[Q] partition issue with mediatek n9002 note 3 clone

i just got a Star/Ulefone n9002 mediatek based clone of a Samsung Galaxy Note 3. the phone is pretty nice... i'm liking it. specs on it are pretty good, but i am having an issue with the internal SD card. when i ordered it, it was suppose to come with an 8gb internal SD card. i got it, took it out of the box and checked, and the system specs said that it had a 16GB internal card. originally, i thought, "Bonus!!" but the more i thought about it, the more i realized that this is probably bogus or an issue with whatever rom is flashed on it. checking needrom.com there are 2 rom images out there for it and they both list the original specs for an 8gb internal card. when i started loading things on it, i suddenly started to get strange errors about running out of space. it didn't make much sense. anyway, i rooted it with mtk droid tools, installed the custom CWM, and what not, and started poking under the hood. fdisk is giving me errors and parted refuses to even work on it. (maybe i am running the wrong commands, but attached are outputs).

anyway, i already know there is an issue with the ROM cause MTK Droid tools reports that it has an mt6582 cpu even though the software on the phone reports and mt6589. all of the roms say it should be an mt6582 also. not a big deal in my opinion.

my question is this... is there anyway to non-destructively fix the partition table? i have read alot about editing the EBR files to change partition sizes, but there has got to be a better way. also, i'd like to truely verify the size of the built in storage without opening up the phone and reading the numbers off of the internal SD card.

should i just get the latest ROM off of needrom.com and flash it? i don't know if this would fix the partition table either.

here are the outputs:
fdisk output:

1|root@hedy82_wet_v116_jb5:/ # fdisk /dev/block/mmcblk0
fdisk /dev/block/mmcblk0

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 951232.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5

Command (m for help): v
v
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary
Partition 2: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary
Partition 3: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary
Partition 4: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Partition 5: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Partition 6: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Logical partition 5 not entirely in partition 1
Total allocated sectors 4290439170 greater than the maximum 15219712

Command (m for help): p
p

Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 7792 MB, 7792492544 bytes
1 heads, 16 sectors/track, 951232 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16 * 512 = 8192 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 65 64 2147483647+ 5 Extended
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 1153 2432 10240 83 Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary
/dev/block/mmcblk0p3 2433 3712 10240 83 Linux
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary
/dev/block/mmcblk0p4 5313 6080 6144 83 Linux
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary
/dev/block/mmcblk0p5 8129 97728 716800 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p6 376001 64 2144476159+ 83 Linux

Command (m for help):

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

gdisk output:

root@hedy82_wet_v116_jb5:/system/xbin # gdisk
gdisk
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.4

Type device filename, or press to exit: /dev/block/mmcblk0
/dev/block/mmcblk0
EBR signature for logical partition invalid; read 0x0000, but should be 0xAA55
Error reading logical partitions! List may be truncated!
Partition table scan:
MBR: MBR only
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: not present


***************************************************************
Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format.
THIS OPERATION IS POTENTIALLY DESTRUCTIVE! Exit by typing 'q' if
you don't want to convert your MBR partitions to GPT format!
***************************************************************

Command (? for help): v
v

No problems found. 13732797 free sectors (6.5 GiB) available in 4
segments, the largest of which is 13656031 (6.5 GiB) in size.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

parted output:

1|root@hedy82_wet_v116_jb5:/system/xbin # parted /dev/block/mmcblk0
parted /dev/block/mmcblk0
GNU Parted 1.8.8.1.179-aef3
Using /dev/block/mmcblk0
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.

(parted) check
check
check
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
(parted) print devices
print devices
print devices
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
(parted) print all
print all
print all
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
(parted)

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

/proc/mounts:

rootfs / rootfs ro,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /dev tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,relatime,mode=600 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /acct cgroup rw,relatime,cpuacct 0 0
tmpfs /mnt/secure tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=700 0 0
tmpfs /mnt/asec tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000 0 0
tmpfs /mnt/obb tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000 0 0
none /dev/cpuctl cgroup rw,relatime,cpu 0 0
/emmc@android /system ext4 rw,relatime,noauto_da_alloc,commit=1,data=ordered 0 0
/emmc@usrdata /data ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,discard,noauto_da_alloc,data=ordered 0 0
/emmc@cache /cache ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,discard,noauto_da_alloc,data=ordered 0 0
/emmc@protect_f /protect_f ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,nodelalloc,noauto_da_alloc,commit=1,data=ordered 0 0
/emmc@protect_s /protect_s ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,nodelalloc,noauto_da_alloc,commit=1,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/loop0 /mnt/cd-rom iso9660 ro,relatime 0 0
/dev/block/vold/179:97 /storage/sdcard0 vfat rw,dirsync,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1015,fmask=0702,dmask=0702,allow_utime=0020,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 0
/dev/block/vold/179:97 /mnt/secure/asec vfat rw,dirsync,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1015,fmask=0702,dmask=0702,allow_utime=0020,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 0
tmpfs /storage/sdcard0/.android_secure tmpfs ro,relatime,size=0k,mode=000 0 0
/dev/block/vold/179:8 /storage/sdcard1 vfat rw,dirsync,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1015,fmask=0702,dmask=0702,allow_utime=0020,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 0

