Related
I have successfully used Nandroid to backup my phone. I wanted to know if it was possible to extracts the files and data out of the data.img that Nandroid gives? I read about the unyaffs tool, but was not able to get it working when I gave it data.img. Is this possible with unyaffs or any other method? Thanks.
the only way you might be able to do it is with unyaffs, but i personally have never tried(i am on a new computer and haven't even gotten adb working yet) so i am not gonna be much help. but if you look around for an answer you will find loads of threads about this and all of them end with "you need to use unyaffs"
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
Hello my name is P3Droid,
We (TBH) have a lot of experience in Motorola phones and hacking. This experience dates back to the Razr days.
Here is a word of caution. Do no delete apps from the System partition, I would suggest you only rename them to .bak. When Motorola pushes updates each of the files undergoes a hash check, if the file has been manipulated or is missing the entire update will fail.
Until a system only sbf or similar is released, unless you make a back up with bootstrap and recovery, you will eliminate your ability to take updates moving forward.
You can remove many of the stock apps without rooting just by using the built in app manager.
Those apps are in /data it is the apps that are in /system that count.
jimmydafish said:
Hello my name is P3Droid,
We (TBH) has a lot of experience in Motorola phones and hacking. The experience dates back to the Razr days.
Here is a word of caution. Do no delete apps from the System partition, I would suggest you only rename them to .bak. When Motorola pushes updates each of the files undergoes a hash check, if the file has been manipulated or is missing the entire update will fail.
Until a system only sbf or similar is released, unless you make a back up with bootstrap and recovery, you will eliminate your ability to take updates moving forward.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i take it that all the apps you can delete through app manager are on /data therefore are safe to delete right?
This should definitely be sticky'd.
franciscojavierleon said:
i take it that all the apps you can delete through app manager are on /data therefore are safe to delete right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes anything that you can delete through the application manager is okay to remove, those have no impact on the update process.
And to complete my thought above. When an update is released, and they are coming, then you need to just change the file names back to normal to take the update.
Sound to me like we ned an ap that lets toys select programs to rename and then can change then back when needed. Would make it alot easier. Ill look onto this...also if some one else can confirm this info I might stick it.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
I can confirm that what p3droid is saying is true for all recent Motorola devices, but the point is really that you won't know until an OTA update is released how they have written the updater script in the zip file.
We have been through this with releases for every phone since the Droid X and many people got caught out by it and were stuck until we released SBF files that could safely restore the stock configuration and allow updating to official release versions.
This brings up another important point about modding your phone at this stage in the cycle. Without a full SBF to recover with in the event of a problem that renders the phone unbootable or unable to access recovery, or if you haven't made a complete nandroid, you will be again be stuck and have to return your phone to AT&T/Motorola for warranty replacement. This is never good for anyone.
When we mod our phones against the wishes of the carriers and manufacturers, we should really take responsibility for those actions and not produce a mountain of bricked phones whose cost is passed along to everyone in the form of higher ETFs for smartphones and other ways.
So, until a full SBF is released of the current build, people should be very careful what they change or remove from their phone's system and/or NVM and radio.
I also tried to warn users about this in another thread that was locked before p3droid started this thread. We have watched hundreds or even thousands of users destroy their phones in myriad ways and helped many of them recover them by providing SBF files as a safety net. It's not fun and if it can be avoided it is to everyone's benefit to do so and only requires care and forethought.
Is there anyway we could make a backup of this partition for later use? would each user need to make one or would one for all users suffice?
Assuming a bootstrapped custom recovery is possible, and we know Koush is already working on it, then a nandroid backup of at least the system, userdata and cache partitions would be the first and best step to take. Also assuming that the bootloader is locked/signed and true recovery is not possible, then the boot image and kernel will not be able to be backed up or written to by the bootstrapped recovery. It is always best to make your own backup for your device and store it on the sdcard where you have easy access, but users have also been able to use someone else's nandroid backup to restore their device in many cases as well. The recovery will give you the option to restore each partition separately in the advanced options so that you won't be restoring someone else's data to your phone.
We at TBH have also been able to create our own update.zip files and SBF files to help users recover from various mishaps.
This was because we had access to both official and unofficial files and tools to accomplish those things.
We have no idea if that will be the case here and we will not likely have the device ourselves to work with given we are VZW users primarily.
Again, there are many variables here that are yet to be determined and modes of access to the various partitions and radio baseband will be different with this phone as opposed to previous Qualcomm chipset devices.
