Large-scale deployment of custom GOS to many Pixel devices

HarryB

Hello

Is it possible to customize a GrapheneOS installation (including settings, installed apps, and user profiles) in order to deploy it to a larger number of Pixel devices? How?

Z3br4

HarryB Did you manage to make any progress in this area? I am also exploring the possibility of managing a custom build on multiple devices and am searching around the forum for any tips regarding this. So if there is anything you might be willing to share, that would be awesome!

mar

This would be of interest to me also. I only use 2 GraphenOS devices, and it's not too much time to get them set up the way I like it. But having my own base build/config/preferences and apps that can be flashed down with images to future devices would be great; (could also have tweaked normie builds for friends and family). Could also then re-image existing daily driver reguarly to build server to give me a new working phone with last app additions/configs and have a working phone to my liking in minutes should mine be lost/stolen/damaged.

I also see some milage in what the OP suggested for getting more users of GrapheneOS - as this may have some appeal for small/medium firms to leave the Glowie plantation with multi device deployments being as easy as it is on IOS/Google phones, because IOS offers Apple Configurator for mass deployment, and Google Offers something called Zero Touch for Google phone deployments. Not used these, so can't comment. It would be nice if GrapheneOS could have its own equivalent (assume devs agree and it isn't a dev time sink).

In a former life part of what I did was manage corporate windows builds for laptops and desktops, which was imitially done with unattended builds, but then moved to ghost images and a certified windows tool to remove the software defined unique ID used on initial build that would be deployed at scale.

Sorry for long post if that's against etiquette (new here).

de0u

mar In a former life part of what I did was manage corporate windows builds for laptops and desktops, which was imitially done with unattended builds, but then moved to ghost images and a certified windows tool to remove the software defined unique ID used on initial build that would be deployed at scale.

At present the Android build system isn't set up to act in a similar way. Obviously it's "just a simple matter of programming", but it's not all that simple. Android Verified Boot and dm-verity provide good system integrity including for updates, but they are not all that nimble. Recently Google has added APEX as a way to ship signed updates that are smaller than a system image, but that's not super-simple to set up either.

I am unaware of a slick commercial tool like Ghost for Android. I think part of the reason is that instead of 100,000 or more companies that might buy Ghost to configure Windows, almost everybody gets Android devices from one of a few thousand carriers. So there may not be a business model for making such a tool.

It's possible to do some central/dynamic configurations on Android via MDM. But so far there isn't a solid MDM solution covering GrapheneOS and Google Play.

MEGAbyter

I am going to be doing this to 20+ phones relatively soon. After a bit of research it seems I should be able to do a seedvault backup of the primary phone with all the necessary apps installed, and then just restore that backup on each one of the phones prior to handing them out. I only intend to install 20-30 apps and do a basic home screen setup. I haven't been able to find a reason why this wouldn't work so if anybody knows a reason why, please chime in.

Z3br4

MEGAbyter Using a seedvault backup to configure multiple phones sounds like a pretty interesting and potentially low effort solution. Did you try it out and if so, how much hassle did it turn out to be?