Database Develop

Updating after root

Forgive me if this has been asked before. I did search, but I couldn't seem to find an answer to this.
I have a dev edition model. I really want to root, but have been holding off because there are bugs with the current build of Lollipop and I'm kind of hoping Moto will release a 5.02 update soon to kill the memory leak and other issues. That being said, I have really been itching for root.
If I did root, what would I have to do to this phone to update it to the new version? Would I have to completely return to stock and wipe? Or could I ADB sideload? Seems like I was reading that you can't update at all when you're rooted, even if you disable root.
Without any idea how much longer it'll be before the next update, I'm finding it harder and harder to hold off on root, but I don't want to go through hell to get it back to stock and update it.
Thanks for any help and sorry if this has already been asked.

From what I understand, root is fine. It is installing a custom recovery that will stop you from getting the OTA. You can very easily undo root. As a matter if fact, you can pretty easily reinstall the stock recovery also.

diggitydogg said:
From what I understand, root is fine. It is installing a custom recovery that will stop you from getting the OTA. You can very easily undo root. As a matter if fact, you can pretty easily reinstall the stock recovery also.
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Thanks for the reply.
Most of the time, that's true. I have updated a lot of phones by simply unrooting, applying the update, and rooting again, or using ADB sideload and then just rooting. But from what I have been reading about the Moto X 2014, you have to completely restore it back to stock before doing anything, even if you just use the temp boot method to root.
Is that wrong? I can't seem to find any info that confirms either way.

I've installed custom recovery, how can I reverse it and install the original recovery for update?

One advantage of root is you'll have Titanium Backup, so even if you do have to do a full wipe before applying the update, you could just update it and restore everything back quickly using TiBu. With lollipop, apparently the update file checks for the entire system checksum as a whole instead of each file so any slight modification to the system will mostly require pure stock and this is the same even with the nexus. So yeah, you most likely have to wipe your device before updating. I'd say, wait till Xposed for Lollipop is out, its almost there, once it comes out go ahead and root it, it'll at least be worth the hassle then

If you're rooted with lollipop and want to take an OTA update you can flash stock recovery and the stock system image. At that point you should still have all apps/data and be able to take a OTA update. The recovery and system files should be the exact version you already have and of course anytime you flash realize you could lose data!

Steve-x said:
If you're rooted with lollipop and want to take an OTA update you can flash stock recovery and the stock system image. At that point you should still have all apps/data and be able to take a OTA update. The recovery and system files should be the exact version you already have and of course anytime you flash realize you could lose data!
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Right. All you need to do is flash the stock /system partition and also the recovery if you replaced it. I don't know why everyone's talking about having to wipe the entire phone with the all the stock images.

[Q] I357 Lollipop Interruption

Hello, I just today found out about the update to the Lollipop 5.0. I checked and attempted the download. It got all the way to the restart and install and then it stopped and instantly booted back up. It came up with the notification "Update Interrupted" or something very similar. I tried again after resetting the phone back to factory mode. It did the same thing. I have seen people have the problem of not enough storage but i had plenty. Especially after the factory reset. I know that this is an over wifi update and i am trying to understand why my phone isn't accepting it or why it isn't working. Thank you for any help you can offer.

Alan1727 said:
Hello, I just today found out about the update to the Lollipop 5.0. I checked and attempted the download. It got all the way to the restart and install and then it stopped and instantly booted back up. It came up with the notification "Update Interrupted" or something very similar. I tried again after resetting the phone back to factory mode. It did the same thing. I have seen people have the problem of not enough storage but i had plenty. Especially after the factory reset. I know that this is an over wifi update and i am trying to understand why my phone isn't accepting it or why it isn't working. Thank you for any help you can offer.
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If you have rooted or modified the system apps in any way then the update is going to fail. You have 2 options:
You can wipe your phone and start with a clean stock ROM; or
You can follow the guide to retain root on OC6. You don't have to be rooted for this method, but this method will allow you to update if you've modified your system.

