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Perplexing circularity

pwabrahams

pwabrahams

Well-Known Member
I would like to root my Moto E 2nd Edition. The standard advice is to do a nandroid backup first. But it seems that to do such a backup, at least using TWRP, I already need to have a rooted device. So how can I do a Nandroid backup without having rooted my device?
 
Hey, @pwabrahams, I think we discussed much of this in here:


But the gist/bottom line is that some devices (like the Nexus line) will allow you to install or run a custom recovery without having previously rooted.

You can do this on devices that have unlocked bootloaders that allow either the running of fastboot boot or fastboot flash or otherwise allow you to replace the stock recovery or run a bootable image file.

For devices that cannot do the above, you need to find an exploit to root and then run/invoke the custom recovery to take a Nandroid backup. That Nandroid backup will obviously backup your device as of the state that it currently exists when it was launched (i.e., with temporary root (i.e., temporary root privileges without having install the root binaries) or full root).

The chicken and egg scenario here is simplified when you know what options you have are:

1. If you cannot run/install a custom recovery without root, then you obviously need to first have/get root

2. If can run/install a custom recovery without root, then that's all the better: you'll have a base/stock copy of your system when you take a Nandroid backup.

The goal of taking a Nandroid backup is to have the ability to restore your device to a known, working state should something go awry (i.e., from using your root powers to tweak something on your device).

Hope that helps!

:)
 
When I rooted my XPE, I used fastboot to flash TWRP recovery.
When flash finished, I unplugged phone and booted into TWRP and made a Stock unrooted backup.
I then used TWRP to flash SuperSU update zip to complete the rooting process.
The idea is that if you want to return to stock, restore the stock unrooted backup then use fastboot to flash the stock recovery image.
 
Well. I got almost all the way. I finally managed to get to the recovery menu. The way I did it was to go into fastboot mode with POWER/VOLDOWN. Then using VolUp and VolDown, I went to RECOVERY MODE (- VolUp and Power (pressing and holding them simultaneously and in various other sequential combinations until I finally got to the Recovery Menu (reboot system now, apply update from sdcard, etc.) This is a very useful procedure to know in any case and it took me a long time to discover it from the available descriptions.

Now the problem. I chose Apply update from SDcard and I got to a screen that says "Choose a package to install:", indicating a directory of /data/meda/0. Under that I listed not the directories on the SD card but the directories in the phone's internal memory. The package I wanted to install was on the SD card. Fortunately, using a USB connection I managed to transfer the file UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.76-20160630161323.zip, which I had downloaded, to the Android directory in internal storage. I was then able to get to it and update from it -- or attempting to. But having painfully gotten all that way, I was knocked out of the box by the message "failed to verify update signature".

How can I get past this?

By the way, I'm posting this under a slightly different name because my original account has been blocked because of email problems (messages from the forum kept getting bounced for no obvious reason).
 
Jfalls63 said:
Sounds like you were in stock recovery and not TWRP.
Click to expand...
According to "about phone", I have a "Moto E (2nd generation) with 4G LTE). I'm sure I've unlocked the bootloader because the phone warns me about it every time I start up. As to stock recovery versus TWRP, I'm pretty sure I did install TWRP because when I start the phone for the first time after my sojourn in bootloader-land, it tells me, one by one, that it's optimizing all 63 of my apps.

But even if I'm wrong about all of that, how could I have gotten as far as I did, including the attempt to start up the update -- which seems to have succeeded except for the signature verification. I tried several versions of UpdateSuperSU from various online sources, including SuperSU-v2.56-20151030013730.zip and UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.76-20160630161323.zip, but all of them gave the same error.
 
Hey Paul,

Did the screen look similar to this?

13000115_704777549662641_5990866451407856210_n.jpg

​
If not, then you were, as @Jfalls63 indicated, still in the stock recovery.

Can you (exactly) tell us how you flashed or otherwise install TWRP?

​
 
You were right -- I was still in stock recovery. But my attempts to install TWRP again encountered this -- which I think is the same problem I had earlier:


fastboot flash recovery twrp-3.0.2-0-surnia.img
< waiting for device >

And it waits forever.
 
When you type and enter the command
fastboot devices
Does it return with your SN showing that fastboot is communicating with your device?
 
Ah, that means you probably need the fastboot USB drivers that work for your specific device.

A quick Google search for "Moto E 2nd Edition fastboot usb drivers" gave me these two hits on the Moto web sites:


So, I'm guessing you need "Motorola Device Manager"...(dunno, it's been a while since I've hooked-up my Droid X)
 
scary alien said:
Ah, that means you probably need the fastboot USB drivers that work for your specific device.

A quick Google search for "Moto E 2nd Edition fastboot usb drivers" gave me these two hits on the Moto web sites:


So, I'm guessing you need "Motorola Device Manager"...(dunno, it's been a while since I've hooked-up my Droid X)
Click to expand...

Yuck! Motorola Device Manager is only available for Windows and Mac, and I'm running Ubuntu.
 
Paul Abrahams said:
Yuck! Motorola Device Manager is only available for Windows and Mac, and I'm running Ubuntu.
Click to expand...

and I get this from the updater:
android-tools-adb is already the newest version.
android-tools-fastboot is already the newest version.

Also:
pwa@Aspire-E1-731:~/Downloads$ fastboot devices
pwa@Aspire-E1-731:~/Downloads$ adb devices
List of devices attached
TA39706VP6 device

So fastboot can't find the phone but adb can.
 
Ah, try doing a:

sudo fastboot devices​

and let us know what that says.

Linux is much more tolerant of USB connectivity than Windows it, but often needs root privileges for USB access.
 
No luck:

root@Aspire-E1-731:/home/pwa/Downloads# fastboot devices
root@Aspire-E1-731:/home/pwa/Downloads# adb devices
List of devices attached
TA39706VP6 device

(Side comment: for this kind of work I open a second tab in bash and put it in superuser mode, thus avoiding all those sudo's.)
 
Your device must be in fastboot/bootloader mode for fastboot to respond/work.

adb can be used in "normal" / "regular" Android provided you have USB debugging turned on and permission granted.

adb can also be used when a custom recovery is running, although you sometimes have to explicitly disable MTP in the Mounts option/function.

Try putting your device in fastboot / bootloader mode by doing an "adb reboot-bootloader" and then try the fastboot devices command (and/or the sudo fastboot devices command).
 
Success at last!! Man, this quadrille has very complicated steps, and I'm not sure I remember correctly everything I did. But the key step, I think, was to reboot the bootloader from fastboot mode when everything else was in place.

Now that I have the correct recovery screen, I still have to install the rooting package. I'll post again when I've done that.

Update: It seems to have worked, and the messages indicate that I AM NOW ROOTED!!!! Hurray!
 
Now I'd like to figure out how to propagate what I've learned so that others can benefit from it. Problem is, of course, that I don't remember it exactly, but I think the key unobvious step was restarting the bootloader on the phone from fastboot mode.
 
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