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I've been stuck in a weird place for some time with my phone. After I installed clockwork mod, backed up, installed some flavour of FroYo, and made the mistake of trying to flash back my old back up without properly wiping things have been getting weird. I can use ODIN to flash fresh ROMs, but I always get a bunch of FCs at startup, and most apps don't work. I tried to do all kinds of tricks to completely wipe the internal SD, but there is always some remnants of old fun hanging about causing cascading errors and FCs. No matter what I try to do, MyBackupPro and Rommanager is always present, but not working.
How I can completely rid myself of anything not stock ROM?
I've finally gotten back to root ADB, after a long and hard battle. I believe this may hold the key to salvation for my Vibrant.
Any and all suggestions are much appreciated!
Things I've already tried:
EUGENE373_SamsungS_Froyo_PDA -> Stock 2.1 T959UVJFD
EUGENE373_SamsungS_Froyo_PDA -> battery pull -> Stock 2.1 T959UVJFD
Stock 2.1 T959UVJFD -> EUGENE373_SamsungS_Froyo_PDA
Bionix1.9.zip - would not install due to some error I can't recall right now. Will update.
Factory wipe - from Settings menu
Wipe in Clockworkmod menu
Wipe all in adb shell
The weird *2767*3855#* factory wipe
UPDATE:
Strangest thing happened: I flashed an old ROM back onto the phone with Odin 1.52, then the Updated Stock 2.1 also via Odin the usual FC-ing was still there. Then I rebooted into recovery, reinstalled the Clockworkmod recovery menu, installed the root-update.zip in order to have root shell access. Then I pushed VibrantDeodexed1_2.zip and Vibrantfroyo_R3.zip on to the sd card. I tried to apply the VibrantDeodexed1_2.zip, but it aborted due to some catalog not present. However, I did notice that the installation erased /system and deleted some files, and I had the notion to try and install the VibrantFroyo_R3.zip. The installation succeeded, and Lo and Behold!
the phone has returned to the land of the living! Wohoo!!
I do not fully understand how this can be, but there is no Force Closing of programs any longer. What a relief!
Thanks to everybody who contributed ideas!
If you're having problems, back up whatever data you want to keep to your computer. Go download eugenes 2.2 that doesn't brick. Flash that, do a battery pull once it's done (don't reboot). Then go get a stock eclair file, flash that with odin and check repartition. This solved every problem I had from flashing way too many roms.
Yea, when in doubt I thank the deities for Eugene and flash his "Froyo that doesn't brick" followed by the stock JFD firmware.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
brnagndan said:
If you're having problems, back up whatever data you want to keep to your computer. Go download eugenes 2.2 that doesn't brick. Flash that, do a battery pull once it's done (don't reboot). Then go get a stock eclair file, flash that with odin and check repartition. This solved every problem I had from flashing way too many roms.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry to say, that trying this solved nothing. Just the same as before.
ullrotta said:
Sorry to say, that trying this solved nothing. Just the same as before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You clicked the "repartition" option? That should format your internal sd...
I7oobie said:
You clicked the "repartition" option? That should format your internal sd...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's the weird part.. It doesn't really delete anything. Files are still there, and so are the un-wanted system files, too.
Does anyone know if I can manually partition the sdcard?
Had a similar issue, and couldn't fully erase my files. Figured out how to completely erase everything, before you proceed, backup your files and be ready to Odin. In rom manager, enable advanced mode in settings, then use the flash alternate recovery option. That set my current cwm version to 2.5.1.2, now when I reboot to cwm i have a menu that says something similar to "sd and storage" and within that menu are options to completely format all of the internal storage. Be careful in there, you can delete everything, incl the sd ext, but I think this is what you are looking for.
Edited - I rebooted and checked the menus, mounts and storage in cwm is what you are looking for after flashing the alternate recovery, I can confirm this removes remnants that an Odin repartition or factory format still leaves behind, let me reiterate, backup your personal files, cause this does remove everything
After formatting, Odin away
Sent from my T959 running Bionix1.91 with Jacs OC/UV and Voodoo
same thing happened to me >.> I just formatted the SD card on the phone. then flashed whatever rom I wanted.
