Related
I own a rooted Samsung Vibrant running cm7, overclocked to 1.3ghz, with cwm recovery. My external SD was full to a byte and my internal had about 100mb free, so I decided to move all my apps on SD to internal. I used an app called App2SD that, among other things, lets you batch move apps. I selected everything on the SD and started a batch move. Like normal, it had to bring up the settings page for each individual app -- annoying, but necessary for the app to work on nonrooted phones. After repeatedly hitting "move to phone" -- back -- "move to phone" -- back -- "move to phone" etc. After almost freezing, and a few metric tons of lag, I finally finished. However, the phone immediately started acting weird. Apps would crash, even after reinstall. This included built in apps like "messaging." It also had the "low memory" alert on, even though the only memory that had gone down was the internal, and it still had >1gb free. (The notification might have actually appeared before, not sure.) Today, after getting into a bit of a jam because I couldn't text, I rebooted the phone. It stopped at the boot animation. I happen to have Live Dmesg, by Chainfire, which replaces the animation with the BIOS output at startup, so I could see that it was getting stuck in a loop after the normal PHONE_ACTIVE=1 message that is the last one I can read (it stops for a few seconds after that, the rest moves way too fast, and the phone boots less than a second later). I have tried rebooting several times, booting to recovery, rebooting, removing battery, etc. Nothing worked. I could probably get it working, as I can access CWM without much trouble, but that would require losing all my data. Yes, I use Titanium, and USB debugging is on, but it would still be a lot of trouble, and I would lose a significant amount of app data.
Any help would be welcome, thanks!
I suppose, in CWM you could mount your internal SD, and backup all of your data and such. Maybe try to move things around manually, and get it to a working state again.
Toast6977 said:
I suppose, in CWM you could mount your internal SD, and backup all of your data and such. Maybe try to move things around manually, and get it to a working state again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you say to back up the internal memory, do you mean for safety, or to then reset to stock cm7, or what? I don't see how simply backing it up could help.
I don't think I could just move things around, unless I can get a hint from the output from live dmesg. I don't even know where the problem is -- are there any app2sd-able apps that are necessary for system stability?
Well, I guess I assumed you may have an idea of some of the offending apps that may have caused the problem by moving them. If you mounted, could have manually tried to move or remove them and maybe your phone wouldnt be borked anymore.
Probably would be easier to Odin to stock and start over.. move things over a bit slower and possibly one at a time so you can catch any errors or problems with the transfer.
Toast6977 said:
Well, I guess I assumed you may have an idea of some of the offending apps that may have caused the problem by moving them. If you mounted, could have manually tried to move or remove them and maybe your phone wouldnt be borked anymore.
Probably would be easier to Odin to stock and start over.. move things over a bit slower and possibly one at a time so you can catch any errors or problems with the transfer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think I would even have to Odin, I can easily access CWM and reflash cm7 from there, right?
Also, I don't think the problem would happen again, I have done the same several times and I think it was due to the extreme lag and freezes that something got mis-moved.
I will examine the bios output, and if that doesn't give me any new info, revert to stock cm7 with cwm. Or with Odin through AIO if that doesn't work.
EDIT:
CWM'd back to a May backup. Old, but better than stock CM. Boots fine. Will try transferring apps a bit more calmly.
Just preferential to me, I rarely do it, so when I need to start fresh I just go that route.
Glad you got sorted out.
What do you mean stock CM?
sent from the depths of helly bean
CyanogenMod as downloaded. Not "stock" exactly, but you know what I mean.
I recently flashed to Helly Bean. even better. However, the superuser is acting odd, denying access and asking repeatedly. ANy help would be welcome, though you guys have already helped me out, and thanks for that.
My internal /sdcard seems to always accumulate a large chunk of files. Just went in there and one file in particular was 2GB in size. I went ahead and wiped them all like I have in the past but I'm wondering if I'm creating the problem with frequent ROM changes, etc.
