Script request - snap and swap CWM backup - Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I don't see any threads or scripts that quite describe the thing I'm looking for, so I'm just going to toss this out and see if anyone has any ideas on how to make this work.
Here's the scenario: I have a rom that I enjoy using, and it's my daily driver that I keep updated. However, I want to see if any other roms have any features I like (or whatever), but I don't want to have to do the legwork of Tibu backups and restores.
So what do I do? I make a full CWM backup of my current rom, clear and flash the new rom, and get it set up to try out. I decide it's fun to use, but I want to go back to other rom's setup. Not a problem, as I made the CWM backup.
However, to keep this other rom option open, I make a CWM backup of this setup, too. I now head to recovery, clear, and flash my original rom back, and restore the CWM backup.
All this equals a lot of steps to basically swap which rom setup I'm loading.
So here's my question/request: Would it be possible to write some sort of script that will do these steps:
1. Make / update a CWM backup of my current setup.
2. Select a different CWM backup as the destination, along with the Rom installer file associated with it (if necessary).
3. Jump to CWM, do the necessary clearing/cleaning, flash the destination rom, and restore that rom's setup.
4. Reboot to new setup.
I don't know if this is easy or makes sense, but I have rarely seen ease or logic stop things from happening in the XDA community.
(Also, if this should be in development, please move it there - I assumed that since it's more of a feature request that it should go in Q&A.)

Related

[SOLVED] Nandroid restores on two different phones? [UPDATE 7/26/09]

Hey all,
Are nandroid restores specific to one particular device or can they be interchanged between two G1's? I have a spare G1 that I play around with that has root while my other G1 doesn't have root. I am thinking about rooting the other one and wanted to know if I could just go through the rooting process, (radio, spl, cyanogen recovery etc) throw on a cyanogenmod or JF, then do a nandroid restore from the spare device with all my settings on it. I know that nandroid creates a unique numerical folder that has your latest backup in it so I wasn't sure if this folder would be seen by nandroid on a different phone.
Any thoughts?
EDIT:
Just wanted to update this thread in case anyone else wanted/needed to do this. As I suspected, I ran into folder name problems when trying to copy one nandroid restore to my spare phone and trying a restore. There is a simple fix however....
1) Perform a nandroid backup on the phone you WANT to backup.
2) Copy that nandroid folder from the phone to your PC.
3) Perform a nandroid backup on the phone you DON'T WANT to backup.
4) Copy that nandroid folder from the phone to your PC.
5) Compare the nandroid subfolder name (should be alpha-numeric starting with HT) of the backup you want to the name of the one you don't.
6) Change the name of the nandroid subfolder on the backup you want to restore to the same name of the folder you don't want. This way you fool nandroid into thinking that the backup was originally done on that phone.
7) Copy the entire nandroid folder (with the newly changed subfolder name) to the sdcard of the phone you want to restore.
8) Boot into recovery (power+home) and perform the nandroid restore. If the restore fails, you probably don't have the correct subfolder name. Return to step 5 and 6.
9) If the restore is successful, reboot and you should be all set!
Good question. I wouldn't have thought there would be issues with it bar of course your settings etc but then a wipe before would resolve that. Just make sure to do what you've said though (upgrade radio, SPL, recovery etc) first.
DirectMatrix said:
Hey all,
Are nandroid restores specific to one particular device or can they be interchanged between two G1's? I have a spare G1 that I play around with that has root while my other G1 doesn't have root. I am thinking about rooting the other one and wanted to know if I could just go through the rooting process, (radio, spl, cyanogen recovery etc) throw on a cyanogenmod or JF, then do a nandroid restore from the spare device with all my settings on it. I know that nandroid creates a unique numerical folder that has your latest backup in it so I wasn't sure if this folder would be seen by nandroid on a different phone.
Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It won't upgrade your SPL, radio, and recovery. If you look in the nandroid folder, you'll see exactly what is backed up. I think its the /system folder and the /data folder as well as something else. But if you have another phone that is already rooted and has the correct SPL, radio, and recovery, this will work.
Should be fine then as he's planning on doing the usual steps up until flashing the desired ROM of choice. Tell us how it goes DirectMatrix and if it works, please change your thread title to include [SOLVED] so we all know ^_^
NeoBlade said:
Should be fine then as he's planning on doing the usual steps up until flashing the desired ROM of choice. Tell us how it goes DirectMatrix and if it works, please change your thread title to include [SOLVED] so we all know ^_^
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gonna start rooting the other phone now so I'll keep this thread updated with whether nandroid backups are swappable between phones. I hope so as that will save me quite a bit of settings/data calibrations.
@h.nocturna... LOL, you have been dealing with n00bs too long in the Q&A section....of course nandroid won't upgrade my radio, SPL, and recovery, but I had a good laugh anyways. Thanks all for the advice

