Difference between .img and .zip files? - General Questions and Answers

Dear Experts
Or, at least those more experienced that me,
I've been looking into flashing the ROM of
an Android phone to Lineage OS.
The scant documents that I've looked at
Install LineageOS on lake | LineageOS Wiki
wiki.lineageos.org
Say to first load the .img file,
fastboot flash boot <recovery_filename>.img
Then later:
adb sideload Lineage.zip
What is the difference between the
.img file, and the .zip file?
Is the .img file a prereq for the .zip?
...
Why run both files?
Instead of the 2 stage process,
why not just flash the .zip file?
Thanks

The .IMG file extension is used for disk dumps, whereas .ZIP file extension is used for any content what got compressed.
Fastboot requires disk dumps ( .IMG ), whereas ADB requires archives ( .ZIP ) passed in.

@xXx yYy
More explanations, great.
So, can you go directly to ADB, and
sideload the .zip?
Or, is it always a two (or more) stage process,
fastboot .img file, then
adb sideload .zip?
Thanks

Related

quesion on fastboot

has anyone had a chance to try
Code:
fastboot update update.zip
where update.zip contains img files from the build output of android source.
fastboot flashall xxxxx.zip
try this
Is there a structure to this update.zip or we just zip the img files into update.zip.
Coz the update.zip that is loaded from the sdcard through the bootloader screen is using update-script !!

[Q] Help with Blob tools?

I'm confused on how to extract blob files using blob tools. I am running Windows XP and 7 and this is my first port
If anyone could guide me through the steps with appropriate commands in command prompt, that would be great.
Blob tools is nice and simple to use
To extract a blob:
1. Download the ROM.zip or other multiple partition blob file and extract the file called 'blob' (Or 'recoveryblob' or whatever..) out of it.
2. Place the 'blob' in the same folder as 'blobunpack.exe' (You can rename it if you have multiple blobs and need to distinguish them)
3. Open up cmd.
4.
Code:
cd C:\directory\of\blob
blobunpack blob (Or the name of the blob, no extension required)
[I]Let it do it's thing for a moment...[/I]
exit
5. You will now have many blobs with different file extensions, each of these file extensions is a different partition of the TF.
EBT is the bootloader
SOS is the recovery
APP is the os, and etc...
Good luck.
I can't speak for Windows, but in linux, it's pretty easy. The commands would be
blobunpack <insert blob here>
you'll get some or a bunch of files like blob.APP, blob.LNX, blob.SOS, blob.EBT. It depends on what is packed in the blob. A proper blob will start with MSM RADIO UPDATE or something like that. If not, it's not a packed blob, but probably just blob parts.
EBT is the bootloader.
APP is an ext4 filesystem that you can loop mount in linux. Don't ask about windows.
SOS and LNX are boot images/Android! magic files that you can unpack wiht the boot tools (bootunpack). Rebound has a thread in the dev section about making an insecure boot image- it sounds unrelated, but it has all the information about boot.img's.
As far as getting the tools, I think there might be some windows binaries floating around, but again, I can't speak from experience. If you have linux, you can just compile them from source and go to town. Grab the boot tools while you are at it and save yourself some time.

Help - unbrick using fastboot and files from update.zip?

