I have been working on some boot/recovery ROM rebuilds for the Garmin/Asus Garminfone A50 (T-Mobile), as well as the scripts and instructions... I'm not sure where to host them.
I personally don't want to host them myself, and was wondering if there is a repository of sorts.
At the moment, I have the following:
* The tools necessary (dump_image & flash_image) to dump the firmware from the phone
* The scripts necessary to unpack/repack the boot/recovery ROM's (modified to support the Garminfone's different address layout). Linux based.
* Pre-built boot and recovery images that give permanent root and mount the system/data partitions as r/w by default.
* Instructions on how to do it yourself, complete with some tech info on the layut of the Garminfone boot/recovery images and how to verify before you flash it that it built properly.
* Instructions on how to flash the phone without risking bricking it, since there is no hardware key combo to get into recovery and a fastboot that's not fully implemented. The technique goes like:
- Verify with a hex editor that the proper addresses are in the header
- Flash the new boot image to recovery
- Reboot into recovery to make sure it boots the new boot image properly
- Flash the rooted recovery image to the recovery partition
- Reboot into recovery once more and verify that works
- Flash the tested boot image to the boot partition
- Reboot normally and have fun
That method works fairly well, and unless you target the wrong partition, and gives you a 99.9% success rate
I'm going to post what I can on the Wiki (as far as instructions go), but it would be nice if I had a place to put the tool set as well.
I'd rather not use one of the temporary sites like Mediafire or what not, since files on those sites have a tendency to disappear.
Please no PM's on having me send them the files directly. I don't have a heck of a lot of spare time and don't want to get into the habit of sending these out manually.
If you're against the typical file hosts and the files aren't too big you could try using dropbox or sugarsync and sharing the links.
Can I ask you a question? I have a Kyocera ZIO M6000 and have the openzio clockworkmod 2.5.1.1 port that only works with "fastboot boot openzio-recovery" and we have tried flashing to our recovery partition with no success. What will it take to break the tether and reboot recovery locally without fastboot?
Sent from my Zio using XDA App
merwin said:
I have been working on some boot/recovery ROM rebuilds for the Garmin/Asus Garminfone A50 (T-Mobile), as well as the scripts and instructions... I'm not sure where to host them.
I personally don't want to host them myself, and was wondering if there is a repository of sorts.
At the moment, I have the following:
* The tools necessary (dump_image & flash_image) to dump the firmware from the phone
* The scripts necessary to unpack/repack the boot/recovery ROM's (modified to support the Garminfone's different address layout). Linux based.
* Pre-built boot and recovery images that give permanent root and mount the system/data partitions as r/w by default.
* Instructions on how to do it yourself, complete with some tech info on the layut of the Garminfone boot/recovery images and how to verify before you flash it that it built properly.
* Instructions on how to flash the phone without risking bricking it, since there is no hardware key combo to get into recovery and a fastboot that's not fully implemented. The technique goes like:
- Verify with a hex editor that the proper addresses are in the header
- Flash the new boot image to recovery
- Reboot into recovery to make sure it boots the new boot image properly
- Flash the rooted recovery image to the recovery partition
- Reboot into recovery once more and verify that works
- Flash the tested boot image to the boot partition
- Reboot normally and have fun
That method works fairly well, and unless you target the wrong partition, and gives you a 99.9% success rate
I'm going to post what I can on the Wiki (as far as instructions go), but it would be nice if I had a place to put the tool set as well.
I'd rather not use one of the temporary sites like Mediafire or what not, since files on those sites have a tendency to disappear.
Please no PM's on having me send them the files directly. I don't have a heck of a lot of spare time and don't want to get into the habit of sending these out manually.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would also suggest dropbox or even id host them off my computer via ftp
Can your method work with Garminasus A10?
Merwin you still working on this?
Yeah, I am working on it still. I am still looking for a better place than dropbox or hosting off of someone's home PC...
As for the A10, if you can get me a dump of the boot and recovery images I can make one for that too... you will want to preferably use the dump_image utility to get the image and the flash_image utility to flash it.
I can probably attach those to a post with dump instructions. They're tiny.
Basically, you root your phone, copy the files to a certain location, type a couple commands to fix permissions on the executables, then run a command to dump the image.
Flashing back requires clearing the boot or recovery partition with a command and then using the flash_image command to flash it.
My method tests the new boot image first by flashing it to recovery first and rebooting into recovery to make sure the new image works. Then flash the modified recovery image to the recovery and make sure it is rooted (so you can get things up again if something does go wrong). Then you flash the new tested boot image to boot. If, for some reason, that fails, it should reboot automatically into recovery after a few boot failures. Never had to test that, since I pre-test all images I make.
hi merwin, we are a fans group of GA a10 and we trust a lot in your work! if you need any kind of help contact me! probably you are the first in the world who can flash a GA phone
Merwin, Im not completely sure which type of place your looking for if its not either ftp or online file sharing
Rapidshare
2shared
Filefront
4shared
Hi merwin,
I found this page, is that similar to your method? Hope you guys can find out something.
http://mygarminfone.blogspot.com/
afoster1003 said:
Merwin, Im not completely sure which type of place your looking for if its not either ftp or online file sharing
Rapidshare
2shared
Filefront
4shared
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You forget one widely used protocol. Good old http on a standard web server.