All of this means that at this stage extreme caution is advised and being overzealous with root access is very dangerous right now.
I suggest everyone that is rooted use TITANIUM BACKUP to deal with their bloatware issues. The pro version, which you will need, is only a few bucks and is worth it. TB allows you to 'freeze' bloatware apps, which to my knowledge just blocks it fro the system, but does not delete it. The apps you choose to freeze are also removed from the app tray - so no more clutter. This way when an update rolls around, you can run down the list and simply touch 'thaw' to bring those apps back to recognition. This seems like a much more efficient and easy way to go back and forth, rather than renaming the .apk's.
I apologize if someone already mentioned TB in this thread - I just skimmed quickly.
I deleted all the bloat apps using the app manager without root. They were gone!
I did a factory reset on the phone and *surprise* the apps were back!
The things that were not part of the system come back during reset. On the other hand, im ****ed because I went crazy and deleted some actual apps that the system will check. Yay me.
pwndrone said:
The things that were not part of the system come back during reset. On the other hand, im ****ed because I went crazy and deleted some actual apps that the system will check. Yay me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ouch. Might not work, but have you tried a hard reset?
We should make a list of what's safe to remove like we did for the Captivate. Might be helpful.
I did a full factory reset and those apps that weren't part of the system came back but stuff like the help center are still missing.
Hopefully there will be a way to load the stock firmware sometime in the future.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
Would an app like "Autostarts" work in this case?
Guys, I can't emphasize this enough: use Titanium Backup to freeze the apps rather than deleting them, it will make your life much easier.
does this apply to using different font files as well? I'd like to use a ttf font that's a little larger than DroidSans. if i rename and use a different font will that impact OTA updates or anything else for that matter? thanks!
before reading about "freezing" apps, i reset my atrix back to factory settings. i need help rooting my atrix again. it keeps me in "Waiting for Device" where before i had no problem rooting. and another thing, when i had reset back to factory settings...i still have superuser installed. do i uninstall superuser in order to gain root access again?
I have not rooted yet. My question is can we use freeze to turn off BlurAccounts or is it fully baked into the Rom?
Hi. I'm new to rooting and flashing ROM's. I have had a Samsung Captivate (Gingerbread) that I haven't been using for quite some time and I thought I might try to update it to KitKat. I have read that it would be important to back up the EFS file so that I can keep my IMEI info. I rooted my phone using the tutorial on these forums and tried to use EFS Pro, but was not able to get past "the device is not perm rooted". Various threads suggested changing adb status, but I could not find that information (though I was able to find the USB debugging selection). I know that the phone is rooted so I looked for an older copy of EFS Pro in case the newer versions had dropped support for the Captivate. I couldn't find one so I looked at other ways to back up the files, but most information was for other (newer) Samsung phones. I could not install Samsung Tools. I really don't want to proceed with installing KitKat before backing up the EFS information. How do I go about doing this? I have tried the search function on the forum for this device and couldn't find what I was looking for (or maybe I didn't understand the information). Any thoughts?
I hope flashing KitKat will be easier than this issue...
Thanks.
Curious D said:
Hi. I'm new to rooting and flashing ROM's. I have had a Samsung Captivate (Gingerbread) that I haven't been using for quite some time and I thought I might try to update it to KitKat. I have read that it would be important to back up the EFS file so that I can keep my IMEI info. I rooted my phone using the tutorial on these forums and tried to use EFS Pro, but was not able to get past "the device is not perm rooted". Various threads suggested changing adb status, but I could not find that information (though I was able to find the USB debugging selection). I know that the phone is rooted so I looked for an older copy of EFS Pro in case the newer versions had dropped support for the Captivate. I couldn't find one so I looked at other ways to back up the files, but most information was for other (newer) Samsung phones. I could not install Samsung Tools. I really don't want to proceed with installing KitKat before backing up the EFS information. How do I go about doing this? I have tried the search function on the forum for this device and couldn't find what I was looking for (or maybe I didn't understand the information). Any thoughts?
I hope flashing KitKat will be easier than this issue...
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could just manually backup your efs folder using a root explorer or through adb. Have that backup on your pc in case you lose your IMEI.
That being said, when it happens (which is fairly rare), a flash back to stock (KK4) usually fixes it and then you're fine to update/flash again.
Other EFS backup options would include:
1) EFS☆IMEI☆Backup by wanam >> his xda thread, his playstore listing.