I've read that this directory can potentially indicate issues with the sd card itself and was just looking to get some clarification. Or is it just the frequent wipes/installs/reinstalls, etc. that I do a fair bit of?
I always delete my lost.dir when flashing. As well as any files that accumulate that are unnecessary. Every rom (well nearly every rom) comes with everything needed to make it work built into the rom. Deleting unnecessary files and folders is fine as long as they weren't put there by the rom you're currently flashing.
Phalanx7621 said:
I always delete my lost.dir when flashing. As well as any files that accumulate that are unnecessary. Every rom (well nearly every rom) comes with everything needed to make it work built into the rom. Deleting unnecessary files and folders is fine as long as they weren't put there by the rom you're currently flashing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I've never gone as far as to clean my sdcard in any fashion between rom changes. I like to keep as much on there that I can from previous roms like photos, ringtones, etc. and with my luck I'd delete something that was necessary that I'm not aware of. This kind of brings up another question, is there a guide out there for a general 'how to' on cleaning up old files and what's safe to delete, etc.? I have to believe I've got a lot of wasted space on stuff that's completely useless now that I'm to another rom (which rocks btw).
[EDIT] I of course always do a full wipe and wipe cache/dalvik but I imagine there's still stuff left over... right? Never really looked into it to be quite honest.
Alright, I hope I have this in the right place. I just recently flashed the TerraSilent Kernel for the Galaxy Player 4.0 US version. The Flash went fine, but my device was running extremely slowly. A re-flash didn't solve it either. I figured that wiping the cache partition might solve the problem - I decided to do this before running a backup, since no important data is stored in the cache (...right?), and since I was worried that backing up while I had this problem could make things worse - so I went ahead into CWM and did just that. Then, it reboots, and I nearly get a heart attack. The stock wallpaper is back, it's using the default launcher again (I had LauncherPro installed), and pretty much only system apps work, all the others have an icon with an SD card on it, and when clicked on, it says something like "application not installed". I did some searching, and it seemed like a reboot might help (although I didn't find anyone with a problem like mine anywhere). The reboot didn't do anything, so now I have it shut down, so that nothing can happen. The odd thing is, it doesn't seem to me like the system messed up and did a full wipe instead, either, because a couple of things I have are still there - for example, some of my bookmarks I made on the homescreen while still using the default launcher are still there. I'm really confused because I have wiped the cache partition before, when I was still on an unmodified stock kernel, and everything stayed the same, the way I thought it was supposed to. And now this happens. What do I do now? I exported my absolute most important data (Astrid Tasks and Calendar) before I installed TerraSilent (but I obviously wasn't able to do a full backup because I wasn't rooted, I figured installing TerraSilent would root it), so my absolute most important data is on my computer. I also did a simple file backup of the internal USB storage and external SD card to another computer before flashing TerraSilent. However, there is still a good deal of data still need, and a lot of data that would just be a pain in the rear to recreate, not to mention my (valuable to me) game data. What did I do wrong - or did something in the system mess up? And - what do I do to get back to where I was before?
It happened to me when I was on gingerbread with terrasilent. It's a known issue with this kernel. In fact, you didn't wipe the data, but the recovery contain a bug wich format the data as soon as you do an operation wich mount the data partition(I think it's this but I can't remind) but it doesn't wipe the system or anythin else, so the icon, setting and everything else stay there but without anything attach to them. I don't remind what was causing it, I only stopped using cwm with this kernel unless I wanted to flash something or to wipe everything. Sorry but I can't help you more as I don't remind everything, it's been a while since I've been on gingerbread.
ti-pich said:
It happened to me when I was on gingerbread with terrasilent. It's a known issue with this kernel. In fact, you didn't wipe the data, but the recovery contain a bug wich format the data as soon as you do an operation wich mount the data partition(I think it's this but I can't remind) but it doesn't wipe the system or anythin else, so the icon, setting and everything else stay there but without anything attach to them. I don't remind what was causing it, I only stopped using cwm with this kernel unless I wanted to flash something or to wipe everything. Sorry but I can't help you more as I don't remind everything, it's been a while since I've been on gingerbread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wasn't that problem solved with a later version of the kernel though?