[Q] I finally Rooted my phone. Now what?

I am very new to this, so I am not sure what to looks for on the forum.
I generally followed instructions from Lifehacker and this forum, used androot to root my phone, done it after two days.. (finally figured out I had to downgrade my phone.. )
So now I'm rooted, I have super user access, and I have rom manager installed. Here are a couple of things I know I want to get to do:
- install froyo (as stable as possible)
- uninstall sprint crapware (the NFL, navigation and others.. who needs them)
- possibly overclocking a little by what I read, I have another battery and I'm willing to try and give overclock a "little" each time to see if it works.
Before I do anything (I backed up my current settings with rom manager), I wanted to post here and ask you guys what I should do first, and how do I restore things back to normal if something goes wrong?
Thanks a bunch!
beholder121 said:
install froyo (as stable as possible)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go to the development forum, you should find the latest Froyo builds out there (check my signature for the latest ;-)).
beholder121 said:
uninstall sprint crapware (the NFL, navigation and others.. who needs them)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you install CM, it will remove all apps anyways. If you want to know how to remove apps - there are threads all over the place for it.
Also, attached is a script I wrote to remove apps (apk). It's a very simple straightforward script. Here's what you do, create a subfolder (not needed) on your sdcard, copy the two files into the folder, update "Apps-to-remove,txt" with all the apks you want to remove (with the full path) and run the script through terminal or adb shell. This script is not needed, but just simplifies the job, that's all.
beholder121 said:
possibly overclocking a little by what I read, I have another battery and I'm willing to try and give overclock a "little" each time to see if it works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Goto http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=756774, read through and use, as appropriate. If you use the latest build by Jaybob, you may not need any kernels from this thread, as the builds have the latest code.
Hope this helps.
beholder121 said:
Before I do anything (I backed up my current settings with rom manager), I wanted to post here and ask you guys what I should do first, and how do I restore things back to normal if something goes wrong?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To restore everything back to "Out-of-the-box", just run the official RUU from HTC/Sprint.
Thanks Andy.
Right now I'm going through Roms (I heard good things about Cyanogen but I can't download it because their registration page is messed up..) and I tried what comes for free with Rom Manager, which almost gave me a heart attack when the phone started... fortunately I read the instructions to restoring things so I was able to get back to my old rom (whew!!)
But now, for some reason, I don't have the market app on my phone! how am I to download rom manager...
Is it possible to chat with you or someone at least for a couple of minutes as I go through this, because at this rate I won't have my phone working well until tomorrow >.>
You need to install GAPPS, once you install a ROM.
I would highly recommend CM. The builds Jaybob has put together are based on CM code, take the latest (12/08) - it's stable. BTW, it's a mediafire link, so you should be good. I just downloaded the latest, y'day... works like a charm... (Thanks JayBob and Cm and everyone - can't say that enough).
The best way to install rom is:
1. Download copy ROM and gapps to your SDcard's root
2. Reboot into recovery
3. Wipe everything - Wipe/Factory reset, Wipe cache, Wipe Dalvik Cache
4. Install ROM from zip
5. Install Gapps from zip
6. Reboot - btw, the first reboot after a rom/gapps install takes a while, so don't be alarmed.
You can PM me, if needed.
I installed that last Rom via Rom Manager, which did it pretty much automatically.. so I didn't try to install a Rom via the SD card yet.
To make things worse, the phone does not recognized it's connected to a computer at all (there is no USB icon on my phone's notification bar) so I can restore it being to old sprint crap. No Market app, no way of installing anything or communicating with the phone, my backup, when I restore it, brings back the old HTC but without the market app and as I said, no USB support.
heeeeeelllllllllppppppppppppp
Ok,
I managed to restore things back to the old Sprint RUU. I noticed the SD card was *completely* out of room, which might have messed up my backups. I still don't know where these backups reside or how much room do they take, but making sure you have enough room on the SD card is important, as I think I have learned the hard way.
Important: the RUU detected my phone and installed *even without* the usb icon or my computer treating my phone as a "usb storage device". So resorting to this option, even though annoying (have to install and gain root access all over again), is helpful to have.
Now I am going to format my SD card, which doesn't have any important information, I don't think (my documents are all backed up anywhere and try and install the CM rom from a zip file, which I'm not sure how to do yet (people like me are used to have something like setup.exe, and everything works from there...) so I'm going to read and go step by step.
ROM installation is pretty simple, once you get your recovery going... just make sure you wipe everything, as I mentioned earlier to you...
beholder121 said:
I installed that last Rom via Rom Manager, which did it pretty much automatically.. so I didn't try to install a Rom via the SD card yet.
To make things worse, the phone does not recognized it's connected to a computer at all (there is no USB icon on my phone's notification bar) so I can restore it being to old sprint crap. No Market app, no way of installing anything or communicating with the phone, my backup, when I restore it, brings back the old HTC but without the market app and as I said, no USB support.
heeeeeelllllllllppppppppppppp
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you reboot with the phone connected by USB, by any chance?
andythegreenguy said:
You need to install GAPPS, once you install a ROM.
I would highly recommend CM. The builds Jaybob has put together are based on CM code, take the latest (12/08) - it's stable. BTW, it's a mediafire link, so you should be good. I just downloaded the latest, y'day... works like a charm... (Thanks JayBob and Cm and everyone - can't say that enough).
The best way to install rom is:
1. Download copy ROM and gapps to your SDcard's root
2. Reboot into recovery
3. Wipe everything - Wipe/Factory reset, Wipe cache, Wipe Dalvik Cache
4. Install ROM from zip
5. Install Gapps from zip
6. Reboot - btw, the first reboot after a rom/gapps install takes a while, so don't be alarmed.
You can PM me, if needed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Had it not been for reading this again, I would have been waiting for a reply. This was awesome and now I am back to business. Thanks a ton for this. i now have what i need to do this on my wife's Hero. Thanks again

