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Root Eris gets official booloader unlock support (*yawn*)

Cool...I'll have something for you right after work, Scotty.

I try flashing it on my Eris first and try making a Nandroid backup and flashing a .zip file, too.

Catch ya later! :)

(happy Friday!!!)
 
scary alien said:
I try flashing it on my Eris first and try making a Nandroid backup and flashing a .zip file, too.
Click to expand...

Flashing a ROM will overwrite your "recovery in boot" (but the flashing operation will succeed and not interfere with the currently booted "recovery").

I'm pretty sure you know that, though. Just thought I'd point it out for anybody else reading this.

You could also consider diddling the nandroid script so that it backs up and restores the recovery partition (in addition to boot).

eu1
 
erisuser1 said:


Flashing a ROM will overwrite your "recovery in boot" (but the flashing operation will succeed and not interfere with the currently booted "recovery").

I'm pretty sure you know that, though. Just thought I'd point it out for anybody else reading this.

You could also consider diddling the nandroid script so that it backs up and restores the recovery partition (in addition to boot).

eu1
Click to expand...

I'll make a note to hard un-set the --norecovery switch to force a backup of the recovery partition in the nandroid-mobile.sh script (I believe the script will auto-identify the partitions to be restored based on the contents of the backup directory (yep, just checked the code)).

Thanks!
 
looking forward to testing this out :)

also,we got a reply on the thread scary linked above: xda-developers - View Single Post - Problem: does not boot and does not recovery

he didint say anything on the thread,but he did follow me on twitter and retweet my commend to htcdev. so i am to assume that he saw doogalds post,followed it,and came here from eu1s comments,read thru this thread,and figured it out for himself.

id say a high 5 is in order :D one more back into service :cool:
 
Well, bummer...I had a nice, long post ready to go while I was soft-booting the new recovery image to test it.

The Nandroid backup fails because there's no "sh" shell (and you can't adb shell either)--the "sh" shell is symlinked to busybox (a 735kb file that I redacted).

Gonna boot into "normal" Android and see if I can grab a "regular" su or sh binary and try to repack things.

Things are already very tight and I've cut a ton of stuff out...

I'll be back in a little bit...I've got to exercise first so I can eat so I can finish this stuff ;) :).

Thanks for your patience, guys!
 
There is a sort of broader topic lurking along the edges of the latest turn in this thread, which is this:

Configuring the partitioning on the phone any way you damn well please.

Well, not for everything - it's a pretty good idea to leave the bootloader and radio alone. :D

This would solve the problems for folks that (a) developed bad blocks in their boot partition, and as a result can no longer install certain ROMs due to lack of space, or (b) developed bad blocks in misc, or (c) allow people to steal space from cache in order to put it to use in either system or userdata ( see the Eris flash memory layout here ).

I think the reason that it hasn't been done to date is because once you "soft partition" a phone via kernel boot arguments, you make that partitioning scheme incompatible with the bootloader's ideas about where partition boundaries are - so using RUUs or PB00IMG.zip files could wreak havoc with that phone.

The other reason is that - because you need to pass partitioning values to every kernel during boot** - is that not only would your recovery boot need to be customized, you would need to fix up boot partitions during every ROM install as well.

The bits and pieces to do that exist - Koush's kernel installer tool does exactly that (unpacks the current boot, puts the new kernel in the unpack area, and repacks and flashes the boot partition), so kanging that behavior into /sbin/recovery for ROM installs would let you add the needed custom boot arguments to perform soft-repartitioning compatible with however the phone's owner wanted it done.

The conversions process would be a little tricky, too - for instance, when a nandroid restore operation takes place, it doesn't just perform a raw image file copy to /system and /data - it actually mounts the yaffs2 file system(s), and performs a recursive erase ( rm -rf /<mount_point>/* ), followed by file-by-file restores via the "unyaffs" utility. So, at the moment in time that the partitioning was changed, you'd probably need the mtdtools to perform erases starting from the new partition boundaries (an empty yaffs2 filesystem has no formatting at all - erasing all pages in a partition intended for yaffs2 use is the logical equivalent of "formatting the file system")

Anyhow - you can see that there is a fair level of effort to put it all together; for the Eris (at this stage in its' life), I'm not sure it is worth the trouble.

eu1


** Judging from certain message strings in the HTC hboot*.nb0 images files, it appears that it has a facility to re-partition the flash memory somehow. To my knowledge, the way that someone gains access to this capability is not publicly known (outside of HTC, that is). It would be better to do things that way, as you wouldn't have to jump through any hoops with boot arguments to the kernel.
 