And, assuming that's what happened (what you describe sounds pretty much like what happened to me), would that mean that the only way to try and get it back would be by trying to recover the formatted data?
trainman261 said:
Wasn't that problem solved with a later version of the kernel though?
And, assuming that's what happened (what you describe sounds pretty much like what happened to me), would that mean that the only way to try and get it back would be by trying to recover the formatted data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was said to be resolved, but it happened to some peoples even thought. Maybe you can recover some of your data with your computer and some tools that let you get the erased data, but I can't guarantee the integrity of your data and you would need to replace every bit of data that was there before to get it running nicely. The easiest way would be to try to recover some of your important data, put it on your computer then wipe your player and start from scratch (wipe data/factory reset) and reinstall your apps. Then put back the save, or setting or files that you got back in your apps. Hope this help, I'm not a proffessional with data recovering or where to put it back after you got it, maybe someone else could further help you with this.
And the conclusion...
ti-pich said:
It was said to be resolved, but it happened to some peoples even thought. Maybe you can recover some of your data with your computer and some tools that let you get the erased data, but I can't guarantee the integrity of your data and you would need to replace every bit of data that was there before to get it running nicely. The easiest way would be to try to recover some of your important data, put it on your computer then wipe your player and start from scratch (wipe data/factory reset) and reinstall your apps. Then put back the save, or setting or files that you got back in your apps. Hope this help, I'm not a proffessional with data recovering or where to put it back after you got it, maybe someone else could further help you with this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, my reply is late, but thanks for your help. I managed to copy the partition with all the deleted contents over to the computer, and I'll have to study the contents some other time, because I've spent about 24+ hours on this problem in total, and need my device for more important purposes - those for which the data I managed to copy before the custom kernel and everything else. For those of you who have a similar issue, this is how I managed to save (or that is I am 95% sure this will have saved at least some, as I said I haven't studied it yet) what I hope is a good chunk of my data.
Have you tried flashing a different kernel? Terrasilent also gave me some weird in that after a few days my device would boot into recovery by itself then wipe all my data in that only my system apps would remain. So it's a little different than what's happened to you. I ended up using klin's R3 kernel or Steven's kernel that fixed the issue.
Sent from my YP-G1 using xda app-developers app
obscuresword said:
Have you tried flashing a different kernel? Terrasilent also gave me some weird in that after a few days my device would boot into recovery by itself then wipe all my data in that only my system apps would remain. So it's a little different than what's happened to you. I ended up using klin's R3 kernel or Steven's kernel that fixed the issue.
Sent from my YP-G1 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've got huge issue with steve's kernel. You can get into recovery, but once you booted in it will simply bootloop. Then you have to flash back with odin. So if you go with steve's kernel, don't boot into recovery. As for klin's kernel, I've never tried it, and will probably never as we have some really nice jellybean rom that I recommend you.
I never got that issue with steve's kernel.
Sent from my YP-G1 using xda app-developers app
obscuresword said:
Have you tried flashing a different kernel? Terrasilent also gave me some weird in that after a few days my device would boot into recovery by itself then wipe all my data in that only my system apps would remain. So it's a little different than what's happened to you. I ended up using klin's R3 kernel or Steven's kernel that fixed the issue.
