Decompiling/hacking the VF HTC Magic

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Hello all,

I'm currently sat with my VF-UK HTC Magic and want to start pulling this thing apart a bit if it'll be of use to the more experienced on here, although I'm not 100% where to start.

Below is a breakdown of where I am at the moment, can people please post with further suggestions and what files/dumps from the device you'd like to see etc.

With adb loaded into root mode: (adb root)

C:\android-sdk-windows-1.5_r1\tools>adb shell
# ls
ls
sqlite_stmt_journals
cache
sdcard
etc
system
sys
sbin
proc
logo.rle
init.sapphire.rc
init.rc
init.goldfish.rc
init
default.prop
data
root
dev

I am in the process to pulling off these files to package up for others etc. however not having a great deal of experience I'm looking for some pointers as to which bits to pull off and upload?

I'm also in the process to playing with SQLite. Which I've successfully got into but my SQl experience is based on MS SQL so again getting my head around this with a view to locating and extracting the operator setting files etc.

Any tips, requests to try on the device (within reason) etc. please post

Thanks

I'm not sure if the forum rules would allow it, but you would get a million more page views (and therefore help) if you post this at the Dream section instead. The Dream and the Magic/Sapphire is basically the same phone anyways, except for the keyboard (or lack thereof) so I don't see the harm.

Jethro - Should Vodafone staff really be asking questions like this?

Tell'em armholes Jethro.
P.S keep the emails coming, We love you up at 2nd Line

Why not? This is an open source device, only the SIM belongs to VF. As I am not decompiling the SIM or even the radio stack at this point everything I'm accessing is within my rights - at least this is my grasp of the licensing side. The Linux kernel is obviously open source and Android itself is released using the Apache License.

"Like any free-software license, the Apache License allows the user of the software the freedom to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software."

So as far as my understanding goes I'm not contravening any licensing or contract, if anyone can provide evidence otherwise then please post and I’ll stand corrected.

Otherwise I'm cracking on with more adb fun today!

@jbelman
source is free, but not compiled binaries, so you are not allowed to 'hack'.

Can anyone explain exactly why the actual compiled binary licensing model differs from the source code?

Originally Posted by thevery

@jbelman
source is free, but not compiled binaries, so you are not allowed to 'hack'.

And who cares about this? It's my phone, so I can even throw it out of the window, if I want.

@jbelman
How did you get the root rights? If I run adb root, I get an error message, that the adbd daemon cannot run with root rights in production builds.

I did some research with adb shell before.
I haven't found any hole I could use to get root rights. Your shell runs with user and group "shell". All the data on the NAND-Flash (Apps and so on) are saved with the user and group "system" and you are not even allowed to enter this directory with another user.

The SD-Card is mounted nosuid and noexec. So we can't execute a local root exploit or something like this from here.

Breaking out of the Java VM is also not possible, because every Application runs with an own user. What would perhaps be possible is exploiting the VM (if there is a security vulnerability in it) and executing a local root exploit (if there is any available for this kernel) from there.


I'm currently waiting for the first update Vodafone delivers. I will sniff the download source of it and save it on my computer to have a backup if anything goes wrong when I'm playing with other firmware versions. I don't want to brick my phone.

@ Matschkeks1988

Are you using 1.1 or 1.5 SDK? I used 1.5.

I'm also a bit loath to really screw around until I've got a stable replacement image etc. should I brick it. Fingers crossed we can grab using update like you suggest.

By the way if anyone has any issues with adb giving: error: more than one device and emulator (I got this after using pull command). Disconnect your device and run: adb kill-server. This will remove all the devices, plug back in and away you go again.

I appear to have a different version baseband, kernel and build:

Baseband:
62.47S.20.17U_2.22.19.07I

Kernel version:
2.6.27-00342-g1936dcd

Build number:
CRA71C

What's everyone else on?