Well guys, I've been at this for a while now, and I'm unable to do anything useful unless I keep the busybox installed :( :confused: :mad:.

That's a rather large file and tips the size of the package well above anything else I could think of removing that would still allow basic things to be done.

I've tried using the smallest image files in the res/images folder, deleting the following out of /sbin:

Code: 
    543 apps2sd*
  15373 bart*
 428664 e2fsck*
  12645 fix_permissions*
 316528 mke2fs*
 346680 parted*
  16047 sdparted*
   8035 switchrom*
 303212 tune2fs*
   4549 utility*

as well as halving the size of the 60kb nandroid-mobile.sh script. Doing all this but leaving the busybox in still leaves an image file of 3139584 bytes--too large by far.

I'll try just doing a flash of a .zip with busybox removed since that would at least allow one to flash the MTD Nuke .zip file and a subsequent ROM.

Be back in a few...
 
sa,

An alternative would be to put spare bits onto your SD card and then define a oneshot service in init.rc (a script) that mounts the SD card, copies the spare bits someplace into /, and chmod/chowns them appropriately. The ramdisk mounted at / (the root file system) will have plenty of room for them.

If they cannot be dropped into a location that is already in the PATH of the init process, you might need to create symlinks.

Kind of a clunky implementation, but what the heck - it's for emergencies.
 
Okay guys, here's what I've ended-up with:

1. the attached recovery is 2,598,912 bytes...I'm hoping that the 2,560kb size referenced in eu1's earlier link reflects 1024-byte blocks (i.e., a "true" "k" ;) :)).

2. I had to remove the busybox, the adb daemon, and all of the fles referenced in the previous post to get it to this size. Apparently, sh is symlinked to /sbin/busybox. I tried installing just a plain, old sh binary in /sbin/sh, but that didn't work. I tried replacing the busybox binary with the sh binary (I cat'd over it) to no avail--maybe I'm missing something here, but was unable to get it to work.

3. this means no adb shell access, no executing any function that relies on a shell for functioning (i.e., Nandroid backups or restores and wiping Davlik-cache (Wipe data/factory reset and Wipe cache still work)

4. Flashing .zip files works just fine and so does toggling USB-MS mode. I flashed MTD Inspect, rootme.zip, and xtrSENSE5.0.1.zip and it booted-up perfectly.

5. Here's the file sizes and MD5 checksums:

scaryalien@scaryalien-Satellite-L655:~/Downloads/unpackwork$ ll tiny*
-rw-r--r-- 1 scaryalien scaryalien 2598912 2012-02-24 22:38 tiny-eris-recovery.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 scaryalien scaryalien 2583358 2012-02-24 23:21 tiny-eris-recovery.zip
scaryalien@scaryalien-Satellite-L655:~/Downloads/unpackwork$ md5sum tiny*
c6bcd8ebe4afc87c1dff210f5811681f tiny-eris-recovery.img
7884a69a305c01ef8969130ebcaa5467 tiny-eris-recovery.zip

6. Now, I only tried soft-booting this .img file--I did not flash it to the boot partition or even to the recovery partition (I'll leave that fun for Scotty, assuming that I didn't exceed the size of the /boot partition in the .img file I made).

I'm hoping that this would be most useful for flashing ErisMTDNuke.zip... I don't like that you can't adb shell into recovery, but I'm not sure how to get around that...

Anyway, that's all I got for now...

Cheers!

edit: oh, other stuff that won't work either: the reboot and power-off functions.
 

Attachments

erisuser1 said:
sa,

An alternative would be to put spare bits onto your SD card and then define a oneshot service in init.rc (a script) that mounts the SD card, copies the spare bits someplace into /, and chmod/chowns them appropriately. The ramdisk mounted at / (the root file system) will have plenty of room for them.

If they cannot be dropped into a location that is already in the PATH of the init process, you might need to create symlinks.

Kind of a clunky implementation, but what the heck - it's for emergencies.
Click to expand...

Thanks, eu1, just now saw this post...

I might play with something like that later this weekend...I figured the efforts tonight was enough for proof-of-concept.

Cheers!