Those other sites annoy me greatly, between the amount of ads, having to wait to download and daily limits, and the fact that they are temporary unless I pay. I am against them on principle.
I figure if there is enough interest, someone will step up to host them, otherwise I will just provide scripts, instructions, and technical info for people to do it themselves.
slumpz said:
Hi merwin,
I found this page, is that similar to your method? Hope you guys can find out something.
http://mygarminfone.blogspot.com/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are my hero That blog has the missing pieces I need to keep going.
A couple of days ago I found some info on how to decompile the .update files which gives us the recovery image and system partition from any other phone that uses a similar format, like the Asus A10... providing a whole host of opportunities for the Asus phones that are still being maintained.
For instance, I grabbed the files from the Chinese A50 that has newer firmware.
With the info from the blog, I may be able to at least compile and integrate the newer kernel and wifi firmware (which is stored on the phone and loaded into memory at boot). The Chinese version does have newer wifi module firmware in it... whether it is compatible or not is another story.
On another note, has anyone successfully downloaded the open sources kernels from Asus? I have tried every method on their site and all but a couple of the kernel versions in the zip are corrupt. One from march extracts fine, so I may use that as a base to start with.
merwin said:
You are my hero That blog has the missing pieces I need to keep going.
A couple of days ago I found some info on how to decompile the .update files which gives us the recovery image and system partition from any other phone that uses a similar format, like the Asus A10... providing a whole host of opportunities for the Asus phones that are still being maintained.
For instance, I grabbed the files from the Chinese A50 that has newer firmware.
With the info from the blog, I may be able to at least compile and integrate the newer kernel and wifi firmware (which is stored on the phone and loaded into memory at boot). The Chinese version does have newer wifi module firmware in it... whether it is compatible or not is another story.
On another note, has anyone successfully downloaded the open sources kernels from Asus? I have tried every method on their site and all but a couple of the kernel versions in the zip are corrupt. One from march extracts fine, so I may use that as a base to start with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have, magically I might add. I downloaded the source for v.5.0.70 and managed to get it compiled. The resulting files can be found on on my blog, the one Slumpz posted(I can't post links yet, lol.)
The only problem is, I don't have much experience with anything linux. But, If you have any questions Merwin, email me, [email protected].
Here's a little how to, just check my blog, or google: How To: Build Garmin-Asus Kernel from Source.
am willing to giv a subdomain/storage ftp access on this domain for the good of the community if it helps any
Domain darkjester.net
Disk Usage 5.4 / 1500.0 MB
Bandwidth 100000 MB (100GB)
Home Root /home/a2931495
Apache ver. 2.2.13 (Unix)
PHP version 5.2.*
MySQL ver. 5.0.81-community
Activated On 2011-05-15 14:42
Status Active
Hello guys, are you still working on this.
I found out that A10 has a new firmware posted, which is versioned 5.2.7 instead of 5.0.x like the others. I wonder if there's any method to test this firmware on foreign A10 (non Chinese firmware)?
So, got an HTC Sensation 4G... meaning not much more work on the Garminfone for me.
Still trying to find time to compile everything that I have done into some semi-coherent document with the unlocked boot and recovery images. I still have the Garmin, so if someone manages a huge breakthrough then I may pick it up again. Really didn't want to get rid of the phone but there just isn't enough community development going on to make it worthwhile.
By the way, the Garminfone GPS blows every other phone away. The Sensation 4G is crap in comparison.
Hello,
I am not 100% sure if this is the right forum to ask for help for my problem.
I bought an EDEN TAB (ET701), which is a tablet sold in Japan,and it comes with ICS 4.0.3.
The system installed is just unusable. So, I need to customize a lot. I was able to root it, but there is no CWM recovery for this model, as there are not many users.
By doing a lot of searches, I found out the following web site, where ii looks like I can make a custom recovery.
http://builder.clockworkmod.com/
The problem is that I am rather a beginner in Android, and I don't really understand how I should proceed, and I have some questions.
If I am not mistaken, I need to take the following files from my tablet. What is the easiest way to to this?
1) Recovery image file
2) recovery.fstab
3) graphics.c
4) postrecoveryboot.sh
Could someone provide me with a comprehensive guide? I have some some modifications in the past using ADB or Terminal Emulator. So, if there is a guide, I would like to try. Thank you.
FIRST OF ALL MY APOLOGIES IF IM IN AN INAPPROPRIATE FORUM. IM A NOVICE.
I have a chinese tablet rockchip rk3026. I have a windows laptop only. I have rooted the tablet using some rooting software (i cant read chinese so i dont know the name)
I have also installed (after reading through several posts) TWRP and busybox.
I tried to donwload ubuntu touch 14.10 - there are no zipfiles so i downloaded img files and tar.gz
Now at this juncture i need the expert help.
If someone can walkthrough the steps on how to make my tab recognizable in the windows and how to install the img files in the tablet.
