[Tutorial] Wanna Backup Before U Get Root?! Heres How U Can

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ok first off this is a little more technical then the other root methods. all u really need from the root update is actually the spl (hboot.img) from that point u can fast boot and are pretty much in God Mode. so yeah i wanted to root my wifes Eris. but alo wanted to make a nandroid of her stock build with all her apps and stuff. just encase she didnt like the 2.1 build. anyhow heres how i did it.



before i start fastboot will be needed for this method. u can find it attached to this post. now fastboot is a very handy thing for a dev or anyone who may wanna flash boot.img, kernels, recoveries and really anything flashable. even update.zips. anyhow put it in ur working dirrectory rename it fastboot and excute as directed. this is a linux compiled fastboot so it will ost likely only be useful to those who are running linux.

i had to rename it "fastboot.zip" to upload to xda. download and rename "fastboot" and it will work fine

also look at the attached pictures on this post. they show what stock and GOD MODE hboot menus look like. that way u can confirm u have GOD MODE before pulling the battery. u will but just to remove all doubt i posted pics so one can confirm they are in fact in GOD MODE before they pull the battery. the top line in hboot menu is all that really says ur in GOD MODE. acutually it says... "PB00100 XC ENG S-OFF"

SO LETS ROCK AND ROLL

step one: get the PBOOIMG.zip from here (md5: 63eacc5ede3b179f95dc22d8ef585f94)

step two: put it on the root of ur sdcard and turn off the phone

step three: hold volume down while powering on. let it fine the PBOOIMG.zip and read it. at this point it will ask u to push the the jogball in to continue. BUT WAIT STOP RIGHT THERE. with that screen up pull the cover off the back of ur phone.

step four: ok now that were set with the cover off the back of our phone. get ready because this will go pretty quick. push in on the jog ball to continue with the install. the phone will reboot and when it comes back it will start looking for and reading the PBOOIMG.zip (we need to stop this or else itll flash the whole build) at this point pull the battery out. the hboot.img(spl) installed in that split second before it rebooted. which means u have GOD MODE.

step five: power the phone back on normaly. once ur booted in u need to remove the PBOOIMG.zip from the sdcard. i did it like this.
adb shell rm /sdcard/PBOOIMG.zip

step six: power the phone back of then hold volume down and power back on into hboot menu

step seven: get the recovery.img from here put in a directory u can remember on ur computer.

step eight: at this point with ur phone plugged into ur computer and in hboot menu. u will notice at the top it says..."PB00100 XC ENG S-OFF" <~~this is GOD MODE. anyhow look further down and u will see the fastboot option in orange. press send key to enable. wait a second or two and u will see "fastboot usb" in red. this means ur all setup to fastboot.

step nine: now were gonna fastboot flash the recovery.img to the recovery partition. u can do this buy this command: (btw i use linux and this is where it was on my computer)
fastboot flash recovery ~/Downloads/recovery-RA-eris-v1.6.2.img

if all goes well it should print this:
sending 'recovery' (3834 KB)... OKAY
writing 'recovery'... OKAY

step ten: press volume down to return to hboot mode. then volume up to reboot to recovery.

step eleven: then navigate through recovery to backup/restore>Nand backup or BART backup (ur choice) then select and wait for the backup to finish. once its finished u can just press volume down till u get back to the main screen and then just reboot.

were finished. now ur stock rom is not a root rom. so once u reboot back into it ur not gonna have su and #. u will still need to flash a custom update.zip via recovery to have a root build. but at this point u have a nandroid backup of all the stuff had. so if for some reason u ever wanna flash back stock ur set.

the spl (hboot.img) is all u actually need from the PBOOIMG.zip to be able to have root and flash custom roms. the radio.img from the PBOOIMG.zip can also be extracted from the zip and flashed via recovery or fastboot.

reserved::

toastcfh,

Awesome, makes perfect sense! I think this might be exactly what I was waiting for in order to loosen my grip on 1.5 and do the root dance.