(now on to my GNex project...:p)
 
well,i tried to play with this some this mornin. first issue: eris is no longer recognized by my pc in fastboot. wtf? :confused: checked my sensation and rezound and theyre both still there,so i dont believe there was a sudden driver failure :eek:

being impatient i tried to install my PB00IMG in hboot. hung at parsing... PB00IMG for like half an hour :mad:

i had simply renamed scarys image "boot" and packed it up with an android info document. i used the same android info that i used for the other experiments:
Code: 
ModelID: DESI****
ModelID: PB001****
ModelID: PB00100
CIDNUM: 11111111
CIDNUM: VZW__001
hbootpreupdate: 3
MainVer: 2.42.0.0

note that i have not done anything yet with the tiny recovery or the boot.img.

the key differences:
1)installed rom.zip as PB00IMG overtop of 1.49.0000 s-on hboot. last time i had fastboot flashed 1.51 overtop of 1.49.2000 s-off. doesnt seem like it should matter,but maybe it does? :confused:
android info from rom.zip(extracted directly from htc's hboot RUU):
Code: 
CIDNUM:11111111
modelid: PB0010000
cidnum: VZW__001
cidnum: UTSI_001
mainver: 2.42.0.0
hbootpreupdate:12

2)this time i am on the v3 leak,so the radio is not the most current. doesnt seem like it should matter,as the hboot flashed and unlocked successfully. but maybe im wrong?

any thots?

im off to work,but ill defiantely mess with this some more when i get home. i am quite disturbed/iritated that fastboot isnt working :mad:
 
Scotty,

I had that fastboot issue last week when we started playing with all of this... I even ended-up moving to an old computer that I knew I would work (and it did). When I went back to my laptop later on, it worked just fine, so I'm not sure what it was, either.

Maybe try some cable disconnects and/or restart the Eris in fastboot mode afterwards and/or a reboot of your PC... I'm betting it will mysteriously "come back".

I was speculating that my issues were because I have USB drivers for Motorola (DX), Samsung (GNex), and my Eris and I had previously been using connected with my GNex--or it simply was just an out-of-sync connection where I connected my USB cable to my Eris after it was in fastboot USB mode (I'm usually connected first before booting into fastboot).

Good luck!
 
*giggle* :D

simple PC reboot fixed the eris fastboot issue,so i tried to run my PB00IMG file from earlier as an RUU. again hung at info parsing... so finally i pulled the plug. after that,no more fastboot connectivity :mad:

this time i was able to close the command window,pull the battery for a few seconds,and reboot. when i went back to fastboot,and opened a new cmd window,fastboot was fixed.

one other strange issue i found: pushing 'send' in hboot did not take me to fastboot :confused:

i could select recovery,so i did that and then rebooted with the stock recovery menu. i cant remember if 'send' took me to fastboot the first time(when i fastboot flashed the 1.51 from s-off)... pretty sure it did. wonder if the android info document is at fault??? its the only thing i can think of,as the file i fastboot flashed was one i pulled from the same rom.zip that i just flashed in hboot.

well,anyway, i repacked scarys tiny recovery renamed to "boot" with the same android info from rom.zip.

this time it worked!
Code: 
C:\Users\Scott>[COLOR="Red"]fastboot devices[/COLOR]
HT9CEHG00119    fastboot

C:\Users\Scott>[COLOR="Red"]fastboot oem rebootRUU[/COLOR]
...
OKAY [  0.024s]
finished. total time: 0.025s

C:\Users\Scott>[COLOR="red"]cd c:\mini-adb_eris[/COLOR]

c:\mini-adb_eris>[COLOR="red"]fastboot flash zip PB00IMG-rescue-recovery[/COLOR]
       sending 'zip' (2523 KB)... OKAY [  0.592s]
                 writing 'zip'... INFOzip header checking
INFOzip info parsing...
INFOchecking model ID...
INFOchecking custom ID...
INFOchecking main version...
INFOstart image[boot] unzipping & flushing...
INFO[RUU]UZ,boot,0
INFO[RUU]UZ,boot,42
INFO[RUU]UZ,boot,94
INFO[RUU]UZ,boot,100
INFO[RUU]WP,boot,0
INFO[RUU]WP,boot,40
INFO[RUU]WP,boot,80
INFO[RUU]WP,boot,100
OKAY [  2.738s]
finished. total time: 3.331s

c:\mini-adb_eris>[COLOR="red"]fastboot reboot[/COLOR]
                     rebooting...
finished. total time: 0.024s

c:\mini-adb_eris>

fastboot rebooted,and voila,up popped recovery :D
-wiped data/factory reset (fine)
-wiped dalvik cache (failed)
-flashed flashback to stock rom (fine)
-booted successfully. verified 2.41.605.6 :)

guys,i think this will work for the "only goes into RUU mode" situation. we need some more brickers!