[Q] Create Copy of SGS

I want to create a copy of my phone as it is (not just user data, but everything, firmware and databases too) - so TitaniumBackup is probably not sufficient for what I need.
The idea is to be able to explorw all aspects of the phone on my computer - things such as passwords etc.
I repeat, I do not just want the firmware, but everything from my current phone in its current state.
I have already rooted it, just not sure what I need to do from here? Assume it's something Linuxy or Telnet based? (I am using a Windows Machine, so ideally something I can do on there)
Thanks for your help
i think to access the complete ROM via a PC you would need some sort of linux OS. you can do a nandroid backup via CWM and find a compatible program to let you browse thru the md5 file format but then again im not sure thats possible via windows OS... perhaps you could ask one of the Dev's for advice as im sure not all them create roms, themes, apps using linux based OS's ???
I think I did try to post this in the Dev section, as I felt it was better suited there, but maybe by selecting the 'This is a question' option, it got moved into this forum.
I have a backup using CWM which has produced some IMG files - will take a look in them and see if it's got what i'm looking for it in there.
I thought maybe I would need ADB running, but maybe I don't.
ADB is like having some Chinese woman teaching you German...... totally confusing..... at least it is for me anyway but good luck hope you do what you set out to do
what you want is NAND back up.
Search for rom manager on the market.
You must be rooted for this.
NAND back up is like creating the back-up image of your current cell phone just like you do it for your computer.
it backs up your phone completely.
Do some googling and you will see.
[email protected] said:
what you want is NAND back up.
Search for rom manager on the market.
You must be rooted for this.
NAND back up is like creating the back-up image of your current cell phone just like you do it for your computer.
it backs up your phone completely.
Do some googling and you will see.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Rom Manager does not back up your kernel. Use sgs kernel flasher for this task.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