Sent from my YP-G1 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, with my problem, my system apps did remain, so it's almost the same problem, only my device didn't boot into recovery on its own (seriously, it booted into recovery on its own and wiped the data? ). I only installed the terrasilent kernel to be able to upgrade to JB, so I'm now on JB, running into different problem (the wrong settings are being backed up from google backup, they're restoring from my galaxy mini 2), but thanks anyway. I am really not having any luck at all with this whole update . But ti-pich, I agree with you, that JB rom is awesome
trainman261 said:
Actually, with my problem, my system apps did remain, so it's almost the same problem, only my device didn't boot into recovery on its own (seriously, it booted into recovery on its own and wiped the data? ). I only installed the terrasilent kernel to be able to upgrade to JB, so I'm now on JB, running into different problem (the wrong settings are being backed up from google backup, they're restoring from my galaxy mini 2), but thanks anyway. I am really not having any luck at all with this whole update . But ti-pich, I agree with you, that JB rom is awesome
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it did, after 1 week. I was like ???. I reflashed it again and it did the same exact thing, and it happened to me while I was at my college too.
I also had that same issue where it was restoring from the wrong device. I just had to reflash the rom, and install stuff manually because it was making my device horribly slow.
obscuresword said:
Yes it did, after 1 week. I was like ???. I reflashed it again and it did the same exact thing, and it happened to me while I was at my college too.
I also had that same issue where it was restoring from the wrong device. I just had to reflash the rom, and install stuff manually because it was making my device horribly slow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow that is some scary stuff, now I know why every kernel/ROM/mod has a disclaimer at the beginning ... I'm glad I'm off that now and on a stable JB build now. I found a way to have it restore at least some of the stuff from when it was on gingerbread (mostly apps and appdata, no WiFi passwords or other settings - at least I'm pretty sure, I'm still working on getting all the stuff up and running) - go into a terminal, and type
Code:
bmgr list sets
It will probably have two different sets, one for when it was on GB and one for JB - or that is, if you had the problem, there will probably be a third set for a different device (maybe more). Then, choose the one you want to restore from, and type
Code:
bmgr restore xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
and replace xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with the apropriate ID from the command before. I'm having to type it several times in order to get it to work - I type it once, it restores some apps, then stops, I type it again, and it restores some more - but I'm hoping it gets as much possible onto the JB build. I guess this won't help you much, I've seen you saying on the ICS and JB threads that you've upgraded a while ago, but I guess if someone else comes along with the same problem, I hope it will help
trainman261 said:
Wow that is some scary stuff, now I know why every kernel/ROM/mod has a disclaimer at the beginning ... I'm glad I'm off that now and on a stable JB build now. I found a way to have it restore at least some of the stuff from when it was on gingerbread (mostly apps and appdata, no WiFi passwords or other settings - at least I'm pretty sure, I'm still working on getting all the stuff up and running) - go into a terminal, and type
Code:
bmgr list sets
It will probably have two different sets, one for when it was on GB and one for JB - or that is, if you had the problem, there will probably be a third set for a different device (maybe more). Then, choose the one you want to restore from, and type
Code:
bmgr restore xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
and replace xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with the apropriate ID from the command before. I'm having to type it several times in order to get it to work - I type it once, it restores some apps, then stops, I type it again, and it restores some more - but I'm hoping it gets as much possible onto the JB build. I guess this won't help you much, I've seen you saying on the ICS and JB threads that you've upgraded a while ago, but I guess if someone else comes along with the same problem, I hope it will help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hmmm. I'm about to try Terrasilent with my YP-G1 (US version) running 2.3.6. This is giving me second thoughts. Does this kernel still cause issues with SGP 4.0s running GB 2.3.6?? Maybe I should try the old Steves Kernel? I just want to use voodoo sound - thats really the only reason I want to root and get these kernels.
I've recently been getting into more security cautious habits with encryption and what not, due to this whole NSA/Big-brother is watching business... But I have a question (more may pop up as this discussion goes on). Sorry if I seem noob-y, I am still getting a hang of all this encryption business. But here's my first round (regarding just the files being backed up):
If I go ahead and do a full phone encryption with my GN2 where will I stand as far as backups to Dropbox/Copy/Google Drive/etc.?