Thanks in advance for your time.
First of all, welcome to XDA.
I'm sorry to tell you but you won't be able to install Ubuntu Touch on that device if you don't port it. ROMs for one device don't work on another one. If you want to run Ubuntu on your tablet, you need to get a supported device. Additionally, img files cannot be flashed in the recovery like zip files.
I have a very challenging ROM dump to preform and was hoping for a bit of guidence.
I bought a Chinese table. Why you ask? Well because it has an Intel Core M with 4gigs of Ram and a retina display. Of course with a Chinese tablet comes nonexistent customer service and poor firmware development. What makes working with this tablet even tougher is the fact that the manufacturer of the tablet has disabled the usb port. You can still use the port for hardware but not for OTG. This means no Adb or Fastboot. The stock recovery is very basic with no extra features. Even if there was a custom recovery I couldnt flash it anyway.
The supplied Android firmware was in Chinese and loaded with bloatware Since it was meant for the Chinese market there was no Gapps with Playstore. Plus the OS wasnt rooted.
I managed to discover a rooted copy of the firmware on a Chinese forum site.... and no I don't speak Chinese. I was able to switch it all to English, de bloated, install playstore and fix a few problems. Now I am ready to make a backup for myself and other owners of this tablet. But with no custom recovery, no Adb or Fastboot I am not sure how to do this.
The firmware was originally distributed on a .img file that could create a bootable USB. You boot to the USB and a script would launch that would install all the .img files, (system.img, userdata.img, etc. ) My plan is to create the new system image files and replace them on the original USB. So I would have a bootable restore did with the modified firmware.
My problem is that I am not sure how to create these system .img files. I would prefer not to have the image creation tool as part the the new modified firmware.
Any direction would be appreciated.
Hello there,
I'm wondering if there's anyone knowledgeable to point me in the right direction. Coronavirus (or I) messed up the build.prop file in a Chinese-made JTY-K107 (MT6580 architecture) tablet and now stuck in a soft-brick state. I cannot use adb push or adb sideload (doesn't detect device probably because I had attached another MT device, a Huawei on the PC before and that is the device I pulled the build.prop from to mess with the bigger tablet and now all seems jumbled driver-wise on my Win 10). In any case, I am able to copy to the SD card an update.zip but factory recovery installation is not possible ("installation aborted" - signing issue?). I tried these two zips inside which the original build.prop files are now nestled. It's maybe the commands/scripts that are at fault or it's some signing issue (that hopefully can be tackled). I don't know. I am very reluctant to think about flashing ROMs at this stage. (Porting MT-architecture ROMs are not exactly easy or risk-free, from what I have seen around other threads/forums.)
The link to the folder with the non-working update zips I pulled from other sites or threads (not knowing how I should go about building these files from scratch on my own):
https://app.box.com/s/7byabibx2j0jfo2zlgmg0oi0ca66vkyn
Thanks very much for any info (or possibly a fix of the zips to make it compatible with MT6580 to install the update).
Cheers,
Zoltán
@zanodor
IMHO a simple factory reset may solve your problems.
jwoegerbauer said:
@zanodor
IMHO a simple factory reset may solve your problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Today I was thinking, people like overcomplicating things: there must be some easy solution. I actually had done that out of frustration (knowing that I had a Titanium Backup on SD) but the boot issue persists (I tried again but all I see is the Android logo for minutes now).
I thought maybe there was a way to repackage my full Titanium Backup into a zip that could be used in Factory Recovery for a restore solution? I perused the net in vain for that too.
I really don't fancy reinstalling Win 10 to fix the driver issues or trying on one of my Linux machines (I am a noob on those too).
Thanks for the answer, anyway.
In the end I managed to restore the tablet (took me 2-3 days of looking around). I'm only writing this up so others facing adb probs can solve their issues on their MTK-built devices. (Actually probably this will work on any device that is not Samsung or whatever old famous brands.)
The first thing to do was sorting out VCOM drivers. There's a Nigerian-sounding guy whose forum Hovatek I followed for tricks on how to go about it (had to download and install Virtual Serial Port Driver to sort out connection issues in Miracle Box/Thunder). Whenever you have some problem, I suggest you include Hovatek in the search string, cause chances are he has a tool and a tut.
Using Miracle Thunder and acting on Hovatek's instructions I made a copy of my firmware. All I really needed was the sytem.img, of course. My bootloader being fine (messing up your device with build.prop only results in a soft brick), it didn't need fixing. Using Assayyed's Kitchen and Hovatek's tutorial again I unpacked the system.bin I extracted with Miracle (which must be all the time used with virus protection off) after renaming system.bin to sytem.img. I exchanged the build.prop and repacked system but didn't wait for the update.zip to be made, instead I took the img file I wanted in the Kitchen. Then tried SP Flash tool to flash system.img on the device but I had issues with the scatter file. So I downloaded a firmware from Boycracked or whoever and used that scatter (in the meantime I overwrote the system.img with mine). I flashed device, turned on the tablet and voila. I hope this helps peeps out there with similar issues.