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/proc/partitons

major minor #blocks name

7 0 1254 loop0
7 1 11451 loop1
253 0 524288 zram0
179 0 7609856 mmcblk0
179 1 1 mmcblk0p1
179 2 10240 mmcblk0p2
179 3 10240 mmcblk0p3
179 4 6144 mmcblk0p4
179 5 716800 mmcblk0p5
179 6 129024 mmcblk0p6
179 7 2097152 mmcblk0p7
179 8 4601856 mmcblk0p8
179 64 4096 mmcblk0boot1
179 32 4096 mmcblk0boot0
179 96 31166976 mmcblk1
179 97 31162880 mmcblk1p1

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progress...

i take it by the deafening number of replys, no one has any idea whats up with my issue or any idea how to fix it. so i have been digging deeper myself and think i have come up with some solutions.

first of all, i was just planing on flashing one of the roms off of the NeedRom.com website, but i read a couple of posts on chinaphonearena.com and one in some german forum that listed a phone with my same baseband and ROM build, and when they flashed the new rom, it screwed up their touch screen. something about having an incompatible touch screen driver. i don't know if the person flashing the rom chose the correct rom, or incorrect rom, but it made me skidish to attempt this as a fix.

so i checked in on modifying the EBR files, which people have been doing on these mediatek phones for a while. i thought maybe one of mine was screwed up. i extracted the EBR1 and EBR2 file from my fine with MTKDroidTools and i pulled the files out of the rom update. i also took the scatter file generated by MTKDroidTools and the scatter file from the rom update. i compared them line for line. the EBR files are totally identical! as was the scatter file. address of where the partitions start and stop inside the phone are 100% the same. so flashing a new rom wouldn't have fixed the problem anyway.

i started googling around at the error that parted gives me: "Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!" this is discussed elsewhere, but mostly on actual machines, not phones. there are some postings here on XDA, but none that address my specific issue. anyway, the ways it always suggests to fix it is to figure out which partition is oversized, used the sfdisk utility to dump the partiton table, fix it, and re-write the partition table to disk. simple enough, if you know what your partition table should look like.

back to fdisk, i reprint out a copy

1|root@hedy82_wet_v116_jb5:/ # fdisk /dev/block/mmcblk0
fdisk /dev/block/mmcblk0

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 951232.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5

Command (m for help): v
v
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary
Partition 2: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary
Partition 3: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary
Partition 4: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Partition 5: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Partition 6: sector 0 greater than maximum 16
Logical partition 5 not entirely in partition 1
Total allocated sectors 4290439170 greater than the maximum 15219712

Command (m for help): p
p

Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 7792 MB, 7792492544 bytes
1 heads, 16 sectors/track, 951232 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16 * 512 = 8192 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 65 64 2147483647+ 5 Extended
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 1153 2432 10240 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p3 2433 3712 10240 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p4 5313 6080 6144 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p5 8129 97728 716800 83 Linux
/dev/block/mmcblk0p6 376001 64 2144476159+ 83 Linux

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

this does indeed tell me that the internal flash memory is about 8gb (Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 7792 MB, 7792492544 bytes) but it is not obvious to me which partition is screwed up.

anyway, i'd love for someone that has an mtk6582 based phone with 8gb of internal storage to provide me with a dump of their partition table, then i could just restore it over mine, and it should fix the issue!... the command is simple...

adb shell
su
sfdisk -d /dev/sdc > PT.txt

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

from what i see (i may be wrong here) but these phones run with something like 2 partition tables... there is the one that is physically connected to the first 512 bytes of the SD card. then they have the EBR's which map out all of the EMMC partitons. so there is just one big partition seen from the outside, but through software, we can map that big partition in to smaller ones by knowing start and end addresses inside that big partition. i tell you, it is confusing.

i'm sure if i use the spflash_tool and format my phone and re-install a rom, it would fix the problem, but i am nervous about doing that because so many people have had issues putting rom's on this phone. they report that even when going back to their original backup the touch screen issues persist.

anyone have any comments? any ideas? any mbr backup they could share with me?