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Root What the OTA means to me?

T

turbomentor

Well-Known Member
Rooted with Stock ROM.

OTA downloaded on it's own (grrrr) and keeps periodically trying to install itself. It gets stuck on recovery and I simply reboot and I'm back to normal. Have a few questions..

Given my setup, do I want/need the OTA?
What exactly does the OTA improve/fix?
Assume at this point the only way to get the OTA is to install a ROM with the OTA incorporated in it?
Assume I DON'T want the OTA...how can I just...get rid of it off my phone? I guess I'd have to locate the zip and delete it (which probably won't stop my phone from downloading it again).

Thanks in advance.
 
My phone was rooted as well. Now the update keeps downloading, and then automatically rebooting the phone. This leaves me with an unusable phone with an exclamation point image on it. I have to actually remove the battery and then reboot to use my phone again.

This is really aggravating. Is there a way to stop this from happening at all?
 
in a word,no.

if you want to run a stock rom,youre going to have to either accept OTAs,or deal with their constant pestering. you can rename a file in system/etc/security called "otacerts.zip" that will keep the OTA from installing,but youll still have to deal with the constant pestering and downloading.

IMO OTAs are good. they make refinements to the code to smooth it out and polish it,and provide you with a better user experience. plus they sometimes give you new radios,wich can make your data and phone signals stronger,faster,smarter.

there will be roms based on the OTAs as they happen. you could just keep flashing these rooted OTA roms as they happen,but then you wont get the benefits of the new radio.

there are 2 good ways to get the new radio and bootloader.
1)run an ruu(wipes data)
2)accept an OTA(doesnt wipe data)

my advice would be: reinstall your stock recovery and accept the OTA. yes,this will break root,but its no biggie. just temporarily or permanenty install your recovery after the OTA and reroot. thats the beautiful thing about htc dev,youre not going to all of a sudden get locked out and not be able to re-root ;)

i personally would not even bother permantly installing recovery if you arent going to use it frequently to make backups and install roms. you can temporarily boot your recovery of choice into the phones memory with the fastboot command: fastboot boot <recovery name>.img

stock recovery is here,if you need it:
PH98IMG_Vigor_recovery_1.02.605.6.zip
md5 80d86eae673c1da1370d0f74e08449c8
Multiupload.com - upload your files to multiple file hosting sites!
 
Its more of pain to get rid of it then just take it and re-root. I would take it and then re-root if a Custom ROM is not your thing.
 
scrosler said:
Its more of pain to get rid of it then just take it and re-root. I would take it and then re-root if a Custom ROM is not your thing.
Click to expand...

Scott I've followed your work and love it. I've just been time limited lately and haven't been able to properly research the right ROM for me. I like Clean ROM but some of the "bloat" is stuff I use...and like I said, I need to go to your website and see how I can use your ROM but get the apps I like (I personally LOVE NFL Mobile!)

In any case...to summarize: I need to first download and flash the stock recovery, then allow the OTA to take place. This will Un-Root my phone, but NOT lock the bootloader (as I understand it). Even it it does lock the bootloader, no biggie, I saved the original unlock key.

So after accepting the OTA, then re-root by re-flashing a custom recovery (I used Amon-Ra last time) or possibly even a custom ROM (say...Clean ROM!).

I'm a wuss when it comes to monkeying around with my $300 phone, so if I have these steps correct, I'll have at it. Just want to be sure...

Thanks again for all your dev work.
 
Thanks for the input and links

Some questions, if you got a moment:

1) I try and accept the OTA update, but my phone just reboots into this exclamation point icon, and never goes any further. The only way to recover is to pull the battery, replace, and reboot back to pre-update.

2) How does one "flash a recovery" on the rezound? Last time I used recovery was with my OG Droid, and that was as simple as installing ROMManager and having it auto-install Clockwork. I've not tried this same route on the Rezound. Would such a route be advised? Is the recovery installer something I can just get from the Market? To be honest, I actually looked for links on just this subject, but every mention I could find of "flash a recovery" said, well, just that - seemed to take for granted that the user knew exactly how to do that already, and in this case, I don't.


I've already unlocked and run the perma-root batch linked elsewhere. I was hoping it'd be as simple as re-running that post-update, but A) the update won't even install for me now, and B) I fear it won't be that easy regardless.

Thanks in advance for any assistance!
 
To install a recovery, assuming your PC can see your phone (HTC PC drivers are installed) and that you have USB enabled on the phone and in Developer mode, you have 2 choices:

permanent install if you're going to be doing a lot of ROM installs:
fastboot flash recovery <recoveryName>.img

temp install i.e a one-time recovery execution:
fastboot boot <recoveryName>.img

fastboot is an Android SDK tool and must reside in the same directory as a few other files (not sure they're required by fastboot but definitely handy to have):
adb.exe
AdbWinApi.dll
AdbWinUsbApi.dll

The recovery file should also reside in that same directory when you run fastboot.

