Updating firmware while unlocked/rooted/TWRP - Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Questions & Answers

SM-T860 that is unlocked, rooted with Magisk, TWRP recovery installed, WETA Kernel installed, running ASK1 November security update firmware.
I'm not new to rooting and all, but am fairly new to Samsung devices and am still learning all the tricks and tips.
I know that OTA updates are not possible in my current state, but Is it possible to some way manually update the firmware to the ASL3 version without having to just reflash stock and loose everything, starting from scratch to reroot, TWRP, reinstall all my apps etc?
I already have Odin installed and have downloaded the full ASL3 firmware package.

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You don't have to lose everything - just flash ASL3 on top of ASK1, then install the rest of the mods (WETA kernel, TWRP, Magisk). In the downloaded zip of ASL3, you should have five files: mostly the same file names, except for the beginning few characters, similar to this:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
So the five images you'll most likely have are AP (the main system + boot.img), BL (bootloader, modem, other low level stuff), CP (other small tidbits), CSC (carrier-specific customizations, also contains country-specific stuff, basically the layer above system that makes the OS specific to a country, with apps, configurations for WiFi, 4G/5G, Bluetooth, and even things like Samsung Pay), and HOME_CSC (same as CSC, but doesn't flip the "wipe device" flag).
What you need to do is do the update via ODIN using the default files, then for the CSC field, select HOME_CSC instead of the regular CSC file. The only difference between the two is just this, HOME_CSC won't wipe the device, CSC will.
Same applies if you want to go back to complete stock, just flash the phone using ODIN, and use the regular CSC image instead of HOME_CSC.

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Thank you for the detailed explanation of what to try and what all of the different parts of the big firmware packages are. I've had this Tab S6 just about a month now and have been doing my best to get used to how Samsung does things. Lots of reading various posts, lots of experimenting. I've gotten the basics down on flashing firmware using Odin, but don't yet have a solid grasp on what all is really going on. I've just been very carefully following directions, and praying to the Android/Samsung gods I don't end up with a brick when I hit "start." LOL So far so good!
I'll give it a go doing what you described. If it works, Yay! If not, no big deal and I'll start over from fresh/stock. I've grown used to that being "just the way it is" when you want to run modified/custom stuff. As long as I don't permanently brick the thing I do enjoy the experimenting and learning process.
Thanks again.

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ragtop429 said:
Thank you for the detailed explanation of what to try and what all of the different parts of the big firmware packages are. I've had this Tab S6 just about a month now and have been doing my best to get used to how Samsung does things. Lots of reading various posts, lots of experimenting. I've gotten the basics down on flashing firmware using Odin, but don't yet have a solid grasp on what all is really going on. I've just been very carefully following directions, and praying to the Android/Samsung gods I don't end up with a brick when I hit "start." LOL So far so good!
I'll give it a go doing what you described. If it works, Yay! If not, no big deal and I'll start over from fresh/stock. I've grown used to that being "just the way it is" when you want to run modified/custom stuff. As long as I don't permanently brick the thing I do enjoy the experimenting and learning process.
Thanks again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please tell me how it goes!

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Daniel Hjelvik said:
Please tell me how it goes!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, it worked... sort of. The system booted and ran, but I started to get random reboots for no apparent reason. I wiped cache and such but nothing helped.
Ultimately I decided to completely wipe the tablet, flash back to stock, and then reroot and just reinstall everything "clean."

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Did you apply TWRP and the WETA kernel again? If so, my gut is that the old kernel is not compatible with the updates. Just my thoughts, nothing to support this but an update should work. This is one of the reasons I am waiting till the updated TWRP is released with the new SL3 kernel.