I currently have photos and such backing up to copy, and I often move backups made through recovery to Dropbox and such. If I were to have photos automatically sync to copy or move system backups to dropbox wouldn't that render them basically useless as I am assuming they move out of the phone encrypted (not being decrypted as they exit).
The photos would be unusable anywhere besides my phone right? So moving them off my phone to share vacation photos for instance would be impossible, and if my phone were to crash they'd be irretrievable? Making the backup process pointless.
Wouldn't the back up be rendered useless as well, exactly when I might need said backup? If my phone were to ever crash or die for some reason, I would lose the encryption key, would even be able to do a full system restore through the recovery? It would seem that the encryption key wouldn't be kept with those back up files, so while it might place everything back in its correct place, it would still be unreadable. Or does it maybe keep the key in system files somewhere so that a full backup would restore the key as well?
And my second round of questions (regarding recoveries and what not):
I am also under the impression that I would not be able to flash through custom recovery either as the internal SD would be inaccessible from the recovery being it doesn't have the encryption key. I am currently running OmniROM and it is in a nightly stage still for my phone. I wouldn't be able to update nightly would I? I am assuming since it basically flashes/overwrites system each time, that I would be losing my encryption key and making everything besides system unusable then right?
And what about downloading ROMs to flash/update directly to my phone? As I download them from in browser or another app and they go to the default /downloads folder they would be encrypted. They wouldn't be accessible from there in recovery, but if I were to try and move them out of internal SD to the external SD they would retain encryption and still be inaccessible? So the only way to download ROMs and updates would be from PC and only move them to the external SD?
Overall, this seems to be crippling a lot of the way I use my phone...
Bump?
Sorry, this is already getting buried and I kinda want to know what's going on before I go ahead and do this...
Zombtastic said:
I've recently been getting into more security cautious habits with encryption and what not, due to this whole NSA/Big-brother is watching business... But I have a question (more may pop up as this discussion goes on). Sorry if I seem noob-y, I am still getting a hang of all this encryption business. But here's my first round (regarding just the files being backed up):
If I go ahead and do a full phone encryption with my GN2 where will I stand as far as backups to Dropbox/Copy/Google Drive/etc.?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not (yet) an expert on this, but when you've encrypted your device, it encrypts the file system on your internal memory and SD card. You have to enter a PIN/password when you turn on your device (and when it times out) to gain access. When the correct PIN is entered at boot time, the file system is available as normal - the underlying data is still encrypted, but the file system can unencrypt it in "real time" for use by apps and the system.
So that means that Dropbox et al all see your files as normal, and any copying you do from your device to something on the net (Drive, Dropbox, a server, etc.) works as normal - the data appears normal to the apps and is copied as normal. So photos would copy across as photos, music as music, etc.
Think of it like this: You can't speak Urdu, only English. There is a book you own that is written in Urdu that you want to tell someone about. You find a translator to read the book and tell you what it says. He reads the first page in Urdu, translates it in his head to English, and tells you what it says. You then tell your friend what it says (in English, of course). Your friend writes down what you told him, in English, then tells you something in reply. You tell your Urdu translator what your friend said (again, in English). Your Urdu translator then translates (in his head) what you said from English to Urdu, and writes it down in the book in Urdu.
At no time do you understand Urdu, nor does your friend. Your friend doesn't even know the book is written in Urdu and doesn't care. He never sees it or accesses it directly. If anyone ever steals your book, they can't read it unless they can read Urdu. The book is only useful to you and your friends if you have an Urdu translator sitting there in the loop. (the analogy is imperfect and incomplete but you get the idea).
So, getting back to your phone, if you have it encrypted, the underlying file system deals with translating things on the fly if you've given it the correct password at boot and login time. No apps ever know about the encryption - they just see data as normal (unencrypted). So any app that wants to copy a photo to Dropbox just sees a normal photo - it never sees the underlying encrypted data. But if you don't enter the correct password at boot time, the phone can't boot, and anyone trying to access the data on the phone won't be able to read it unless they know the password.
