Recover soft brick w/o data loss - After failed dirty flash? - General Questions and Answers

Hi All,
I'd urgently need confirmation and/or tipp from seasoned "brick recovery artists" ;-)
Key questions:
(a) In the scenario presented below, can I recovery from soft brick without loosing data (incl. encrypted external sdcard)?
(b) If no - is there a way to recover directly from a TWRP backup (to pre-encryption status)?
Thanks a million!
-----the issue------
To dirty flash to my S9+ rooted and encrypted device, I tried to perform a dirty flash. See CustomROM thread here.
How the issue unfolded:
1. downloaded the latest v7.4
2. moved v7.4 install file to external sd
3. booted into twrp and performed system partition backup (system image, system, recovery, boot)
4. initiated via twrp a dirty flash
4.1 received error messager after 1 second: damaged zip file
5. rebooted into sysem - WORKED
5.1 realized my SDcard was not mounted and the system tried to "encrypting sdcard 10%/11%/..."
5.2 shut down system immediately
6. repeated step 5 with same results
7. booted into twrp and tried to restore from backup (system image, system, recovery, boot)
7.1 received error message "extracttarfork() process ended with error=255"
8. rebooted into system and rebooted into twrp
9. performed full restore only "system image"
10. booted into system - same as before, in step 5; immediately shut down
11. tried to boot into twrp without success; bootloader 1 error message: "could not do normal boot. INVALID KERNEL LENGTH"
I am a bit screwed here, i think?
the funny thing is that
(a) a OS boot still required me to enter my encryption pin
(b) the OS itself had no sdcard access/mounting issues apparently, same for TWRP partially. HOWEVER, the TWRP system backup was stored on my external SD card - How was TWRP even able to perform a restore from it, if it could not read /data and the sdcard in the first place?

solved. Please close

Related

Phone soft-bricked after bad manipulations (need help from advanced users)

Hello
First of all, I'd like to excuse myself because of my lack of knowledge in all that android stuff and also in english. I got my phone rooted just by following tutorials on internet.
I have a Huawei Ascend Mate 7 MT7-L09. Probalby half a year ago, I have unlocked bootloader and installed CWM-based Recovery v6.0.5.1 and got it rooted.
Not long ago, Huawei released a new version of the EMUI, wich I guess is the Android 6.0 marshmallow thing (logically, I was using the previous version). After downloading, I tried to install it but it would reboot to the CWM everytime I was trying. And then, after booting, the phone would tell me the update failed. It's normal, I know. I needed to install it manualy and etc
BUT instead, by pure ''I don't give a crap what may happend'', I did some big crap.
First of all, in the phone's settings, I did a factory reset. I made a backup of all my files and data before (not in the CWM, but in the phone's tools). After the reset, the phone booted in an old-fashioned android version.There wasn't any keys to go home/back on the bottom of the screen. Because of this, the phone was almost unusable because I had to reboot the phone to leave an app and select another.
I raged and booted to the CWM by pressing the + button and the lock phone button.
I went to Mounts and Storage Menu and did all of this
format /boot
format /system
format /cache
format /data
format /storage/sdcard1
format /data and/data/media (/sdcard)
I did the wipe data/factory reset
I also went to Backup and Restore
I made the
delete from /sdcard
delete from /storage/sdcard1
free unused backup data
choose default backup format
I went in Advenced Menu aswell
I chose
wipe dalvik cache
I think that's it. No wonder why it doesn't work well now LOL...
Later on, I thought I may try to fix it. After reading some stuff, I downloaded a package from the official Huawei website, I think it was with the 5.5.3 EMUI or some sort of. After mounting USB storage to my pc, I put the zip file, wich was not really a zip file because it had a .tar format, it would show me by going to the install zip: Impossible to read format lol. Then I found a package of a rom wich was zip. After putting on the phones storage this zip it would start to install and show installing update and then show me: Installation aborted. Then i gave up and decided to ask some help from pros.
So..... What should I do?
I know my explications are weird, but this is the only way I can describe my problem.
Thank you for reading this long story, and even a bigger one if you help me.
hi,
i don't know cwm recovery.
I suggest you install TWRP recovery , then flash the rom image found here.
(i have installed B571 by this way)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/mat...overy-twrp-2-8-7-0-mate7-android-5-1-t3156779
http://forum.xda-developers.com/mate-7/general/huawei-mt7-l09-l10-stock-firmware-ota-t3275784
regards
tar is another compression format like rar and zip.
If you have the software installed to use terminal commands (ADB) to connect to your phone when it is in so called 'recovery'or 'fastboot' mode you should flash the TWRP recovery image for Mate 7 posted somewhere on the forum for better compatibility. It is basically similar as CWM (clockworkmod) but newer.
In another post here there is a summary of firmwares and in that list is also the 'Twrp Backup' of a fresh installation. That should be downloaded, unpacked and placed in the folder where other/previous backups are stored. To find out where that it is you can create a backup yourself in recovery but only select the 'boot' so the backup is done immediately (and useless) and you can browse your phone to see where to put the downloaded recovery backup.
Next is restoring that backup within recovery.
Personally I would also do a factory reset after that but you should be ready to go after that.

