootloader first, only then backs up the partitions modemst1, modemst2, fsc and fsg to .bin files of the same names, and finally writes them back. The zip already contains four such .bin files, three of them with real content that isn’t your device’s data. The script doesn’t stop when a step fails, so if the backup fails, the zip’s files are what gets written to your device.

Re-flash a dongle that runs OpenStick

To re-flash a UFI003 that already runs OpenStick, only the root file system and the boot partition need writing. Unpack debian.zip, put boot-ufi001c.img in its debian directory and run these commands there. Don’t run that directory’s flash.sh as it is: it writes the generic boot.img.

adb reboot bootloader
fastboot -S 200M flash rootfs rootfs.img
fastboot flash boot boot-ufi001c.img
fastboot reboot

Write rootfs.img with -S 200M

Write rootfs.img with fastboot’s -S 200M (the flash.sh in debian.zip does). With the default chunks of about 256 MB, the UFI003 fails halfway through.