RattlesnakeOS is privacy focused Android OS based on AOSP for Google Pixel phones. It is my migration strategy away from CopperheadOS (hence the name similarity) which is no longer maintained.
- Based on latest AOSP 9.0 (Android P)
- Support for Google Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL
- Monthly software and firmware security fixes delivered through built in OTA updater
- Maintain verified boot with a locked bootloader just like official Android but with your own personal signing keys
- Latest Chromium browser and webview
- Latest F-Droid client and privileged extension
- Free of Google’s apps and services
Rather than providing random binaries of RattlesnakeOS to install on your phone, I've gone the route of creating a cross platform tool, rattlesnakeos-stack, that provisions all of the AWS infrastructure needed to continuously build your own personal RattlesnakeOS, with your own signing keys, and your own OTA updates. It uses AWS Lambda to provision EC2 spot instances that build RattlesnakeOS and upload artifacts to S3. Resulting OS builds are configured to receive over the air updates from this environment. It only costs a few dollars a month to run (see FAQ for detailed cost breakdown).
- An AWS account. You'll need to create an AWS account if you don't have one. If this is a new AWS account, make sure you launch at least once paid instance before running through these steps. To do this you can navigate to the EC2 console, click
Launch instance, select any OS, pick ac5.4xlarge, and clickReview and launch. After it launches successfully you can terminate the instance through the console. - In the AWS web console, you'll need to setup AWS credentials with
AdministratorAccessaccess. If you're not sure how to do that, you can follow this step by step guide. You'll need the generated AWS Access Key and Secret Key for the next step. - On your local computer, install the AWS CLI for your platform and configure it to use the credentials from previous step.
- In the AWS web console, setup an SSH keypair and download the key to your local computer. You'll use this keypair name when deploying your stack and you'll use this key if you want to SSH into the launched EC2 spot instances.
The easiest way is to download a pre-built binary from the Github Releases page. The other option is to compile from source (see Build from Source section below).
The rattlesnakeos-stack tool will handle deploying your stack - which is just all the required AWS infrastructure needed to run ongoing builds of RattlesnakeOS. After initial deployment, your first build will automatically start; by default it is configured to build every 2 weeks after this (see the FAQ for details on how to modify build schedule). When deploying your stack with rattlesnakeos-stack:
- Pick a unique name to replace
rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname>in the commands below. Note: this name has to be unique or it will fail to provision. - Provide the SSH keypair name that you created in the prerequisite steps to replace
<yourkeyname>in commands below.
Deploy stack with default options for your specific device.
# Pixel XL (marlin)
./rattlesnakeos-stack --region us-west-2 --name rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname> --device marlin --ssh-key <yourkeyname>
# Pixel (sailfish)
./rattlesnakeos-stack --region us-west-2 --name rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname> --device sailfish --ssh-key <yourkeyname>
# Pixel 2 XL (taimen)
./rattlesnakeos-stack --region us-west-2 --name rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname> --device taimen --ssh-key <yourkeyname>
# Pixel 2 (walleye)
./rattlesnakeos-stack --region us-west-2 --name rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname> --device walleye --ssh-key <yourkeyname>These are some examples of more advanced options that can be used.
# Setup the stack to: build every 2 days, on a larger instance type c5.9xlarge, with additional patches, using a custom hosts file
./rattlesnakeos-stack -r us-west-2 -n rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname> --ssh-key <yourkeyname> -d <yourdevicename> --schedule "rate(2 days)" --force --instance-type c5.9xlarge --repo-patches https:/RattlesnakeOS/community_patches --hosts-file https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hostsTo see full list of options you can pass rattlesnake-stack you can use the help flag (-h)
...
Flags:
-d, --device string device you want to build for: 'marlin' (Pixel XL), 'sailfish' (Pixel), 'taimen' (Pixel 2 XL), 'walleye' (Pixel 2)
--force build even if there are no changes in available version of AOSP, Chromium, or F-Droid.