Does that help or confuse?
Zombtastic said:
I currently have photos and such backing up to copy, and I often move backups made through recovery to Dropbox and such. If I were to have photos automatically sync to copy or move system backups to Dropbox wouldn't that render them basically useless as I am assuming they move out of the phone encrypted (not being decrypted as they exit).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, this does my head in a bit but lets untangle it:
- you boot into Recovery. The Recovery you're using (obviously) understands encrypted file systems (some versions of CWM do, some versions of TWRM don't for instance - see near the end of this post for a bit more on this). So when you boot into Recovery and enter your PIN/password, it can then read your file system. You can then do a Recovery-based backup of your file system (or individual files, though I'm not aware that you can do this). The backup it creates is written to the encrypted file system and thus encrypted with the same encryption keys used for everything else.
- You boot the phone back up as normal and enter your PIN/password, and start up Android. You then use Dropbox to copy the Recovery backup files to the cloud. So the question is, "Are these files encrypted?" and I think the answer is, "No". Why? Read the rest of this post and hopefully you'll work out the same conclusion. But I'm pretty sure that the data that ends up on the Cloud is not encrypted.
One general comment worth pointing out as an aside (sorry, this paragraph isn't really related to the above but I wanted to point this out somewhere and its still useful) is that each time you encrypt your phone, it creates a unique encryption key - even if you give it the same PIN/password to use. So if you're forced to rebuild/reflash/wipe your phone in the future, it won't be able to access any data that is still on there (in internal or SD memory) since it won't know the previous encryption key. So you'll have to wipe all data and start again. And at that point, if you choose to encrypt your fresh, newly initialized phone, it will have a new, unique encryption key that won't work on any encrypted data from previous. So if for instance, you plug in an SD card that was encrypted on your phone in an earlier ROM, it won't be readable even if you know the correct PIN/password, since your phone will be using a different underlying unique key.
Zombtastic said:
The photos would be unusable anywhere besides my phone right? So moving them off my phone to share vacation photos for instance would be impossible, and if my phone were to crash they'd be irretrievable? Making the backup process pointless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, if you're following this, you'll now understand that moving your photos off your phone could be done two ways:
- while you're using the phone as normal (ie. you've booted it, entered your PIN/password, and copying your photos to Dropbox via an app while you're logged on. If you do it this way, you're simply copying photos as normal that can be viewed as normal in Dropbox.
- by copying backups generated while in Recovery. But Recovery will be firstly mounting the encrypted file system successfully (if you gave it the right PIN/password and your version of Recovery supports encryption), which means it can read your photos as normal files, then backs them up into its own normal Recovery file/folder structure and writes them to your encrypted file system, so the underlying data is encrypted unbeknownst to Recovery. Then when you boot up your phone and log in successfully to Android, you can access that data as normal (and unencrypted). So when you then copy it to Dropbox, all you're copying is normal Recovery-created backup files. The copied data won't be encrypted (unless Recovery encrypts them itself, independently, which I don't think it does). So you could copy this data to anybody's phone, so long as they were using a compatible Recovery version and probably compatible ROM.
Zombtastic said:
Wouldn't the back up be rendered useless as well, exactly when I might need said backup? If my phone were to ever crash or die for some reason, I would lose the encryption key, would even be able to do a full system restore through the recovery? It would seem that the encryption key wouldn't be kept with those back up files, so while it might place everything back in its correct place, it would still be unreadable. Or does it maybe keep the key in system files somewhere so that a full backup would restore the key as well?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think your logic is correct. The backup would be useless if the phone loses the encryption key, which it would do if you re-initialized your phone and/or did a new encryption. So you can only recover your backed up data if you haven't done either of those things. A solution to this is to use backup software that runs on your phone (Titanium Backup) that gives you the option to encrypt your data. Some caveats to this approach should be obvious:
- you firstly need to decide if you trust your backup software's encryption
- you need to use a strong password and be able to recall it months/years from now when you go to restore your data
- you need to copy your backups off your phone (such as onto your SD card, cloud, dropbox, etc.) in case you lose your phone.