Devo7v said:
If you have rooted or modified the system apps in any way then the update is going to fail. You have 2 options:
You can wipe your phone and start with a clean stock ROM; or
You can follow the guide to retain root on OC6. You don't have to be rooted for this method, but this method will allow you to update if you've modified your system.
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My system has been rooted before but it no longer has root access.
When you say wipe and start with a fresh rom, isnt that also the same as resetting the device?

Alan1727 said:
My system has been rooted before but it no longer has root access.
When you say wipe and start with a fresh rom, isnt that also the same as resetting the device?
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To explain a bit further, the way the update works is there's a program built into the OTA. This program checks the signature of all the system files on your phone against a database included in the OTA. If all the signatures match then the update will proceed, but if even 1 of the signatures doesn't match then the update will fail as you have experienced.
When you root your phone you are exploiting a weakness in some aspect of android that allows you to modify system files. Once you modify system files by rooting you change their signature. Even if you unroot, it is impossible to change the signatures back to what they originally were. This is the reason that even if you unroot the update will fail.
By resetting the device you are essentially deleting all the user apps and settings, the system files go virtually unchanged. So if you unroot, your signatures still don't match and when you factory reset the device the system files don't get touched so the signatures still won't match. The only thing you can do to get the signatures to match is to flash the NE3 full Odin package. This will completely wipe out our phone and install everything (the bootloaders, modems, system files, etc.) from scratch.
So like I said you have 2 options:
Follow the guide I linked to above; or
Flash the NE3 Odin package and take the OTA.
Either way you have to use Odin at some point.

[Q] Getting root back D959

I made a few stupid mistakes with my phone, and now I can't get root back. I was editing the mixer_paths.xml file to try and boost the audio output on the headphone jack, because frankly, the LG G Flex is incredibly quiet for whatever reason. I made a couple of changes to the file and then rebooted. The phone wouldn't reboot. I freaked out for awhile, but then realized I could still get into TWRP. I did, and I flashed dfuses stock rooted ROM. Cool, everything was working fine. The only thing wrong now was that the rom was an older firmware version, and I wanted to be on the newest. So I stupidly took the OTA updates. I know. Big mistake. After that I was going to make a backup in recovery, so I tried to reboot to recovery. Instead of rebooting to recovery, it factory reset my phone. Now stumproot says that my phone is already rooted, and it won't do anything, and SuperSu says that I don't have a su binary installed. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could possibly get root back? Thanks for your time.

I got it working. I was able to downgrade to jelly bean, and then re root the device. How do I now safely get back to kit kat though?

FULL system backup

I just received my SM-T815C this morning. My last tablet at one point "lost" it's /efs folder, creating all manor problems for me. I now understand that it's possible to back that up, but I hadn't done so when I lost it, and it took me forever to recover.
So now, as I begin my journey with my new SM-T815C, I'd like to start by making a FULL system backup of all directories before I eventually root and possibly install a TWRP. Does anyone have a step-by-step tutorial? I've Googled a bit, but most of the pages I found seem to talk more about Jelly Bean than Lollipop. I'm currently running 5.0.2, and I haven't done any rooting or installing of a custom recovery, but plan to do both eventually (if possible).

Of course it is possible to do a full backup of your whole system. For this, you must have a recovery menu customized. The only solution for you is to follow exactly this post to root your machine and to install the customized recovery .... http://forum.xda-developers.com/tab-s2/general/guide-root-tab-s2-t3205019
It's by this menu , you can do a complet backup of the system....You can chose microscard or usb for the backed up

January ota update help needed

OK I got the notification to update today it's MMB29S, I am on K. I am rooted but stock, unlocked using systemless root for root. I've always been rooted and expected it to fail and have to install manually but this time because I'm not rooted like the old way. So i downloaded and went to install to my surprise dead Android with the triangle didn't show but it went to custom recovery screen twrp. I just hit restart because I've never not had a fail and never seen it do this before. Well when it restarted I was not updated and still on K. I also for the life of me can't get it to redo the ota. Tried to clear system service in apps and recheck but nothing.
So my question is since I'm new to systemless root what should I have done when it went to custom recovery? So that way if I can get it to pop up again I can be updated. Thank you in advance for any help and it would be awesome if possible to update this way without having to manually do it.

