It seems that several users including myself had EFS problems - suddenly a corrupted efs dir which means no network and a generic imei
It seems that flashing completely wrong firmware, and especially cm10.1 can corrupt the efs dir in a nearly unrecoverable way - even with a efspro backup its not restore able, because the mount point in backup isent correct anymore like > Efs is located in block 3, not 1 and therefore efspro is unable to restore
So if you get this error
You have this problem - only way to restore efs dir is by writing these commands in terminal it seems >
mke2fs /dev/block/mmcblk0p3
mount -w -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 /efs
this should remount it back to block3 and after a reboot restore backup with efspro this should bring back network and your original imei again
Until now i haven't seen any other ways to fix this
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Dont forget to make a backup of EFS with efspro or/and ktool just in case!!
Related
I think during unlocking my phone I confuse the comand umount /efs with unmount /efs and I brick my phone.
So my question is if with a custom kernel is posible to remount again efs partition and make it work again.
Unfortunately odin gaves me errors with my stl5.rfs("EFS" backup) file trying to flash it as EFS.tar renamed to efs.rfs
Thanks for your attention.
If is it posible can anybody make this special kernel to flash it?
Thanks
It is possible to use DD to extract individual partitions from a backup file into seperate partition files. So in the case of bml3.bak my understanding is that it contains a copy of /efs and the stl3 data. If this is the case, then there should be a way to use dd and extract the individual partition data into seperate files so that the stl3 and /efs partitions can be recovered to restore an original IMEI.
The imei on the Galaxy S 4G is definately tied only to the contents of the EFS partition in the sense that I copied the EFS partition from one phone to another and ended up cloning the IMEI by accident. Now I would like to somehow extract my old data from BML3.bak and put the IMEI back.
Hello Guys,
Any idea, if we have any Alternatives to Nandriod Backup?
Drawbacks of Nandriod Backup as I know:
1. It does not backup EFS binary/image which contains IMEI details
2. It does not backup Modem binary/image which is useful to camp to the networks
FYI: I know there are tools like EFS Pro and kTool to backup EFS
I wonder if there is any tool which can dump my entire ROM's partition on to sdcard "as it is" and re-storable using CWM.
Please delete this thread
Please delete this thread. I am supposed to use Q & A section instead of General...
EDIT: Great, moved to Q & A section. Thanks Mod Hulk
Raghunan said:
Hello Guys,
Any idea, if we have any Alternatives to Nandriod Backup?
Drawbacks of Nandriod Backup as I know:
1. It does not backup EFS binary/image which contains IMEI details
2. It does not backup Modem binary/image which is useful to camp to the networks
FYI: I know there are tools like EFS Pro and kTool to backup EFS
I wonder if there is any tool which can dump my entire ROM's partition on to sdcard "as it is" and re-storable using CWM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Found Alternative to Nandriod Backup
Guys, found some useful info @ forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1667886
-------------------- backup
before messing with the partition table, everyone should make backups of all partitions that can be accessed.
-------------------- efs backup
The most important backup is the efs partition, which very crucial, it includes your IMEI number, bluetooth MAC etc., and without this individual information, your phone cannot be used as a phone again.
For most supported phones, you can do this via adb:
Code:
dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 of=/mnt/sdcard/efs.img
please look at forrest1971's thread for details about using adb.
If your phone uses another partition number for efs, then use this instead of the "1" in mmcblk0p1.
Perhaps you have to mount your sdcard first, to be able to save it there.
Then you should copy the backup to your PC (the recovery should have the option to mount usb).
-------------------- backup files from internal sd before repartitioning
the repartitioning will clear all data in the affected partitions, so all data in your big partition (internal sd etc.) will be lost.
You can try to backup your data, if the partition is accessible. The different methods below may have different success, depending which parts of your phone are usable.
* you can use aroma file manager, which is a full fledged gui file manager which starts standalone by being flashed in CWM. So it should be completely independent (sorry, I could not test it for this kind of backup myself).
For the following possibilities you should first ensure, you have a working recovery with working adb support.
Mount your external sd in recovery (which might be /emmc or /sdcard, please check), to be able to copy files.
* you can use QtAdb to copy files to your PC:
* you can use adb pull to copy any files or directory tree to your PC, e.g.:
adb pull /emmc/. emmc
* you can use tar from adb to archive files to a file on sdcard:
adb shell tar cvjf /sdcard/emmc.tar.bz2 /emmc/.
* you can use a copy command in adb shell to copy files to a folder in sdcard:
adb shell cp -ra /emmc/. /sdcard/emmc.backup
Note: you will loose file attributes and owner information if emmc is formatted with ext2/ext3/ext4, because vfat cannot handle these.
This may matter for system and some app related files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi all, i just replaced my sd-card so i can make a swap partition and speed up my phone.
any way.. i played with Swapper 2 options (swap and swappiness size).
after reboot my galaxy doesn't boot into the system i did a nandorid backup,moved back to Samsung official release, did a full system format and still i doesn't boot into the system.
when i'm restore to my cm backup it stuck on it writes that the restore succeed but it stuck on ''Samsung Galaxy SIII'' screen.
when the official release installed (from adb) it does a boot loop over and over (factory reset doesn't work).
another thing i noticed is that in the recovery it writes ''E:failed to mount /efs (invalid argument)''
that can i do? i think i did every thing i can
In recovery can you access the efs partition? If not then it probably is corrupt, you'll need to format it and restore your efs backup.
If you don't have an efs backup then you need a service centre.
I wouldn't mess with any partition software on this phone, too risky.
i don't have /efs partition
Ok so i managed to boot into official firmware and i found that i don't have /efs partition.
i figure this out from EFS Professional, EFS pro and the recovery.
im searching for an hours but with no answer.. - can i create /efs partition?
EFS Recovery
RReeD said:
Ok so i managed to boot into official firmware and i found that i don't have /efs partition.
i figure this out from EFS Professional, EFS pro and the recovery.
im searching for an hours but with no answer.. - can i create /efs partition?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have any older backup files.
When you try to restore your backup file CVM or TWRP recovery will ask which partitions you want to restore.
If you see EFS partition on any of your old backups you can restore it.
If no the way to service is seen.
i saw that we should backup EFS when flashing , but i also read that some people backup QFS so as not to lose IMEI, should i do both? or should i simply backup the EFS partition , any advice please
hold efs partition backup should be enough, if you keep both also fine. personally i keep efs backup only and never use it due to when i lost my imei, i only need to flash some modem files
flashing modem files fixes your IMEI issues?