Br1cK'd said:
Had a similar issue, and couldn't fully erase my files. Figured out how to completely erase everything, before you proceed, backup your files and be ready to Odin. In rom manager, enable advanced mode in settings, then use the flash alternate recovery option. That set my current cwm version to 2.5.1.2, now when I reboot to cwm i have a menu that says something similar to "sd and storage" and within that menu are options to completely format all of the internal storage. Be careful in there, you can delete everything, incl the sd ext, but I think this is what you are looking for.
Edited - I rebooted and checked the menus, mounts and storage in cwm is what you are looking for after flashing the alternate recovery, I can confirm this removes remnants that an Odin repartition or factory format still leaves behind, let me reiterate, backup your personal files, cause this does remove everything
After formatting, Odin away
Sent from my T959 running Bionix1.91 with Jacs OC/UV and Voodoo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I boot into recovery, I always have to reinstall packages to get to the CWM recovery menu. I tried to clear everything from the mounts and storage submenu; I cleared system, cache and data, then flashed stock eclair. STILL the same applications and files sit on the internal SD.
When performing the wiping, all looks normal. It does take a little time, and the system reports that all is going according to plan, yet no files are deleted.
What can possibly make the phone act this way? Are there no super secret samsung-technician codes that allow me to completely wipe clean the face of the sdcard?
When you get into the storage and mounts menu, I would format everything given what you're experiencing. Format boot, data, system, cache, and sdcard. Dont format the sd ext, thats the physical card. After formatting all of those your phone should be an odin ready blank slate, mine was. Hope this helps.
Sent from my T959 running Bionix1.9 with Jacs OC/UV and Voodoo
this has to be one of the most useful threads. just last night i was messing with rom manager and enabled advanced settings, BEEFORE reading this thread. I've done so much monkeying, but didn't keep a journal or log, so ive got **** from so many hacks and tweaks (mods and themes)...
thanks, im gonna wipe this ****er clean.
Good Info..but moved to Q&A
Br1cK'd said:
When you get into the storage and mounts menu, I would format everything given what you're experiencing. Format boot, data, system, cache, and sdcard. Dont format the sd ext, thats the physical card. After formatting all of those your phone should be an odin ready blank slate, mine was. Hope this helps.
Sent from my T959 running Bionix1.9 with Jacs OC/UV and Voodoo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is exactly what I tried yesterday. I'll try it again a few times to see if I can find a way.
ullrotta said:
This is exactly what I tried yesterday. I'll try it again a few times to see if I can find a way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was hoping that would help you friend, that process wiped mine clean of all remnants. Good luck in getting her back into a functional state.
After reading som more, contacting Samsung Service, I've decided to send the phone in for service. [sigh]
I've learnt a lot about ADB, pushing and pulling files, rooting, unrooting, swapping ROMS and whatnot. Still, the phone is stuck in that weird place where I cannot delete files.
Hopefully the service team can fix this poor, misguided phone
As of yesterday, my CM7.1 phone won't boot - it gets stuck at the "rotating arrow" blue Android for ever. It's a Samsung Galaxy S II GT-9100.
I have been running CM 7.1.0 for several happy months now, and haven't tried to install or upgrade my ROM. The last action I took before this happened is that I made a full system backup (using CWM 5.0.2.6).
That backup is present on the internal memory. I can boot into recovery, mount drives and access devices using adb shell. So I do have an opportunity to fix what's broken, if I can work out what it is.
Given that the last thing I did was a backup, I checked to see if any of the partitions were full, but none are. (None is more than 42% full according to df; although strangely, df does not show any partition mounted on /.) I tried making another backup, watching carefully - that worked fine. I tried restoring the first backup - no improvement.
I've also tried wiping everything Recovery allows me to that's non data-destructive - cache, Dalvik cache etc. It hasn't helped.
How do I work out what's wrong? Is there a boot log file anywhere which might give me a clue as to what is wrong? I've searched for "*.log" but can't find anything obvious.
I don't want to do a factory wipe if I can avoid it, because obviously that will lose all my data. If I do a factory wipe and restore just the data partition, does that put me pretty much back where I was? If so, how do I restore just the data partition? The Restore option in CWM Recovery seems to do full backups only, and only from a particular directory.
The original CM and Google Apps zips are still on the internal SD (same versions as are currently not working). Would it be worth trying to reinstall those, without wiping? Or would that be data-destructive?