Zombtastic said:
And my second round of questions (regarding recoveries and what not):
I am also under the impression that I would not be able to flash through custom recovery either as the internal SD would be inaccessible from the recovery being it doesn't have the encryption key. I am currently running OmniROM and it is in a nightly stage still for my phone. I wouldn't be able to update nightly would I? I am assuming since it basically flashes/overwrites system each time, that I would be losing my encryption key and making everything besides system unusable then right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tricky - if you flash/update your phone with a new ROM, you will probably be OK so long as you haven't wiped the part of your phone's storage that holds the encryption information. I don't know where this is. But the nightly updates I do to my phone don't normally touch my data - all my apps are still there and it boots identically to the way it did before I updated it. HOWEVER, its possible that an update may force me to wipe my phone for some reason - the update may fail, it may contain significant changes, or I might screw something up. I probably end up completely wiping my phone at least once every 2 months just because I like to play with the latest and greatest ROMs, or I screw something up. So if that happens, I'm going to lose the encryption information and thus would lose everything on the phone.
Of course, I can always restore my apps and data via Titanium Backup, since I back up my stuff quite often and then copy it to Dropbox.
Zombtastic said:
And what about downloading ROMs to flash/update directly to my phone? As I download them from in browser or another app and they go to the default /downloads folder they would be encrypted. They wouldn't be accessible from there in recovery, but if I were to try and move them out of internal SD to the external SD they would retain encryption and still be inaccessible? So the only way to download ROMs and updates would be from PC and only move them to the external SD?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm - good question. A simpler question is, "Is my encrypted file system accessible while in Recovery?" I believe the answer is, "Yes, if you use CWM, No if you use TWRM". But I say that because from what I've been reading, some versions of CWM/TWRM can/can't handle encrypted devices. But you'll already have sorted this out at the time you're trying to encrypt your device anyway since the encryption process involves rebooting your phone into recovery I believe - and if you're not using the correct supported Recovery, this step will fail. But if you are using a supported recovery, this step will work, and therefore logically I'd assume that you can access your encrypted file system while in Recovery in the future. I'd imagine Recovery would prompt you for your PIN/password in order to mount the encrypted file system.
So assuming the above is correct, you would be able to access the newly-downloaded ROMs while in Recovery and thus can flash them. But of course, Caveat Emptor with flashing the new ROM - if it forces you to wipe anything, you may end up unable to access any of the data.
Zombtastic said:
Overall, this seems to be crippling a lot of the way I use my phone...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I've been researching, you won't have a problem anyway, because I haven't come across anyone that has successfully encrypted their phone using a custom ROM. Strangely, this ability seems to be unwanted by XDA people. My tinfoil hat tells me that there are people ensuring that this ability continues to not work on custom ROMs until/unless a backdoor capability is found. Hopefully I'm wrong on many counts.
douginoz said:
From what I've been researching, you won't have a problem anyway, because I haven't come across anyone that has successfully encrypted their phone using a custom ROM. Strangely, this ability seems to be unwanted by XDA people. My tinfoil hat tells me that there are people ensuring that this ability continues to not work on custom ROMs until/unless a backdoor capability is found. Hopefully I'm wrong on many counts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Amazing post by the way! It does seem very helpful.
BUT it's very funny you mention it not working. Because that's exactly what happened. After not getting a response here or in the ROM's forum for a few days, I decided to just take the plunge and do it. I was just planning on testing everything out my self and figuring it out as I went. The first time it seemed fine, the encryption went through it seemed.