nandroid backup = factory reset??

i made an nandroid backup with amon ra 2.2.1 with sd-ext included and when i reboot, everything was gone, as if the data got wiped....
i see some broken apps so i geuss something happended with the ext partition
my sd-ext map is empty and i have this ext.tar in my nandroid map
wtf happened!?
shiyou,
You are having too many problems from the beginning. I posted some tips on your first thread, but never heard back. Also, a member recommended doing more research before going forward. The N1 is different from other phones as far as flashing roms.
I would recommend you do this assuming you have a working rom or working backup and sdcard backup. Depending what you have or don't have the below order may vary. Maybe someone can help us there:
1. Take your sd card out of phone--believe you said you have a backup--format it with sdformatter: http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/sd/download/sd_formatter20.html
You can dl manual also--mainly select full erase on and size adj on as format options.
Put your backup back on sdcard while still outside phone. Put card back in phone and boot into Amon recovery. Go thru the partition steps to get 1gb ext3 and 0swap.
At this point you need to have a working rom to boot into. If not other steps may be needed.
I use Titanium Backup to manage apps, the paid version. After I flash a new rom, I open TB, or get it from Market if not part of rom. Then I restore all apps with data. NOT system data. Then I delete any old rom apps and do a refresh and then backup all apps and data.
At some point you need to get rid of Rom manager and Clockwork and flash a fresh Amon_Ra 2.2.1 from his site: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=611829 Before flashing make sure the install recovery file from old revovery is deleted thru Root Explorer, see this link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=9414097#post9414097. You don't have to use adb, just Root Explorer. Change permission first to R/W.
You can push the 2.2.1 .img after, downloading to root of sdcard, with Terminal Emulator using these commands:
Open TE and type:
SU
at # type flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery-RA-passion-v2.2.1.img then hit enter. I usually check md5's with a file explorer. The recovery-RA-passion-v2.2.1.img part above should be the exact name of the img file you downloaded.
2. Before flashing an update to a rom wipe dalvik cache and cache in recovery
3. If flashing a new rom wipe Phone's System with Temasek's System Wipe zip 3X by flashing from recovery. It should be in your download folder.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=723844&page=1767
Then wipe Dalvik Cache and anything else that wasn't wiped with System Wipe zip 5X
4. You probably already know, but you can't restore a CWMod backup using Amon_RA or vice versa.
5. Read all the OP pages on the links I posted carefully
This is the way I been doing this for a long time--and rarely need any help or have problems. The system wipe is critical as old files can be left on phone even after a phone data wipe and flashing new rom.
Hope this helps and I haven't left anything out. Not a good typer. If I did--someone will correct me and some things are personal preference. But these have worked well for me.
BTW: If you have no good rom, you may want to dl the latest CM7 RC or nightly to pc and put it on sdcard after you format and put your sdcard backup from pc to phone. Then it is there to flash after card is ready and good recovery installed. You can always put the 2.2.1 on I mentioned after you get rest worked out. But, you gotta get off CWMod 3.0.
You should not use the beta Dark Tremor either, Would dl the the latest non beta.
Also, want the correct gapps for CM7 from OP page, and flashing order is rom/gapps/DT
Ken
I guess I was the member who recommended doing more research. So let me repeat:
I suggest leaving your phone alone and reading A LOT before you start doing something with it.
Yea, Sorry Jack
I was too lazy to go back and look--been a busy day and Fits is giving me a hard time on another thread
rugmankc said:
Yea, Sorry Jack
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nothing to be sorry for But indeed, I agreed with your point - someone who's looking for help rooting the phone and doing basic stuff for several days in a row, encountering a lot of problems, is most probably not ready for it, or not willing to read the guides.
You were right Jack on last thread. OP has now abandoned two threads he/she started and again asking for help on a CM7 thread.
No return to either with thanks and still looking for one magical answer, wondering why his phone don't work.
I gave enough advice for a dozen new users and over a year of flashing/backup expertise all in one post.
If he had done it right to begin with and followed some advice, he'd be running smooth. Card could be bad too, don't know.
I am done--
Ken
I love how you two are having this random conversation hahaha. Although I don't understand how the op did a nandroid backup and his phone wiped.. he mustve clicked wipe and confirmed it instead of nand backup. It's nearly impossible. I also decided (out of boredom) to look at his other thread.. Jack you said "Flash a new ROM, wipe your data, and try.
Repeat.
If the problems will still persist - they're in HW and you can't do anything about them." and what HE did: "i tried factory reset but didnt work..." lmfao you sir, are too nice jack! I'll give you two a thanks for the entertianment!
Well, rom development is slowing
Gotta do something
can't tell the same. 2 times i saved by nandroid due to bad flashing issue...