not booting after encryption attempt - stuck on cyanogen logo -- phone now restored

I have a phone that was rooted with the original rom (CyanogenOS but not cyanogenmod I think?) and had TWRP 2.8.5.1 installed. I initiated the encryption process and let it run. I returned to it after a couple of hours and found it displaying the cyanogen logo. I waited another 30 minutes before deciding it was stuck. I tried restarting the phone but it would get stuck on the cyanogen logo.
I then booted to recovery and was prompted for the decryption code, but the correct code was rejected. After researching here I concluded that the TWRP version was part of the problem so I flashed version 3.2.1-0
I was then able to boot to TWRP and decrypt the data partition and browse files. Unfortunately it still gets stuck at the cyanogen logo.
I also tried wiping the cache, and wiping and replacing the persist.img.
I'm not very experienced or skilled with these issues. I'm looking for a way to restore the phone to how it was before my encryption attempt; for now I'm abandoning the idea of encrypting the phone.
If it isn't in bad taste or obnoxious to ask this here, I'm willing to pay for help.
edit-0:
I was thinking of using TWRP to backup the decrypted data partition, wiping the encrypted version, then restoring the decrypted version.
It seems like this should restore the pre-encryption state, but am I missing something? Any downside to trying this?
edit-1: a follow-up
I was able to restore the phone by the method proposed above in edit-0
I made a backup with TWRP using a method similar to what's discussed in these threads:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/general/general/twrp-backup-including-internal-storage-t3660479
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/general/tutorial-create-internal-storage-backup-t3389172
I followed roughly these steps:
1) temporarily rename the "media" folder to "mediabak" from the TWRP file manager
2) confirm size of the "data" partition has increased to expected value after renaming
3) plug in USB drive and mount
4) backup data partition to USB drive
5) make a backup copy of the USB drive to PC
5) wipe the data partition
6) restore the data partition using the backup on the usb drive
7) reboot to TWRP recovery (not a necessary step as far as I can tell)
8) note that at this point apparently TWRP automatically re-creates the "media" directory
9) delete the TWRP-generated "media" directory and rename the "mediabak" to "media"
10) reboot to TWRP recovery and browse restored files to see if things look right
11) reboot phone
Rebooting phone took longer than normal, as I think one would expect.
After lingering for a while the "cyanogen" logo animation disappeared and the message about android updating apps appeared
Phone seems to be working normally.
In retrospect my only exposure to actual data loss the database of Signal app messages. It seems like everything else I could have extracted from file based backups and also directly from the phone after I upgraded to TWRP 3.2.1-0

I wiped my whole phone

have a rooted Honor 8 (FRD-L09).
So, I installed the new Magisk. I have been prompted to reboot.
So, I rebooted, and my phone asked me my password for decrypting the OS. I never encrypted the system. I tried 0000, my pin and others, but nothing did it, so I factory reset my phone.
The system did not load.
I looked up online for custom ROMs to boot, but none of them worked.
And that's my big errir : I wiped /system partition because it was a recurring error.
Now I have a bricked phone, with no OS on it.
What to do ?
Hello,
Did you flash a custom recovery (TWRP)?
What the phone do if you press & keep all buttons ( "Power" , "Vol-" and "Vol+" )?
delete
Update : I reinstalled the TWRP and fixed /system, but HURupdater ignore the update.zip and /data isn't writter (also, every line in TWRP starts with "Unable to mount /data")
Gabmiral said:
Update : I reinstalled the TWRP and fixed /system, but HURupdater ignore the update.zip and /data isn't writter (also, every line in TWRP starts with "Unable to mount /data")
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you format /data partition and reboot ti ricovery?

Question: After TWRP install and /data format can't access encrypted SD card data anymore, is this normal?