Being as I didn't know any of the info you just enlightened me with, I did fear that nothing was truly encrypted though. Everything was transferring to my computer with a drag and drop and working fine, so I was afraid (without evidence) that nothing was truly encrypted. I asked on the ROM's forum again (still waiting for an answer).
That night, my phone was left plugged in charging, yet some how had turned off in the night. I awake to my phone asking for an encryption key. I enter my key in to no avail. Nothing works and my phone is left unable to boot. It was utterly denying my password. I had to reflash. I asked about that in the forums as well, whether that was normal or if encryption was maybe not implemented yet, etc. The dev running the nightlies for my device has responded to the forum multiple times but not to me. Another user mentioned it might be that it is now merged together as a Galaxy Note 2 ROM and not specifically a T-mobile Galaxy Note 2 ROM (might be possible. Idk.).
Now, I have tried to re-encrypt. Multiple times. But I cannot for the life of me get it to even start now. Every time I go to start the encryption process it shows me the fullscreen image of the android unzipped horizontally (at which point it is supposed to reboot and start encrypting) and it hangs/sits there forever. Not rebooting, not anything. If I hit the back button, the image disappears and it goes back to my phone. Working perfectly fine, like it never even started doing anything. I am not doing anything differently. I don't know what could be happening to stop it from even getting as far as it did last time. Unless the devs maybe started working on it and have disabled it for the time being/screwed it up worse, I dunno.
Not you got me crafting a tin-foil hat...
So now that I have root on my phone, using Titanium Backup, WHAT should I backup? I mean... my phone doesn't have inherent instability now does it?
Or does the instability (possibly) come from xposed modules I install?
Are there sets of steps I should take before installing new root apps?
Thanks!
-Matt
Root details:
Verizon S4 (sch-i545)
Stock ROM (4.4.2)
Back up anything you would miss loosing if something happed. For me thats nothing, for others thats maybe a particular apk version, or an apps data.
What do you need to do before installing root apps? Root apps are just programs that require admin rights. Nothing magic, do whatever that app might need, which is probably nothing.
It is generally good to have a full system backup from your recovery... For when you try to do _______ and **** it up.
scryan said:
Back up anything you would miss loosing if something happed. For me thats nothing, for others thats maybe a particular apk version, or an apps data.
What do you need to do before installing root apps? Root apps are just programs that require admin rights. Nothing magic, do whatever that app might need, which is probably nothing.
It is generally good to have a full system backup from your recovery... For when you try to do _______ and **** it up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay great! I already backed up any folders (pictures, pdfs from camsacanner, roms) to my computer via usb before rooting... so...
So when people are talking about TWRP/CWmod recovery... how is it different from stock recovery?
So basically a custom recovery is an all in one answer that allows you to back up EVERYTHING but also allows you to back up EVERYTHING in one blow?
blueman189 said:
Okay great! I already backed up any folders (pictures, pdfs from camsacanner, roms) to my computer via usb before rooting... so...
So when people are talking about TWRP/CWmod recovery... how is it different from stock recovery?
So basically a custom recovery is an all in one answer that allows you to back up EVERYTHING but also allows you to back up EVERYTHING in one blow?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stock recovery will let you do a factory wipe to basically clear data and reset your system to recover from something that messes up your install and makes your phone unusable.
Custom recoveries allow you to flash unofficial files, as well as take basically a snapshot of your system. With a custom recovery you can make a backup of your phone, and almost no matter what happens, you can flash that backup and it will be like nothing happened.
So when you try and run some xposed module that isn't written well, and now makes your phone crash every 2 minutes, you can boot to recovery and flash back to the backup you took right before you installed that module, and it will be like you never did it.
The recovery images are kinda large, as its all your data/apps/the OS all in one. Many custom recoveries will have a file manager that will allow you to deal with files individually, but most typically the point is taking a snapshot of your current system so you can go back to it. I make backups before trying a new rom, that way if after a little bit I am not happy I just flash back and its like I never changed anything.