[Q] Rom/Kernal Help

ok ive been reading a few posts but cant make head nor tails of this rom/kernal stuff and cant find a guide to it in the stickys so i have come here to ask some seasoned memebers for help
I am Uk based and english speaker any help is welcomed.
1. At a guess what are the chances of bricking my device and is it fix's able
2. what is diffrence between Kernal and rom
3 in what order do i need to install kernal and rom
4. what are the best kernal's and rom's availible For - Gameing, phonecalls, texting, wifi connections and battery life
5.what will i need to backup on my phone before i install them and what program's are needed?
6. after installing if all has installed correctly can someone recomend some apps for my phone (and will i be able to use the google playstore still if not how do i get them)
Please can you help me out there seem to be 100s of roms/kernals
Rom/Kernel Help
Hi mazoshi,
I'm no super-guru but I'm happy to share my experiences. Ref your questions:
1. It is possible to brick your phone to varying degrees as evidenced by all the help requests for bricked phones, but IMHO, it's very unlikely as long as you follow the directions scrupulously and make sure you only flash ROMs/kernels that are known to be compatible.
2. The kernel is the low-level operating system, derived from Linux, that handles the low-level interface to the hardware and manages device resources (CPU, memory, peripherals, interrupts, etc). The kernel is mostly written in "C". A "ROM" is the whole ball of wax, usually including the kernel as well as the Android framework and apps, written in java, that provides the user interface and all the apps you see on your screen.
3. For installation, you'll need a firmware flashing program, like ODIN or Heimdall. You'll also need a USB cable for your phone. And, of course, you'll need compatible zips or tars to flash.
4. Common question that's difficult to answer. The best ROM, the best religion, the best political party and the best pizza are almost completely personal choices and depend on your expectations.
5. There are a number of "backup" programs that can back up your personal settings and data, e.g., Titanium backup. Note that these do NOT backup up the kernel and system stuff. You need to be rooted to do that. After root, you'll probably get ClockworkMod (CWM) which has a nice function to back up whole partitions, including the system stuff. There is a chicken-and-egg problem here though: You can only back up the system after you root, but after you root you've got a "new" system. I've never been able to figure out a way to do a complete backup of a stock system, i.e., to be able to restore to factory new state.
6. Like 4, apps are also a matter of personal chioce. There are zillions of apps on play.google. And yes, you can get to that after rooting but you'll have to manually install the Google apps package first. I don't know the latest, but a quick google search should locate many. They're usually called "gapps-something". They are supplied as a zip and can be installed with CWM.
Hope this helps.

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