Any other ideas?
Thanks!
Gerv
SOLVED - remove 0-byte data/system/profiles.xml
I tried doing a full factory reset from Recovery. This got the phone booting again, but without any of my data . Fortunately, ClockWorkMod has a "partial backup restore" function. I restored the data partition... and the phone stopped booting again.
So this is progress. I now had some idea where the problem lay. I finally found it using a laborious 5-minutes-per-cycle manual bisection technique. Delete half the stuff on the data partition, reboot, if it still fails, delete more, reboot... once you get it to boot, restore the data partition, narrow it down further. Once you find a top-level directory, repeat the process inside it.
The result: the existence of a single 0-byte file stopped my phone from booting entirely. The file was: data/system/profiles.xml.
I have no idea what that file does (there are only a few references online), how a 0-byte version of it got created, or why having it existent but empty breaks things but if it's not present everything works fine. I have no idea if anyone else will ever see this problem, or if they will ever find this forum post. But still, here's my Wisdom of the Ancients (google the phrase for the relevant XKCD comic).
This error is still not answered on the forums so im starting a new thread.
i get the error as the title.
sd card space is not the problem.
i tried formatting the sd card.
i have less than 50 apps installed.
wiped dalvik cache, and all other sorts people say on other posts.
(my phone is LG P936 so "fix permission" screws up the phone. all text disappears)
have latest cwm recovery.
and still get the error.
any answers please?
and please dont reply if you are going to write an opinion.
only answers please.
sorry for my rude behaviour but I'm sick and tired of reading posts full of opinions and "maybe"s.
Not sure if you ever got this fixed but I 'm suffering from the same error. I tried pretty much everything you tried (even fix permissions) and I have about 20GB free on my SD card so space shouldn't be an issue. I have not yet tried formatting the SD card since it has always worked and CWM is able to write to it because the following files are created:
- boot.img
- data.ext3.tar
- recovery.img
- system.ext3.tar
The files that are missing are (based on older backups):
- .android_secure.vfat.tar
- cache.ext3.tar (probably because I wiped it first?)
- nandroid.md5
I have attached the log from CWM in the hopes that someone can tell me what is wrong. The error occurs at the end of the progress bar of 'backing up /data'.
hey just use TWRP Recovery. It's way better than CWM. normal backup on cwm took me like an hour but twrp was never longer than 10minutes.
Today I have formatted the SD card and tried again, but as expected it did not change anything.
ceoleaders said:
hey just use TWRP Recovery. It's way better than CWM. normal backup on cwm took me like an hour but twrp was never longer than 10minutes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess I will give this a try. Can I just install it over CWM or can they run side by side?
different reciveries cannot be run side by side as they are installed on a different partition. so it will always be installed over your current one.
ceoleaders said:
different reciveries cannot be run side by side as they are installed on a different partition. so it will always be installed over your current one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I tried TWRP and it also fails at backing up my data partition. The log is a bit more clear though and it seems to get stuck on "/data/data/com.android.vending/cache/images" which is the last line before it gives an error. I checked the "images" folder and it seems empty but I cannot delete it. Tried ES File Explorer and Terminal Emulator but no way to get rid of it. The folder appears to be related to Google Play, so I cleared all data and cache from Google Play, even uninstalled the updates but there 's simply no way to get rid of it. I 'm not sure if this is the reason why the backup fails, but I CAN copy the folder and even rename it.
Pff looks like I 'm going to have to do a clean install after all .
Hello, I too have this problem and unfortunately TWRP is not available for my phone.
I used to be able to do CWM backups fine on my old phone, and they work great on my tablet. But they consistently fail at "/data" on my Galaxy Ace II x. Might it be because I'm using Link2SD? I don't see why that would cause a problem, but maybe it's having trouble with the symlinks?
Hmm. Seems the issue was that, despite having only 1.28 GB total available storage space on stock, the backups wanted more than 4 GB. Cleared some room on my microSD card and suddenly backups worked fine! Of course, shortly after I installed CyanogenMod, which has much smaller backups...