-h, --help help for rattlesnakeos-stack
--hosts-file string an advanced option that allows you to specify a replacement /etc/hosts file to enable global dns adblocking (e.g. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts). note: be careful with this, as you 1) won't get any sort of notification on blocking 2) if you need to unblock something you'll have to rebuild the OS
--instance-regions string possible regions to launch spot instance. (default "us-west-2,us-west-1,us-east-1,us-east-2")
--instance-type string EC2 instance type (e.g. c4.4xlarge) to use for the build. (default "c5.4xlarge")
--max-price string max ec2 spot instance bid. if this value is too low, you may not obtain an instance or it may terminate during a build. (default "1.00")
-n, --name string name for stack. note: this must be a valid/unique S3 bucket name.
--prevent-shutdown for debugging purposes only - will prevent ec2 instance from shutting down after build.
-r, --region string aws region for stack deployment (e.g. us-west-2)
--remove cleanup/destroy all deployed aws resources.
--repo-patches string an advanced option that allows you to specify a git repo with patches to apply to AOSP build tree. see https:/RattlesnakeOS/community_patches for more details.
--repo-prebuilts string an advanced option that allows you to specify a git repo with prebuilt APKs. see https:/RattlesnakeOS/example_prebuilts for more details.
--schedule string cron expression that defines when to kick off builds. note: if you give invalid expression it will fail to deploy stack. see: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/events/ScheduledEvents.html#CronExpressions (default "rate(14 days)")
--skip-chromium if you want to avoid doing chromium builds (still need the initial build though) for a period of time you can enable this
--skip-price string skip requesting ec2 spot instance if price is above this value to begin with. (default "0.68")
--ssh-key string aws ssh key to add to ec2 spot instances. this is optional but is useful for debugging build issues on the instance.
--version version for rattlesnakeos-stack- Setup email notifications for builds. Note: you may miss some of the first notifications as the build may have kicked off already and sent notifications before email notifications were configured.
- Go to the SNS console
- Click on the topic named
rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname> - Click on
Create subscriptionbutton - In
Create subscriptiondialog, inProtocoldropdown selectEmail - For
Endpoint, enter your email address - Click
Create subscriptionbutton - You should get an email link that you need to click in order to subscribe to messages in this topic
- After initial setup with
rattlesnakeos-stacktool, an EC2 spot instance should have been launched for running the initial build. You can check this by going to the EC2 console and verifying there is an EC2 instance running. With the default configuration, it's possible that the EC2 instance could be deployed in any of the following regions: US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), so you should look in all of those regions by clicking on the right hand region dropdown in the EC2 console and selecting each of those regions. If an EC2 instances hasn't started in any those regions, check out the FAQ for how to manually start a build. - The initial build will likely take 5+ hours to complete. Looking at the EC2 instance metrics like CPU, etc is NOT a good way to determine if the build is progressing. If you want to see live build progress, go to FAQ section
How can I connect to the EC2 instance and see the build status?. - After the build finishes, a factory image should be uploaded to the S3 bucket that you can download:
- Go to the S3 console.
- Click on
rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname>-releasebucket. - From this bucket, download the file
<device>-factory-latest.tar.xz.
- Use this factory image and follow the instructions on flashing your device carefully.
- You followed the instructions until the end and you re-locked your bootloader and disabled OEM unlocking after flashing right? If not, go do that! Note: I think it's important to mention that disabling OEM unlocking does significantly increase the security of your device, but it also increases potential for bricking your phone. If you somehow manage to get the device into a non booting state while OEM unlocking is disable AND you lose the generated signing keys, you wouldn't be able to generate a new valid image to get your phone booting and it would essentially be bricked.
- After successfully flashing your device, you will now be running RattlesnakeOS and all future updates will happen through the built in OTA updater.
- I highly suggest backing up your generated signing keys. To backup your signing keys:
- Go to the S3 Console.
- Click on
rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname>-keysbucket. - Download all these keys there and store them in a safe place.
- Just download the new version of rattlesnakeos-stack and run the same command used previously (e.g.
rattlesnakeos-stack --region us-west-2 --name rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname> --device <yourdevicename> --ssh-key <yourkeyname>) to apply the updates
Use this at your own risk.