Thanks for this great site, I followed the instructions in this thread to install TWRP on a Samsung Galaxy J3 (2017) running Android 7 with encryption enabled on the Phone: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/...axy-j3-2017-sm-j330f-j330fn-j330g-ds.3709056/
Since encryption was enabled on the Phone (including the SD card) TWRP could not mount the /data partition which was fine (I could load a zip from USB OTG instead). But the Phone complained on normal boot about "Integrity check failure" and that it would reboot to recover/restore, but the same message appeared on reboot. To get out of this endless loop I booted into TWRP and formatted the /data partition (without encryption) since all important data is stored on the encrypted SD card. Now the Samsung Galaxy J3 was able to boot normally without any integrity warnings but with all data/settings gone (as expected). The problem now is I can't access the encrypted data on the SD card anymore, I have the option to decrypt it but it stays on the verification stage and never ends (it has been now more than 48h stuck trying to decrypt the data which is more than enough time). I can't encrypt the /data partition either, it reboots unencrypted as nothing has been done. Is this normal? Is there a way to recover the data on the SD card? I no longer want to do any experiments and increase the damage and any help would be appreciated!
Steps done so far:
1 - Put Samsung Galaxy J2 (2017) with enabled encryption (on both Phone and SD card) in Download mode
2 - Flash TWRP with ODIN and auto reboot disabled
3 - Reboot directly into recovery mode / TWRP - /data can't be mounted, expected since the Phone is encrypted
4 - Reboot normally, Phone is still encrypted but error "Integrity check failed" appears all tells the Phone is going to reboot to recover/restore
5 - Since the Phone keeps showing this integrity error all the time and is not able to boot normally I boot to recovery / TWRP again and format /data which can now be mounted since it has no encryption
6 - Phone boots again normally with settings/data gone (expected) but decrypting SD Card doesn't work (stuck in "decrypting SD card" for more then 48h) and Phone encryption does no longer work either (reboots unencrypted nothing is done)
I also tried installing no-verity-no-encrypt_ashyx.zip on TWRP but it didn't help. At this point I wish I could restore the old state even if it means no TWRP / rooting, the data on the SD card and having working encryption is more important. Sadly since I couldn't mount /data with TWRP at the beginning when it was still encrypted I couldn't make a backup
Thanks for any help, information or feedback. Maybe everything is working as expected and I should have kept my fingers away from TWRP!
PS: "Encryption" refers to the OS/Android encryption in Settings > Security

How to flash rom via twrp? rom zip not appearing on sd card

Hello guys,
I am looking for help because I am lost.
I have a motorola one vision, its rom is XT1970-3_kane_reteu_RSAS31_48_36_21 according to the lenovo rescue tool
I had flashed XT1970-3_KANE_RETEU_PL_11_RSAS31.Q1-48-36-23_subsidy-DEFAULT_regulatory-DEFAULT_CFC.xml via fastboot
I later was trying to install twrp and magisk to root the phone (to later try to extract data from the userpartition after a factory reset, kind of mission impossible I guess)
I was somehow able to install twrp but later when trying to boot the system the system was simply not there anymore. I must have messed around a bit
I am able to boot in recovery mode to twrp and I need to flash a rom. I would like to reset to factory or to obtain a bootable system and here I am stuck
I have the zip file of XT1970-3_KANE_RETEU_PL_11_RSAS31.Q1-48-36-23_subsidy-DEFAULT_regulatory-DEFAULT_CFC.xml.zip on the external SD card
Currently if I try to boot the system after the logo the phone turns off
I turn on the phone, I get to the bootlooder. I had the bootlocker unlocked. I select recovery mode and enter twrp and here I am stuck:
If I select restore and select storage sd card no file to use for the restore appears in my sd card
If I select install I see the XT1970-3_KANE_RETEU_PL_11_RSAS31.Q1-48-36-23_subsidy-DEFAULT_regulatory-DEFAULT_CFC.xml.zip
I get invalid zip file format, error installing zip file
Should I use the other zip file? should this rom have another format?
I cannot reflash via fastboot currently
Thanks in advance
May be I have solved:
I saved on the SD card:
lineage-19.1-20220618-nightly-kane-signed.zip
lineage-19.1-20220618-recovery-kane.img
Via twrp I installed the .img file, a recovery tool (the recovery tool will substitute twrp)
(I accessed if I remember well from advanced, install ramdisk or something similar. I did not know exactly what I was doing, intuition was guiding me)
Rebooting the system through the recovery tool I applied the zip file
Later I resetted to factory via the recovery tool.
Once rebooted Lineage OS started in 10m
Now I can eventually reflash the motorola original rom via fastboot

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