Editing partitions on Motorola Moto G 2015 (Osprey)

Edit 2/2/24: So, earlier today, I got the idea to use lvm. I’ve only used it once in a TUI install, so I had to learn how CLI tools today. I was pleased to see volume group and changes made to the logical volume persisted after a reboot.

While trying to learn how to configure the initramfs to boot pmOS from a logical volume, I discovered a gitlab thread from 2017 discussing using system and userdata as a logical volume: gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/-/issues/60

So, I’m gonna continue investigating that. Still curious as to what’s preventing the partition layout from being altered. Maybe I’ll figure that out along the way.

wiki.postmarketos.org/…/Motorola_Moto_G_2015_(mot…

This phone only has 8GB of internal storage. I’ve attempted to remove the system and userdata partitions and create a larger unified partition in their place. I have no desire to ever run Android on it again, so I’m willing to risk bricking it. No matter what I do, those partitions are restored after a reboot.

I’ve tried directly doing so via parted in pmOS running from an SD.

On my PC, I’ve tried cloning the internal storage, making the partitions accessible via losetup and partprobe, editing them via parted, and piping the edited clone via dd using ssh in pmOS and adb in TWRP.

Afterward, I’d use partprope and run ‘ls /dev/(block/)mmcblk0*’, lsblk, and ‘parted /dev/(block)/mmcblk0 p’ to verify that the desired partitions are in place. Only in pmOS, though. TWRP gives a device busy error when using partprobe.

I’ve tried using using fastboot’s delete-logical-partition option, but that failed with an error telling me to run ‘fastboot oem help’, which lists no commands to delete partitions. I realized today the aforementioned would apparently only work on devices using Android dynamic partitions.

In pmOS, I see no output in dmesg when editing partitions. I have no idea what to search for online and keep getting irrelevant or no results. Does anyone know what is occurring here or what I should be looking out for?