[Moto G6 Questions & Answers] doctorwill:
Hi

Firstly, thank you in advance for any help you can give me. I'm completely new to this so apologies in advance for my clumsy terminology and probably lack of useful detail - obviously v happy to provide any other details that will help. I do appreciate you are all volunteers - I moved from Windows to Ubuntu a few years ago and really appreciated the community support which made it possible so I am well aware of how dedicated you all are - thank you in advance.

I've an old Moto G6 (Xt1925-5). I thought I'd try rooting it and then installing a custom rom to ensure I can update security etc.

I won't bore you with all the details of why - I don't actually need to succeed but I hate the fact that a functional phone is electronic junk after 2-3 years just because it won't update; so I thought I'd try with my old phone that I don't need to see how easy this is to do (if it is I'll move over to Android for my main phone - I reluctantly currently use an iPhone - for me the selling-your-sole-to-Apple is outweighed by the several years of useability such that I buy my iPhones 2nd hand and still get several years of secure phone use.

I did manage to install twrp, root it and then wiped the original OS in order to flash a new rom. It's OEM unlocked via code from Motorola.

The problem I now face is that whatever I try to flash gives me error 255 in twrp. I've tried many different roms mostly downloaded via links on this site - eg lineage 17 and 18, crDroid v7 (android 11), Pixelexperiance.

twrp is version 3.6.2_9-0. My PC is running Ubuntu 22.04LTS. The phone previously ran Android 9 as an upgrade from the OEM 8.

I'm attempting to do this by (1) downloading the .zip; (2) transferring over to the sd card using adb push via USB from my laptop; (3) install via twrp.

The file seems to go over to the sd card and twrp shows it and tries to install, then I get the error (seems to be 255 every time). I've also tried sending the .zip to /tmp and /sdcard - neither work: error 255 every time. If I check 'zip signature verification' most of the ROMs pass (one or two fail) but still gives error 255 when trying to install.

The text is 'Updating partition details ... done; Formatting Cache using make_ext4fs ... ; Updating partition details ... done; Wiping Cache & Dalvik ... -- Dalvik Cache Directories Wipe Complete!; Updating partition details ... done!; Installing zip file '/sdcard/lineage18...'; Unmounting system ...; Updater process ended with ERROR: 255 Error installing zip file '/sdcard/lijneage-18...'; Updating partition details... ... done

As I get the same error with multiple different OSs I suspect I've made a simple error somewhere but don't know where to start to find it.

As an aside - I don't know if this is normal or completely unrelated - the .zip files I move over seem to disappear from the phone sometimes - often if I reboot, but I can't reliably reproduce the disappearance - wiping cache etc. doesn't remove the files, rebooting sometimes seems to but not every time.

I don't really mind what OS I end up with - happy with any OS that is secure; but I suspect I've missed something really simple to give the the same error with every attempt. As I said at the beginning, this is mostly an experiment (and would be nice to have a backup phone!) so the actual OS I end up with is much less important than whether I can do it or not.

Any help greatly appreciated - thank you!