One thing I know you can do when you get the red triangle with the "!" is to hold volume up + power until the recovery screen comes up. From there you can reboot or whatever.
 
thornev said:
To install a recovery, assuming your PC can see your phone (HTC PC drivers are installed) and that you have USB enabled on the phone and in Developer mode, you have 2 choices:

permanent install if you're going to be doing a lot of ROM installs:
fastboot flash recovery <recoveryName>.img

temp install i.e a one-time recovery execution:
fastboot boot <recoveryName>.img

One thing I know you can do when you get the red triangle with the "!" is to hold volume up + power until the recovery screen comes up. From there you can reboot or whatever.
Click to expand...

Awesome. Perfect! Thanks.

I'm used to clockwork, but I don't see it mentioned much around this forum anymore. What would you recommend?
 
Hah! I tried that Vol+Power button trick to show the recovery message after I got the exclamation point, and it seems the OTA is immediately failing because I uninstalled the stock Blockbuster app. Interesting.

My current recovery just says "Android System Recovery (3e). Would flashing a better one and a custom rom be a more efficient way of using the phone? I've only ever used Stock on the Rezound, but I was a loyal CM7 user on my OG Droid.
 
phasmaphobic said:
I'm used to clockwork, but I don't see it mentioned much around this forum anymore. What would you recommend?
Click to expand...
I don't know the status of Clokworkmod now, but I've read in other forums that it has problems with Gingerbread (aka Android 2.3.4 + HTC Sense) on the Rezound. I use Amon Ra v3.13. It has a lot more options than the stock recovery, but I'm not sure those options will help you any better than with what you've already discovered. Also, I've read that the OTA will fail if you don't have the stock recovery on your phone. I manually installed the OTA so I cannot verify that claim.

I'm surprised that the OTA would fail because you're missing the Blockbuster app (but then maybe not... I've heard the OTA checks a lot of stuff just to be safe that it doesn't mess up the phone), but obviously the next task to try is putting it back on your phone.
 
im not sure of the status of clockwork now,either. i personally have always prefered amon anyway,being into rooting since the droid eris.

i had a bunch of apps deleted on my phone when the OTA installed itself,so i dont think thats your prollem. you might try booting to the stock recovery,and using it to wipe cache. then try looking for updates again and see if it redownloads and installs that time.

you should be able to get a menu on the stock recovery by vol up/power(i think)

the OTA did,of course break root so that all the system apps promptly reinstalled themselves,lol.
 
dont forget there are more than 1 link ;)

the Wupload link is defaintely still working,i just donloaded it to be sure :)
 
turbomentor said:
Thanks again. That's the one link I DIDN'T try...the others didn't work for me!

Got it, flashing now.
Click to expand...


Welllll...I thought I was flashing the recovery. Turns out, not so much. Hope I didn't brick the damn thing.

Hmm..

OK tried it the old way: I simply popped out my SD card and used my PC to drag n drop the PH98IMG.ZIP file to the SD card root. Booted into my recovery (Amon-Ra) and tried to install the recovery from there. Curiously, it would not let me do so. Gave me an error message?

OK no problem. Put the Recovery.IMG onto the same directory as my fastboot and (using CMD line) ran fastboot. Got the message "waiting on device" and...that was it...nothing. Killed the fastboot via Task Manager and unplugged.

I attempted several times to boot into recovery and the device won't boot into recovery (power on switch + VOL up). While holding both, it goes straight into normal boot.

I haven't done it yet, but my last resort is to try to use fastboot one more time...but I'm pretty nervous to do that without being damn sure I haven't messed things up and that I won't do more harm.

Some reassurance and some guidance would be very helpful!

UPDATE: After some further unsuccessful attempts to get into fastboot, I downloaded Quick Boot from the market and used that to get into fastboot. Once I was in, flashing the recovery was (naturally) quite easy.

So now I'm downloading the OTA and going to apply it then re-root. Will update.

Thanks thornev: saw the Quick Boot idea of yours in another post and tried it. Thankfully that is what did the trick!

UPDATE: OK this is beginning to piss me off.

Downloaded the OTA. Check. Installed the OTA. Che...wait...I got the dreaded Red Exclamation point! Did a battery pull to reboot and once again, my phone refuses to boot into recovery (booted normally). However, upon checking phone's info, the OTA did NOT take, I am still on software version 1.02.605.6.

Tried to use Quick Boot to go to Recovery and got the Red Triangle/Exclamation again. Battery Pull/reboot and now I am a bit stuck.

I am unable to determine what recovery is actually flashed because I can't get there. I'm uable apparently to make the OTA happen successfully and I'm still unable to boot into Recovery. Would greatly appreciate some assistance.
 