2) [HOWTO]Comprehensive IMEI/EFS Backup lists two simple ways to permanently backup up IMEI on your phone. One is with adb, the other is with Terminal Emulator for those with rooted devices. The commands used are said to be based on "Samsung's built in backup." The thread is in the SGS3 forum, if nothing else is an excellent source of background information for backing up and restoring nvdata.
I tried to copy the efs folder using Root Browser because the adb method looked very involved. When I started Root Browser, it was able to see a Titanium backup that I had placed into the SD card even though I had formatted the SD card. I figured that the format didn't wipe the information so I proceeded to copy the efs folder over. However, after copying the folder, I stuck the card into my computer and did not see the folder and could not copy the folder over to my computer. Is it because the card is formatted differently than my computer or is it that the file is not compatible with Windows given that it is an Android folder?
Will copying the folder be enough for backing up? If it is this easy to restore the efs, why use EFS Pro? Is there something else with the folder that needs to be present in order to restore a phone that loses IMEI information?
Curious D said:
I tried to copy the efs folder using Root Browser because the adb method looked very involved. When I started Root Browser, it was able to see a Titanium backup that I had placed into the SD card even though I had formatted the SD card. I figured that the format didn't wipe the information so I proceeded to copy the efs folder over. However, after copying the folder, I stuck the card into my computer and did not see the folder and could not copy the folder over to my computer. Is it because the card is formatted differently than my computer or is it that the file is not compatible with Windows given that it is an Android folder?
Will copying the folder be enough for backing up? If it is this easy to restore the efs, why use EFS Pro? Is there something else with the folder that needs to be present in order to restore a phone that loses IMEI information?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have it on your SD card, it should be fine. The idea is to have it on something else than your device's internal memory in case something goes wrong and can't get it there.
As for efs pro, some devices can't manually backup like the Cappy or is not enough. But once again, it doesn't happen very often that you lose your IMEI.
Okay. That's great. I guess I can try my first ROM flashing to KitKat. Thanks.
Hi everybody,
hopefully someone here can answer a few questions for me.
I have a Samsung Galaxy 3 mini.
android version 4.4.2
kernel version 3.4.0-1670137
baseband version g730aucubng4
my service provider is AT&T
what I want to do is pretty simple, or so I thought.
I read this article ( https://www.androidpit.com/galaxy-s3-note2-memory-bump) about swapping your phone's internal and external storage so the thing doesn't get so full of apps etc. it runs like crap.
I thought "hey, I haven't rooted my phone yet for fear of loosing stuff, but it's old and slow and if it's that easy, why not"
I rooted it using kingo-root, but decided to use o-nandroid backup to create a backup before I did anything. I fallowed these instructions (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1620255/) but during the process of flashing the zip file I got a failure message and managed to wipe my memory loosing everything that wasn't on the external sd card.
anyway, to make a long story short, after 4 days of messing with different apps and trying, unsuccessfully, to do various tasks (mainly dealing with creating backups. using twrp, cwm, titanium backup) I think I've discovered the problem.
contrary to what I had read, my android device's boot-loader was not unlocked, or in fact unlockable.
I finally managed to create a backup using Safestrap. but now to my question.
with my bootloader locked, and working through Safestrap, is it possible to use something like the 11extsd2internalsd file from that first article to swap my two hard drives? or am I stuck, since I can't install new kirnels?
--now, someone is bound to say "hey, you should have searched xyz, there is a thread there about this exact thing". I thought I'd respond to that now and save them the trouble. I have spent the past 5 hours searching, googleing, and reading articles about this. so far, I have learned a lot, but I'm tired and quite frustrated with the whole endeavor.
so I thought I would try asking the experts if it's even possible to do what I originally wanted to do, or if I should just delete all these apps, unroot my phone and go back to deleting my pictures and text messages every other day to save space.
Thanks for having the patiance to read through my tale of woes, hopefully someone will be able to help me out and answer my question.
JM
You can swap internal storage with external SD by editing fstab.<device_name>.
Look, here is this file for my phone (yours will be little different) https://github.com/TeamCanjica/andr...dina/blob/cm-11.0/rootdir/fstab.samsungcodina
Just swap in places this code "voldmanaged=sdcard0"/"voldmanaged=sdcard1"
This file you can edit only after unpacking and repacking boot.img (you need to get ramdisk filesystem, more info and how to http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2036528).
For flashing boot.img (kernel) after making changes, your device must be rooted (minimum this) or have custom recovery which will let you flash zip package.
As I know, last step is to edit from /system/etc/permissions/platform.xml one line (more info http://trendblog.net/fix-kitkat-sd-card-write-restriction/ )