I have a couple of questions though, I hope you don't mind:

My impression is that Amon_RA's recovery + Nandoid, BART, et cetera - (or fastboot+ S-OFF) allows you to backup/restore anything on a partition-by-partition basis, e.g. on the Eris we have

$ cat /proc/mtd :

dev:    size   erasesize  name
mtd0: 000a0000 00020000 "misc"         (normally skipped)
mtd1: 00500000 00020000 "recovery"    (normally skipped so it won't get nuked accidentally)
mtd2: 00280000 00020000 "boot"    
mtd3: 0aa00000 00020000 "system"
mtd4: 08200000 00020000 "cache"        (normally skipped)
mtd5: 09f80000 00020000 "userdata"

...but I'll have to admit - my understanding about the flashing of hboot, radio, and nv images is little bit fuzzy about what is possible - specifically if it can be done without a signed zip (the way it normally happens is with the RUU update process).

They are neither backed up nor restored by by the recovery tools, correct? (Amon_RA doesn't mention them in his announcement thread)

I was under the impression that fastboot can't flash any of those images, well... one by one anyway. Is that what the "fastboot update update.zip" method is for, or is there some other way to avoid the zip-signature issue that the RUU/PB00IMG.ZIP+hboot methods use?

I'm probably missing something completely obvious - and of, course, I'm aware that we have the 1.5 image files (hboot, radio, & nv) from the RUUs - but how do you burn them to the phone, assuming the S-OFF bootloader and/or (Amon_RA) recovery are in place on the phone?


bftb0

Also...

- can steps 5 & 6 be skipped by ejecting the SD card after the battery pull (step 4), and re-inserting it just before step 10? (Delete the PB00IMG.ZIP file later - after everything else is done.)


bftb0

Originally Posted by bftb0

Also...

- can steps 5 & 6 be skipped by ejecting the SD card after the battery pull (step 4), and re-inserting it just before step 10? (Delete the PB00IMG.ZIP file later - after everything else is done.)


bftb0

well im sure it might work. but... if u eject the sdcard it will stil sit and search for the it and u will have to sit and wait for a bit. i say pull the battery because its prolly the quickest way to pull this off and its how i did it. if u wanna try to eject the sdcard instead of pulling the battery ur welcome to try. if u do it and it works well post and give feed back on what happened. i tried to make this as detailed as possible to clear up most questions. so a good post on what u did and how it went down would be great for me to update the my post. thanx

Originally Posted by bftb0

toastcfh,

Awesome, makes perfect sense! I think this might be exactly what I was waiting for in order to loosen my grip on 1.5 and do the root dance.

I have a couple of questions though, I hope you don't mind:

My impression is that Amon_RA's recovery + Nandoid, BART, et cetera - (or fastboot+ S-OFF) allows you to backup/restore anything on a partition-by-partition basis, e.g. on the Eris we have

$ cat /proc/mtd :

dev:    size   erasesize  name
mtd0: 000a0000 00020000 "misc"         (normally skipped)
mtd1: 00500000 00020000 "recovery"    (normally skipped so it won't get nuked accidentally)
mtd2: 00280000 00020000 "boot"    
mtd3: 0aa00000 00020000 "system"
mtd4: 08200000 00020000 "cache"        (normally skipped)
mtd5: 09f80000 00020000 "userdata"

...but I'll have to admit - my understanding about the flashing of hboot, radio, and nv images is little bit fuzzy about what is possible - specifically if it can be done without a signed zip (the way it normally happens is with the RUU update process).

They are neither backed up nor restored by by the recovery tools, correct? (Amon_RA doesn't mention them in his announcement thread)

I was under the impression that fastboot can't flash any of those images, well... one by one anyway. Is that what the "fastboot update update.zip" method is for, or is there some other way to avoid the zip-signature issue that the RUU/PB00IMG.ZIP+hboot methods use?

I'm probably missing something completely obvious - and of, course, I'm aware that we have the 1.5 image files (hboot, radio, & nv) from the RUUs - but how do you burn them to the phone, assuming the S-OFF bootloader and/or (Amon_RA) recovery are in place on the phone?


bftb0

ok im gonna give this a shot for u. ok u got the partions listed here correctly which is good. ok when u flash amon_RA's recovery it flashes to the recovery partition. at that point u got the ability to use flash_image which is in the recovery. flash_image enables recovery to flash update.zips and some .img files. image ".img" files are whats inside the RUU ur talking about. a RUU is just a utility that whenn u run it, it will extract the includes image files to a file on ur computer. then flash those files via hboot. but it does it all automagic for u to avoid the user error part of life. just one thing about the image files though. u can flash via amon's recovery the radio, hboot, and boot.img using the flash_image comand while in amons recovery. the hboot u will never need to change most likely. it doesnt hurt to have full root (GOD MODE).