The costs are going to be variable by AWS region and by day and time you are running your builds as spot instances have a variable price depending on market demand. Below is an example scenario that should give you a rough estimate of costs:
- The majority of the cost will come from builds on EC2. It currently launches spot instances of type c5.4xlarge which average maybe $.30 an hour in us-west-2 (will vary by region) but can get up over $1 an hour depending on the day and time. The
rattlesnakeos-stacktool allows you define a maximum bid price (--max-price) you are willing to pay and if market price exceeds that then your instance will be terminated. Builds can take anywhere from 2-6 hours depending on if Chromium needs to be built. So let's say you're doing a build every two weeks at $0.50 an hour and it is taking on average 4 hours - you'd pay ~$4 in EC2 costs per month. You could reduce this to a monthly build (see section how to change build frequency) and then you'd be looking at ~$2 in EC2 costs per month. - The other very minimal cost would be S3. Storage costs are almost non existent as a stack will only store about 3GB worth of files (factory image, ota file, target file) and at $0.023 per GB you're looking at $0.07 per month in S3 storage costs. The other S3 cost would be for data transfer out for OTA updates - let's say you are just downloading an update per week (~500MB file) at $0.09 per GB you're looking at $0.20 per month in S3 network costs.
The current default is to do builds every 2 weeks. With rattlesnakeos-stack tool there is an option to specify how frequently builds are kicked off with option --schedule. For example you could set --schedule "rate(30 days)" to only build every 30 days. Also note, the default behavior is to only run a build if there have been version updates in AOSP build, Chromium version, or F-Droid versions.
- Go to the AWS Lambda console
- Click on the function named 'rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname>-build'
- Click on the 'Test' button
- In 'Configure test event dialog', set event name to 'rattlesnakeos', keep the defaults, and click 'Create' button.
- Click the 'Test' button again to kick off the build
On build failure/success, the instance should terminate and upload its logs to S3 bucket called <stackname>-logs and it's in a file called <device>/<timestamp>.
There are a few steps required to be able to do this:
- In the default security group, you'll need to open up SSH access.
- You should be able to SSH into the instance (can get IP address from EC2 console or email notification):
ssh -i yourkeypairname.pem ubuntu@yourinstancepublicip - Tail the logfile to view progress
tail -f /var/log/cloud-init-output.log
There is a flag you can pass rattlesnakeos-stack called --prevent-shutdown. Note that this will keep the instance online for 12 hours or until you manually terminate it.
If there wasn't an error notification, this is likely because the Spot Instance bid was not high enough at this specific time. You can see historical spot instance pricing in the EC2 console. Click Pricing History, select c5.4xlarge for Instance Type and pick a date range. If you want to avoid having your instance terminated, you can pass an additional flag to rattlesnakeos-stack with a higher than default bid: --max-price 1.50
If you go to Settings->System update settings you'll see the updater app settings. The updater app will check S3 to see if there are updates and if it finds one will download and apply it your device. There is no progress indicator unfortunately - you'll just got a notification when it's done and it will ask you to reboot. If you want to force a check for OTA updates, you can toggle the Require battery above warning level setting and it will check for a new build in your S3 bucket.
I only have access to a single device and carrier to test this on, so I can't make any promises about it working with your specific carrier. Confirmed working: T-Mobile, Rogers, Cricket, Ting. Likely not to work: Sprint (has requirements about specific carrier app being on phone to work), Project Fi.
If you decide this isn't for you and you want to remove all the provisioned AWS resources, there's a command for that. Note: if you've already done a full build, you'll need to manually remove all of the files from the stack related S3 buckets before running this cleanup command or you'll see failures deleting the S3 buckets.
./rattlesnakeos-stack --remove --region us-west-2 --name rattlesnakeos-<yourstackname> --ssh-key <yourkeyname>Important note: this will not terminate any running EC2 instances that may have launched and these will need to be termianted manually.
For Pixel and Pixel XL, just unlock your bootloader and flash stock factory image.
For Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, you'll need to clear the configured AVB public key after unlocking the bootloader and before locking it again with the stock factory images.
fastboot erase avb_custom_key- Huimin Zhang - author of the original underlying build script that was written for CopperheadOS.
- anestisb/android-prepare-vendor
- terraform
- To compile from source you'll need to install Go (https://golang.org/) for your platform
go get github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack/
make tools
make