My best guess, based on what Chainfire replied to me when I asked about OTA, is that because you're somehow rooted the OTA will refuse to install. He said that using the "unroot" function in v2.63 (and I suppose in subsequent versions) he was able to apply the OTA and then just had to re-root.
As to the OTA, I read in the long-distant past that once it's been provided to your device you sort of go to the back of the queue, and even pressing the "check for system update" button has no effect. One day your turn will come again. When it happens, before you press the "install now" button, use the unroot function, reboot, and give it another go.
And I would really appreciate it if you could report back on the success or failure, just so we all know - thanks...
And before I close... your alternative is just to download the full ROM from Google, unzip everything in sight (including the zip within the zip), copy system.img to a convenient folder, and use Fastboot to flash system. After that you'll need to re-root (simple flash) and when you reboot everything will be as it was, apart from the version and security update date. I did it myself to MMB29S a week or so ago.
But my lawyer advises me to advise you to take a full backup first and store it off your device before you do anything to your device - just in case, you know?

I will definitely reply if I get the update again in a few days. If it doesn't I'll probably do it manually. I was just really surprised I hadn't gotten the error, just so used to it. Thank you for the info though.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to install an OTA don't you need to be completely stock, including recovery?

If I'm not mistaken but since 4.3 (I'm probably wrong) if your rooted (before systemless root) when you try to the ota you will always get the dead Android because rooting changes the system files causing the update when it does is checks to think your system is corrupt.
Also it was really bad when people tried going from 5.x.x to 6.x even doing it manually some of us got bootlooped or when starting the phone up after updating manually saying system is corrupt but still starting up fine. Leaving like me having to completely clear out everything and installing the factory image just to not be corrupt and able to use Android pay.
Systemless root though I've not had a single problem and still able to use AP. And is also the first time in years I've gotten as far as I did with the OTA.

Rbh50815 said:
OK I got the notification to update today it's MMB29S, I am on K. I am rooted but stock, unlocked using systemless root for root. I've always been rooted and expected it to fail and have to install manually but this time because I'm not rooted like the old way. So i downloaded and went to install to my surprise dead Android with the triangle didn't show but it went to custom recovery screen twrp. I just hit restart because I've never not had a fail and never seen it do this before. Well when it restarted I was not updated and still on K. I also for the life of me can't get it to redo the ota. Tried to clear system service in apps and recheck but nothing.
So my question is since I'm new to systemless root what should I have done when it went to custom recovery? So that way if I can get it to pop up again I can be updated. Thank you in advance for any help and it would be awesome if possible to update this way without having to manually do it.
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These small ota's can be done with boot modifications because they don't include any boot.img changes and if they do then they just blanket overwrite what's already there. The only part that is checked is /system. However TWRP won't ever install an ota update for compatibility reasons. Even if you reflash the stock recovery then you'll fail the ota because when you installed TWRP it protected itself (by modifying /system) from being overwritten by the stock recovery which is what unmodded stock android will always do on boot by default. And there are 2 things the ota verification looks for when updating: 1. It looks for whether /system has been ever mounted as Read/Write. 2. It hash checks the /system, if it finds any mismatch it fails. As for the update not showing up again, the ota checker hides the update after a failure to stop from flooding the download server. If you want to extract the update zip you can look in /cache for the zip. But since you don't have an unmodded /system you might as well just download the newest factory image and manually flash the system.img

You can use Wug NRT, unroot with MMB29S provided in the NRT , then root.