now as for fastboot. fast boot gives u the ability to flash all image files to all partitions. but it doesnt give u the big backup restore option like amon_RA recovery does. fastboot is more for dev purposes. giving a dev the ability to flash images without pushing them to the phone first and also the option to just boot the image instead of flashing it. so if it a image file doesnt do what was expected by the dev then he can just boot back into hboot menu and try the next, without having to take the extra steps of booting into recovery, pushing the next image file, flashing it and rbooting. hence the name fastboot. its fast but again this is really a dev tool. flashing or booting update.zips from fastboot i have never tried. as amon_RA recovery does this fine and lets me do a backup first.

for the use of this method of gaining root is the only time u should flash the recovery partition from fastboot. it can be done in root roms with ease if they are built correct.

there i hope i answered ur questions. sorry such a large post once u go root this way u will always have the reverse option. well as long as u have ur backup on ur sdcard. i did root this way for my wife and myself to have that security of knowing if she isnt happy with 2.1 or any other custom rom. she always has the build she knows she likes. 1.5 stock.

What exactly are Radios

toastcfh

AWESOME.

I'm running 1.5... with a S-OFF bootloader and Amon_RA's v1.2.6 recovery.

I need to figure out if there's any money in my Paypal account (haven't used it in 6 years), and buy both you and Amon_RA a coffee.

Gonna run out and get another SD card. Any suggestions about partitioning strategies, or whether you prefer Nandroid to BART for backup/restore, etc?

One thing you might edit in to the original instructions (step 9) is a mention to run fastboot from a root (Linux) or privileged account (Windoze), and check first that you are talking to the phone with a "fastboot devices" command. ( I got a small scare when I got to that step and forgot about needing root to write to the USB device under Ubuntu - I thought that the new bootloader was deaf for a minute there.)

bftb0

Originally Posted by bftb0

toastcfh

AWESOME.

I'm running 1.5... with a S-OFF bootloader and Amon_RA's v1.2.6 recovery.

I need to figure out if there's any money in my Paypal account (haven't used it in 6 years), and buy both you and Amon_RA a coffee.

Gonna run out and get another SD card. Any suggestions about partitioning strategies, or whether you prefer Nandroid to BART for backup/restore, etc?

One thing you might edit in to the original instructions (step 9) is a mention to run fastboot from a root (Linux) or privileged account (Windoze), and check first that you are talking to the phone with a "fastboot devices" command. ( I got a small scare when I got to that step and forgot about needing root to write to the USB device under Ubuntu - I thought that the new bootloader was deaf for a minute there.)

bftb0

Great man and I'm glad all went well. It was easy easy huh. Lol sorry bout not adding the whole root user deal. But thanx for the heads up. I will add it in as soon as I'm finished with this stupid windows install.( my hdd took a crap last week) anyhow about partitioning... I use nandroid for backups. But that doesn't make bart suck. It has some advantages over nandroid that I don't remember. Also for partitions I use ext 3 for a2sd on my heroc. But haven't hooked up the Eris yet. I will build a Rom soon that'll include a lot of goodies so keep an eye out

Originally Posted by toastcfh

Great man and I'm glad all went well. It was easy easy huh.

When I saw your original post, I actually laughed out loud as soon as I got to the part about doing the battery pull.

I had noticed that little "flashing hboot" blip that occurs right before the 2nd reboot during the many times I had re-run PB00IMG.ZIP flashes - but I never put 2+2 together the way you did.

Very nice - anyone that wants the option of rolling completely back to "factory 1.5" has that option now.

bftb0


[Edit] PS - One more minor thing - I think that use of the trackball (step #3) for confirming operations in the bootloader menu wasn't present in the OTA 1.5 (HTC) bootloader - you use the End Key in step #3 if you have the factory/OTA 1.5 bootloader on the phone (7501a_1.47.0000_091023). Not a big deal, but thought I'd mention it cuz it might confuse folks - it never mentions the trackball in the menu with the factory 1.5 bootloader.