Help Create Firmware backup

[Zarin1480]

Hey folks.

I have myself an Apollo phone on Telus here in Canada. We are of course, still limited to 2.1 through Kies, however I have upgraded to the Orange image of 2.2 from Europe, and it has been working OK for a while now. My GPS has never worked well. I have here now, a second Apollo phone from Telus with the original Telus 2.1 firmware.

Now, on to what I want to do. I want to pull the firmware from the 2.1 phone so I have a dump of Telus' original firmware around to re-flash my phone with a: in case I manage to get sick enough of the GPS issue to send it in, and b: so that when an official 2.2 is released for us here in Canada, I can reflash to Telus' again, and get the official update instead of using an imported image.

I'd love some advice on how to go about getting this image pulled off the phone - hopefully before she goes back home and takes her cell with her, adn starts installing all her own new apps etc. LOL

Thanks folks!

 

[barqers]

Hey folks.

I have myself an Apollo phone on Telus here in Canada. We are of course, still limited to 2.1 through Kies, however I have upgraded to the Orange image of 2.2 from Europe, and it has been working OK for a while now. My GPS has never worked well. I have here now, a second Apollo phone from Telus with the original Telus 2.1 firmware.

Now, on to what I want to do. I want to pull the firmware from the 2.1 phone so I have a dump of Telus' original firmware around to re-flash my phone with a: in case I manage to get sick enough of the GPS issue to send it in, and b: so that when an official 2.2 is released for us here in Canada, I can reflash to Telus' again, and get the official update instead of using an imported image.

I'd love some advice on how to go about getting this image pulled off the phone - hopefully before she goes back home and takes her cell with her, adn starts installing all her own new apps etc. LOL

Thanks folks!

Using ADB you can pull system folders. What I would do is run the following using adb:

adb pull /

This will pull all your folders.

 

[Zarin1480]

Using ADB you can pull system folders. What I would do is run the following using adb:

adb pull /

This will pull all your folders.

Sounds great, and ADB is installing as I type. I can see how the root folder backup would be helpful, having some Linux experience in my past. What I don't quite get, however, is restoring this backup to my phone. Will this also copy the IEMI? Will it also copy the phone's network and phone # settings, or is that locked in to the SIM? My device is unlocked, so how will that work? Will the unlock persist, or be erased if I restore from the copied image?

Finally, how does restoring the image work? Just load ADB on to the phone, and run a push? (ie. push everything that was backed up out to the / of my phone?)

I know I have a million questions, but the last thing I want to do is be stuck with a brick, and have to pay the recovery at the locak Telus shop

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

[barqers]

Sounds great, and ADB is installing as I type. I can see how the root folder backup would be helpful, having some Linux experience in my past. What I don't quite get, however, is restoring this backup to my phone. Will this also copy the IEMI? Will it also copy the phone's network and phone # settings, or is that locked in to the SIM? My device is unlocked, so how will that work? Will the unlock persist, or be erased if I restore from the copied image?

Finally, how does restoring the image work? Just load ADB on to the phone, and run a push? (ie. push everything that was backed up out to the / of my phone?)

I know I have a million questions, but the last thing I want to do is be stuck with a brick, and have to pay the recovery at the locak Telus shop

Thanks for the quick reply!

Haha, I understand your worries. By pulling "/" you'll pull /system /data and /cache all in one go. These are the three partitions that you need to worry about. when restoring, do NOT push anything but those three partitions.

/system, /data, and /cache are where all the firmware/apps are installed. So I believe if you pushed this to another phone, overwriting everything that was in the other phone, you would end up with an exact copy of the phone you pulled from.

So basically these are the commands I'd try:

adb pull /

Then to restore to another phone:

adb push /system

adb push /data

adb push /cache

Alternatively you can simply adb pull /system /data /cache from the other phone only.

Right now though, backing up firmware from the SG3 is relatively difficult in a sense. But I tried this on my friends phone that was stuck in a boot loop and it worked for him. But he then had an exact copy of my apps, my apps' data, my contacts, emails, text messages, etc.

So I made him factory reset

 

[Zarin1480]

Well, after a long vacation from working on my cell (ie. I was at work on board ship...) I am back...

I used adb pull / and got the whole shooting match off the other Galaxy phone here, but I was unable to push it to the flashed one. I would get permission denied at first.. I tried adb remount but that did not work, and I had to use the adb shell command to manually remount system as rw. After this, I was then able to write to the system partition, but only one file sucessfully copied. After that, it just hung there, and would not complete the process.

I'm now using a 2.2 image I found on samfirmware, which seems to be OK, but I would still love to get back to the default Telus firmware so I can use KIES to upgrade to the TELUS 2.2....

Thanks for any other ideas