Sent from my GT-S7560M using Tapatalk 4
I forgot to report back here but the only way I found to fix the problem was by doing a clean install. After that, I was able to backup my data partition again. I then restored my apps ' data with TB and was unable to backup the data partition again. I 'm guessing one of my apps had corrupt data, but never got to find out which one it was.
maybe your partition not match with recovery, like something wrong vold.fstab
Just in case anyone still wants to know how to fix this, I managed to solve it by running these commands:
1. run adb shell in recovery.
2. unmount data partition (umount /dev/block/mmcblk0p26). -> this one failed so I skipped it
3. run e2fsck /dev/block/mmcblk0p26
See http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=48659092&postcount=868 for original post.
I got a few HTREE errors and a bunch of duplicate names which I renamed when prompted. Booted the phone and rebooted into TWRP and now I am able to backup my data partition again. :good:
EDIT: Problem reappeared so I tried the above commands again but it said that the filesystem was clean. Ran 'e2fsck -f /dev/block/mmcblk0p26' instead and had to fix a bunch of HTREE errors from Facebook again and duplicate names from Xprivacy but now I 'm able to backup my data partition again.
Dude just selest the backup format as both zip and tar filea
I made a bit of a rookie oversight when flashing a ROM today, the device was encrypted and I forgot to grab the files off the device first.
Unfortunately, the MD5sum for the backup I made gave me a mismatch, and once I got around that issue I found that, for some reason, my old password couldn't be used to unlock the device any more.
Here's what I know so far:
The device was fine when I rooted it, as I loaded it up to backup some other data some backups.
I installed CWM, made a backup, and flashed Paranoid Android 4.4 RC2, where I then noticed that the internal memory couldn't be located properly by apps, as it was still encrypted. So this is the stage that something went wrong, perhaps when making the backup?
After spending many hours attempting to go back to my backup (sorting out the MD5 problem), I can't get back past the encryption login to grab my files. I haven't been able to find a way to mount the partition (SDCard0) either.
So, after all the reading I've done, it appears I'm stuck with reinstalling the stock ROM for the device through Odin, and losing the encrypted data in the process.
Before I do that, does anyone know of a way to access these files on a I9100 (as I know what the password should be), perhaps through ADB, or attempting to install part of the stock firmware and decrypting the drive again? It's 3am and I'm all out of ideas.
After a disastrous experience trying to root my phone through Magisk and their "modified" boot.img, I lost everything on my phone. Worse even, TWRP was unable to restore my system from my TWRP nandroid backup.
But after days of investigating solutions, trying tirelessly, I finally, FINALLY was able to restore my nandroid into my phone.
It should have been straight forward, that's the purpose of a nandroid, right? But it wasn't, because my TWRP backup (nandroid) was some updates behind my current phone OS, and apparently that was enough, because phone brands and google can't stop messing with low level android "for our safety and privacy" (google taking care of our privacy, LOL!), and as such they keep changing stuff about partitions, boots, protections, all this new crap about A/B slots, 'vendor' and 'vbmeta' .img files, and whatnot. There's even a file called 'uefi_sec.mbn' in the ROMs now.
When I was trying to restore from my nandroid backup, half of my partitions were giving me errors at restoring, and /data was giving me the infamous "createTarFork() process ended with ERROR=255". Rebooting only gave me either bootloops, or a reboot only to the bootloader.
Something in the partitions had irreversibly changed with the new updates, and not even a previous nandroid was able to deal with it and put it all back as it was before. All my stuff *right there* in that backup, ready to surface again in a supposedly seamless process, and I was unable to reach it. So close and yet so far away. It was infuriating.