I have bricked my kyobo ereader (gingerbread 2.3.5) but still have fastboot and limited adb (no shell commands since there is no valid system) access on the device.
I have various update.zips for the device but unfortunately these are installable only on a working system (via settings->privacy->updates) and I know of no way of installing the update.zip since there does not appear to be any custom recovery for this ebook reader and booting into recovery does not install the update.zip on the sdcard.
The update.zip for the Kyobo ereader contains boot.img, recovery.img and a system folder containing files and directories for the system partition (an example of an official update.zip is available from m.kyobobook.co.kr/mirasol/update.zip )
I have extracted the system folder on a ubuntu system and need to prepare a system.img file which may be flashed using fastboot. I have also changed owner of the extracted files to root:root and chmod 777 on all the executables in the extracted system folders. A complication is that I only have the windows qualcomm hsusb drivers for fastboot or adb to connect to a pc, so I must use a windows 7 notebook to flash the device (possibly precluding pushing the system folder files to the device since they don't have permission and owner settings in windows)
I have tried various tools to make a system.img including the native linux mkcramfs and tools suggested by various google searches such as mkfs.yaffs2.x86 and make_ext4fs. All these tools could prepare a system.img but unfortunately they have different sizes and I am not sure which img is the correct one. I have tried to flash the various system.img using both fastboot flash system system.img and also by adding the system.img to the update.zip (together with placeholders for the required android-info.txt but in all cases they do not any files onto the sytem partition (although fastboot does send the system.img successfully to the device and writes the 120~180MB img files in about 50-70seconds. I have tried using both the official boot.img and the rooted boot.img. I noticed that the device reboots twice after such flashing which may be because there is some protection from the official recovery.img which checks the system partition an erases it if it does not match.
My first 2 questions are general and the third is specific to my situation:
1. What is the correct tool to generate an android system.img file from the extracted update.zip's system folder on a linux system?
2. Any suggestions on how to flash an update.zip using fastboot or adb?
3. Are there any generic recovery.img which I could try to flash over the official recovery partition on the kyobo mirasol ereader?
Any suggestions anyone?

[Q] Need some help with grabbing system.img

Hello !
I'm trying to set up a dual boot with Ubuntu and Android on my TF101.
I'm using Frank's Tool to do so.
I know i must have the boot.img the recovery.img and the system.img files, and that is the problem : i can't manage to dump my current ROM in img format. I tried with several Recoveries, but i just can't...
All i have in the best scenario is the following :
boot.img
recovery.img
system.ext4.dup
or :
boot.img
recovery.img
system.ext4.tar.a (400+ mb) and system.ext4.tar (0 kb)
Is there any way to grab the system.img from my current ROM, of am i forced to use the one provided in OLiFE Prime (which is fully stock... :crying: )
Many thanks in advance.
What file formats are the .img files? Linux doesn't care about the extension at the end like windows does. You could name the file dog_food.blah and linux is just as happy.
If you just need dumps of the partition, then the dd command will work for system. These will probably be ext4 filesystems.
What are the file types of the olife files that you want to change? From the linux command line, you can just type "file <some system.img here>" and it will tell you. I'm guessing it will say ext4 filesystem. Those tar files you have can probably be converted to what you need.
Disclaimer, I haven't dual booted my tablet and I don't know a thing about Frank's tools.
EDIT: I spent 30 seconds looking at Frank's tools, which appear to be an nvflash interface for windows. I suppose this means you want everything in an nvflash-able format. boot.img and recovery.img will be ANDROID! packed files, while system.img will be an ext4 filesystem.
To be sure, boot.img and recovery.img will start with ANDROID! There are also some boot tools by Rayman and other sources if you want to manipulate these. I think you can grab the system with "dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 of=/Removable/MicroSD/system.img" It will take a while and will be a large file, maybe 500MB. Depending on where your sdcard is, you might have to change that bit around.
If any of this doesn't make sense, then feel free to google or ask. Good luck!

Conversion of one file type to another for purposes you will not be informed of. (intentionally vague)

HOW, in detail, step by step, can I take stock firmware in the Samsung 4 file format tar.md5, and somehow, with minimal extra steps, create a flashable zip file with it?
If you're on a Windows computer, use 7Zip tool to untar & zip an archive
More info here:
https://allthings.how/how-to-use-7-zip-in-windows-11/
BTW:
You can untar a .TAR via Windows command prompt, too:
Code:
tar -xf <TAR-FILE>
jwoegerbauer said:
If you're on a Windows computer, use 7Zip tool to untar & zip an archive
More info here:
https://allthings.how/how-to-use-7-zip-in-windows-11/
BTW:
You can untar a .TAR via Windows command prompt, too:
Code:
tar -xf <TAR-FILE>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So it is that easy? No special hand coded files to direct things or anything like that? So when people say a "flashable zip", it's no different internally than the tarballs are? Just decompress one and compress into the other? I had a suspicion it might be that way, but everyone has been so cryptic with other users, and just refusing to answer, I thought it must be more complicated than that. Thank you very much for the straight answer, I am very grateful.
So i state this as overtly as possible for posterity: nothing signifies a flashable zip as different than an ordinary zip other than the contents, which are identical to the contents of a tar archive. Easy.

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