FASTBOOT enabled won't let you boot into hboot or recovery. Well duh! I totally forgot that was the case.

OK: so got that little issue resolved.

Now PWR + VOL goes to HBOOT. Try to boot into recovery and...red triangle/exclamation point, batter pull and frustration.

Unable to determine what recovery exactly is flashed (I think it is stock cuz that's what I downloaded and flashed).

Can't get the OTA to take for some reason. Probably because when it's done with it's thing it's trying to flash into recovery and can't.

Maybe I should try to reflash Stock recovery and try again?

Thanks.
 
turbomentor... You can flash the stock recovery by

1. Putting your phone into HBOOT and then selecting FASTBOOT.
2. Plug in your phone to the PC (if you haven't already) and then you'll be in FASTBOOT USB mode. Put the phone down.
3. Go into the directory on your PC with fastboot, put the stock recovery file, recovery.img, there too and enter the command: fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
which will permanently (well, until you flash a different recovery) put that recovery on your phone.

This is the same method you can use to put the Amon Ra recovery on the phone too.

I'm assuming you already have the HTC phone drivers installed on your PC and that you've disabled HTCSync on your PC. Those are prerequisites.
 
thornev said:
turbomentor... You can flash the stock recovery by

1. Putting your phone into HBOOT and then selecting FASTBOOT.
2. Plug in your phone to the PC (if you haven't already) and then you'll be in FASTBOOT USB mode. Put the phone down.
3. Go into the directory on your PC with fastboot, put the stock recovery file, recovery.img, there too and enter the command: fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
which will permanently (well, until you flash a different recovery) put that recovery on your phone.

This is the same method you can use to put the Amon Ra recovery on the phone too.



I'm assuming you already have the HTC phone drivers installed on your PC and that you've disabled HTCSync on your PC. Those are prerequisites.
Click to expand...

Well the good news is that I did in fact already flash the stock recovery. The bad news is that when I then downloaded and ran the OTA it did not take. In the process of running the OTA, it went into reboot and then I got the red exclamation pt/triangle symbol. I did try the VOL + PWR and that didn't get me into HBOOT or anything. All I could do was a battery pull.

In any case, I will have to continue to monitor things to see how to get the OTA working.
 
phasmaphobic said:
Hah! I tried that Vol+Power button trick to show the recovery message after I got the exclamation point, and it seems the OTA is immediately failing because I uninstalled the stock Blockbuster app. Interesting.

My current recovery just says "Android System Recovery (3e). Would flashing a better one and a custom rom be a more efficient way of using the phone? I've only ever used Stock on the Rezound, but I was a loyal CM7 user on my OG Droid.
Click to expand...

I am determined to figure this thing out.

OK, so I have flashed the stock recovery and again ran the OTA. This time when I got the Red fail signal, I tried again to get into recovery and...it worked this time! Great! This is the error message I am receiving: asser failed: apply_patch_check("system/app/Blockbuster.apk". and then a huge string of #s which I suspect is an MD5 checksum. Then it says Error in /cache/fumo/OTAPkg.zip. (Status 7).

It sounds to me like the OTA is doing some sort of check sum against the bloat that should be on my phone (to include Blockbuster app) and, failing to find it, is aborting the install.

My plan is to go in and reinstall the Blockbuster app, re-run the OTA and see what happens.
 
turbomentor said:
My plan is to go in and reinstall the Blockbuster app, re-run the OTA and see what happens.
Click to expand...

When I de-bloated, I went in and renamed all my bloat apps from *.apk to *.bak. Second time I ran the OTA it got to the same point but froze up this time doing a checksum on the Flickr.apk.

OK, so now I'm going to go in and reinstall all my bloat and try the OTA yet again. Suspect it will work at that point (of course, I could just flash the orig RUU and that would be the same thing but at work and don't have the capability to do so). Will report back with results.
 
I got the exact same error as you did on my 1st attempts. What I ultimately ended up doing was backing up user apps and their data, locking the bootloader, running the .11 RUU exe to install the OTA update (which wipes the phone), re-unlocking, re-rooting and restoring user apps and their data. Now I'm a happy camper. Entire process took me about 1-2 hours. Maybe save yourself more angst?
 
phasmaphobic said:
UPDATE to my own issue:

I ended up following the instructions here:

Root Rezound OTA Update 2.01.605.11

And that worked wonderfully. I now have CleanROM and Amon nicely isntalled, and no more nagging OTA messages
Click to expand...
That's interesting. I was under the impression that ROMs could not install the radio from the OTA update. Did you verify that you got the new radio with this process (and you didn't have it before)? To find out, Settings > About phone > Software information > More > Baseband version should say "0.95.00.1118r". I believe the pre-OTA version is 0.95.00.1017".
 
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