So I decided to trace back everything. What I tried *and worked* after many attempts, was this:
(NOTE: this will recover virtually everything you had in your system when you made the nandroid, but it could wipe your internal storage, depending on your ahead decisions)
— Make sure you have ADB and Fastboot tools installed on your desktop computer, and also the same ROM you had when you made the nandroid or another one close enough (more details ahead), and the same TWRP version from which you created the nandroid. — Have an SD card and copy your nandroid backup there (the whole "TWRP" folder in your storage root), if it isn't there already. — Get a ROM closer in version/date to the one you had when you created the nandroid backup. If it's the same even better, no matter if it's outdated, you want it outdated, since it matches your also outdated nandroid. E.g, if your phone was on MIUI 13 and you made your nandroid when you had MIUI 12.0.2, then get the 12.0.2 ROM or another close enough. Also match the other ROM specifications you have in your nandroid backup (Global/India(Indonesia/China/Russia). And get the FASTBOOT ROM version instead of the recovery version, and save it to your desktop computer. — Now decompress the gzip file of that ROM: you'll get a .tar file, decompress this one either, until you get a folder with files inside and a 'images' folder. Winrar or 7Zip will decompress those easily. To avoid long pathnames, put this folder in the root of your hard drive. — Boot your phone into bootloader/fastboot, connect it to your PC/MAC, and install that ROM via fastboot, with the script files included in the rom folder flash_all.bat (flash_all.sh for linux or Mac). Mind you this script will also wipe your internal storage, so make sure you have previously backed your stuff from there (search the internet on how to pull/save files from internal storage through adb pull, or even easier, put a SD card and save your stuff to it, assuming your internal storage isn't reading 0bytes as mine was...)NOTE: If you really want to preserve your internal storage you can instead run the script flash_all_except_data_storage.bat/(.sh), but I don't know if it will be as effective. — Once the rom is flashed through fastboot, reboot the phone and config the device with the initial settings screen (I don't know if this step is really necessary, but it worked with me), until you can see app icons on the home screen. — Now reboot the phone into bootloader mode (fastboot), connect it to the PC, and boot TWRP WITHOUT flashing, you'll just boot it by running TWRP into the ram disk of the phone. The recovery of the now installed ROM needs to be untouched, or you'll have bootloops. To boot TWRP without flashing it, you enter this on the command line: fastboot boot twrp.img (considering twrp.img is the name of your TWRP file, and it's present in your current path)NOTE: It may be important to work with a twrp version similar in version to the one you used when creating the nandroid backup, you never know... — Now with TWRP running from the phone's RAM, use your PIN to unencrypt the phone storage if it is asked. — Using the Mount button, mount every partition you see except OTG_USB. I don't know if this step is necesssary, but it worked with me.
— Do a normal wipe to the phone (no need to go to the advanced wipe). Again, I don't know if it's necessary, but it doesn't hurt. But it's almost certain this will wipe your internal storage, so you decide. — Now finally go to the restore button of TWRP, select your external SDcard as the storage where your backup is, select the backup from the folder browser, and choose to restore ALL the partitions from your nandroid backup (when I created my nandroid backup, I backuped every partition except maybe dalvik cache)
Now you wait, drink a glass of wine, go outside, it may take a while restoring everything, specially if you created your nandroid with compression enabled. Hopefully this won't give any errors, or at least no significant ones. Once it's done, reboot, wait a little longer since it may take longer to reboot this one time. When that is also done, hopefully you have your phone the way you had it when you created the nandroid backup, with your system, preferences, apps AND all their data, home app folders, chats, SMS messages, etc.
You may find some small stuff slightly off, like having the day theme while you're sure your phone always had the night theme, the clock now has a different setting, no fingertprints installed, maybe this is stuff inherited from the rom you flashed that remained, but all of this is easily configurable to what you want.
And that's it!
Now, after all this, you want to go to your appstore app and update all your apps -- they are the very same apps stored in the nandroid, they may be outdated, my nandroid was 6 months old -- and also update your OS through OTA or other means, since your rom is also outdated.
Optionally, after all this is done, you may want to make another nandroid backup: reboot into bootloader, connect the phone to the PC, again reboot to TWRP without installing it since it's better if your original recovery remains untouch (do fastboot boot twrp.img ), -- this time you can use an updated TWRP version -- select the storage you want to save the nandroid backup to (either internal storage or the SD card), and select all your phone partitions for backup except internal storage, SD card, and cache. Reboot your phone to system, and save your new nandroid somewhere safe in your PC's hard drive. If you encrypted your nandroid with a password, save that too, otherwise if a time of need arrives, you'll have nothing.
And very important, DON'T TRY TO ROOT IT with Magisk with that altered boot.img process they have, which supposedly "doesn't touch your partitions". You'll only get tears with that, since not even trying to flash your original boot.img will get your system back. Maybe they'll correct this in the near future, but for now avoid it like the plague. They also have an older way of installing root through TWRP and a zip file, I don't know if this one still works. But AVOID the other one.
This process helped me immensely, I hope it also helps someone with the same problem I had.