With Epsylon3 brilliant work, a new idea of flashing custom firmwares came to surface, allowing custom /system partition to be flashed directly from RSD Lite! This way you don't need to flash fixed SBFs and waste time with rooting and recovery install in case of system screw-up.
What you need:
1) MotoAndroidDepacker. With it, unpack sbf of the firmware you use as base.
2) Leave CG35(boot) and CG61(devtree) partition files, delete other smgs. Other files are not that important. You can delete all partition files if you're making backup for yourself...
3) Replace CG39(system) with your system dump:
adb shell:
su
dd if=/dev/block/system of=/sdcard/CG39.smg
copy CG39.smg from sd card to your firmware folder.
4) Compile sbf with MotoAndroidDepacker.
5) Flash your sbf in case of failure.
MAJOR CAVEAT: This sbf will work ONLY on devices with have same full SBF version applied last as your device. I.e. if you have flashed 3.4.2-107 and then upgraded it with nandroid to 3.4.2-177, the sbf you created from your system dump will work only for devices which flashed still 3.4.2-107 sbf last. To install such (custom) sbf, one would need to flash full 3.4.2-107 sbf first.
Technical: this is possible because of bug/feature in flashing process: system signature partiton is not checked if phone signature is already present. Phone signature is generated when flashing full genuine sbf and is verified aganist copy in sp partition and obviously differs for each firmware. It is stored at the end of the system partition.
Great news.
Some question:
If I install a full sbf. IE: 3.4.2-117 and then apply a custom ROM over it (CM).
So can I make a backup of my system and flash it again in case of any brick?
You can make a backup for yourself and flash it again all you want until you flash another full motorola sbf. Don't forget to make data backups as well, this method can't replace nandroid / titanium!
Interesting...
So I can flash my base sbf, integrate call recording, 720p playback, wvga recording, root, swype on my language and other mods and create a new sbf only to apply these mods.
It will be usefull....
Oh great all of us asked this question when this section began in xda. So essentially we can make an sbf out of our phones and keep it and not worry about any nandroid backups.
This is a great discovery, thanks a ton.
Cheers
So would it be possible creating custom bootmenus as these are updated by sbf's too?
If your current system contain boot menu. The custom sbf also, it is identical with the current system.
i think you can create a Full SBF with all original partitions and your "signed" CG39
I think it is not a bug... the thing is : i'm not sure sbf can work on other devices ... but anyway... it can be really usefull to recover device or to create a full backup with the good kernel made for the /system and /devtree
mbr and ebr are needed too, if the partition table has changes, you will have problems..
So the question is whether the signature is related to the specific part of every device, or it is universal as official sbf. Need to be verified .
Does this means that someone could create a sbf wich flashs dierctly CM7 or MiUi?
IE-coRe said:
Does this means that someone could create a sbf wich flashs dierctly CM7 or MiUi?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's possible too.
Where i can finde the MotoAndroidDepacker?
Great news! But why are Android systems so complicated when it comes to flashing and banking up? I mean, with computers it's easy. You make an image of the system partition and you're done. Restoring is as simple as writing the backup back to the partition. So, why is it so hard to just make an entire nand backup that we can simply write back to go to a working state after failure?
Sent from my MB525 using Tapatalk
I made a custom sbf with nightly build in it . Then wipe and flash it, stuck at M logo. Bootmenu works, but it seems that it can't mount some partition , it's the same symptom when wipe in stock recovery in cm7.
Does it really need to flash a full sbf before the custom sbf ?
So if i wanted to do this i split my sbf, delete everything only leaving,
CG35.SMG
CG61.SMG
firmware.hmg
Then system dump and add that CG39.smg in and build and flash?
Have i missed anything?
Well you forgot RAMDLD... One CG39 is enough if you'll flash this SBF over ver 4 froyo (not Chinese or Korean) but i recommended CG35 and CG61 to make such sbf enough to flash over system downgraded with fixed sbf + nandroid.
Is it possible to keep all files and just replace CG39? Or are files removed for a reason? Thanks for replying.
You can keep all files, theoretically.
Well i made an sbf version of miui and it works
Wonder if it works on other peoples Defy?
Tested by formatting system and then applying sbf. Booted back into MIUI like a dream
EDIT:
Shame the SBF comes out at 300+mb May take a while to upload these things lol.
If I mount the CG39 as a loopback device in a linux box,
Can I just replace the contents and it will retain the signature?
Or the signature is based in a checksum?
I would assume this is a simple matter but I could be wrong. No access to nandroid or anything of the like on this device(Toshiba thrive). But we do have a system dump on the computer.
On that note: Since we have access to an unlocked fastboot, theoretically we could take a system dump, add the appropriate root files, turn it back into a .img file and flash? or is there a fundamental flaw in that plan that I'm missing?
Edit: Are there any folders from the system partition that an adb system dump doesn't grab? Wouldn't want someone to have a chance of bricking their phone doing this.
I would also like to know how to do this. I am willing to risk a brick to get root on the thrive.
I was wondering if there is a way to change the new style of the file types that clockwork makes. I know its good to keep the filesystem (ie ext4) but if there is ever a problem that i know is not due to a corrupt system (like when you change the name of the file folder or etc) you cant seem to just flash the files manually with fastboot. so really im wondering can we convert these back to an .img that we can manually flash or is there nothing we can do? Is there another nandroid app that will make the relevant files in .img form (data.img, system.img, userdata.img and boot.img)?
So I've made a user backup from the stock recovery mode on Android, everytime I restore the backup my phone starts to main screen and then reboots thus creating a bootloop. So, I guess there are some files that corrupts the boot process in a way but I had a lot of information that I won't like to have lost. It is possible to extract information from this file just to get the important bits?
P.S.: the backup file extension is .backup. So far I've seen some tools who are able to open just .img backups and at this point I just got confused on this backup thing. My phone is a Motorola XT914 on stock Android 4.1.2
shameless bump
I have been searching for long time, just trying to find a tool to make a system image after all needed apps are installed. like imagex, Ghost, Acronis or clonzila on Windows, so i can use that image to restore into other device.
I dont want to install all apps on over 50+ android devices (MK902) over and over again......so there must be something i can use to load a rooted .img file with all configured apps....
the .img file can be loaded by using RK Batch tool, but how to make a .img file with all apps installed?
Anyone has any idea?
as far as i know, there is no such software that does that. only way i know is to make a disk image of the partition using DD command in linux or using Roadkill (link is from my own backup) to make a copy of the whole partition table of your phone while it is on download mode.