is there anything else we might wanna try?

tiny rescue recovery:
PB00IMG-rescue-recovery.zip
md5: a2f3b8007df147bed7247efa2920a513
PB00IMG-rescue-recovery.zip

last and not least,i decided to tweet htcdev again: https://twitter.com/#!/scotty1223/status/173546439866195969
 
Hey Scotty I followed the process to the letter however after I install the rescue recovery zip everything looks good except that when I reboot and try to launch recovery it simply keeps bootlooping. Droids on skateboards and reboot which is none stopping. That is the original problems when I accidently wrote the wrong nv items. I have the display on the fastboot screen as UNLOCK but S-ON. can you provide me any pointers. I have had this phone for the longest but dont use so I could try anything you may suggest. I hope you reply soon. thanks.
 
obonilla30 said:
Hey Scotty I followed the process to the letter however after I install the rescue recovery zip everything looks good except that when I reboot and try to launch recovery it simply keeps bootlooping. Droids on skateboards and reboot which is none stopping. That is the original problems when I accidently wrote the wrong nv items. I have the display on the fastboot screen as UNLOCK but S-ON. can you provide me any pointers. I have had this phone for the longest but dont use so I could try anything you may suggest. I hope you reply soon. thanks.
Click to expand...

obonilla30,

Wow, I see you signed-up here quite a while ago! :)

Good to hear from you and I'm betting Scotty will hopefully be along soon.

Cheers!

edit: see, I told ya! :) ;)
 
just to make sure we are on the same page:
-you downloaded scarys tiny recovery image,
-renamed it "boot",then packed it up with the android info document from the original "rom.zip" for the 1.51 hboot
-installed it as an RUU in fastboot as i did in the prior post

remember,the trick to this is that were replacing the boot image with a recovery image instead. since your phone is simply rebooting,im assuming the boot partition is the same as it was before... maybe you left the image named "recovery" so it installed it in the recovery partition?

also,since youre trying this,are we correct to assume you are not able to install a normal recovery in the normal recovery partition and boot to it? some more details of what happend,and what youve done would be helpful :)

last and not least,what do you mean you "accidently wrote the wrong nv items"?

if you can provide a copy/paste of your cmd window while youre trying this,it may help us figure out what went wrong :)
 
scotty85 said:
just to make sure we are on the same page:
-you downloaded scarys tiny recovery image,
-renamed it "boot",then packed it up with the android info document from the original "rom.zip" for the 1.51 hboot
-installed it as an RUU in fastboot as i did in the prior post

remember,the trick to this is that were replacing the boot image with a recovery image instead. since your phone is simply rebooting,im assuming the boot partition is the same as it was before... maybe you left the image named "recovery" so it installed it in the recovery partition?

also,since youre trying this,are we correct to assume you are not able to install a normal recovery in the normal recovery partition and boot to it? some more details of what happend,and what youve done would be helpful :)

last and not least,what do you mean you "accidently wrote the wrong nv items"?

if you can provide a copy/paste of your cmd window while youre trying this,it may help us figure out what went wrong :)
Click to expand...


Scotty, Scary Alien, I am sorry I did not followed up on the thread when you assisted me regarding the issue. I have been traveling all over on business and finally I made it back home. I am willing to send you this phone if you wish so that you can perhaps find a solution and help anyone else that might be in the same situation I have been. You do not need to return the phone if you do not want. Please PM me for details where to send it. Thanks in advance guys.
 
obonilla30 said:
Scotty, Scary Alien, I am sorry I did not followed up on the thread when you assisted me regarding the issue. I have been traveling all over on business and finally I made it back home. I am willing to send you this phone if you wish so that you can perhaps find a solution and help anyone else that might be in the same situation I have been. You do not need to return the phone if you do not want. Please PM me for details where to send it. Thanks in advance guys.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the nice reply, obonilla30...no worries about the delay :).

The phone's probably in better hands with Scotty since he's done this stuff first-hand with his phone, so I'll let him reply and/or PM you as needed.

Cheers and thank you again for getting back with us.
 
Great still waiting for address to send this device. Thanks in advance for all the personal tech support you and scary alien provide to the community.
 
obonilla30 said:
Great still waiting for address to send this device. Thanks in advance for all the personal tech support you and scary alien provide to the community.
Click to expand...

my apologies! ive worked late the last couple days and had completely forgotten about it :o

sending pm now
 
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