With Epsylon3 brilliant work, a new idea of flashing custom firmwares came to surface, allowing custom /system partition to be flashed directly from RSD Lite! This way you don't need to flash fixed SBFs and waste time with rooting and recovery install in case of system screw-up.
What you need:
1) MotoAndroidDepacker. With it, unpack sbf of the firmware you use as base.
2) Leave CG35(boot) and CG61(devtree) partition files, delete other smgs. Other files are not that important. You can delete all partition files if you're making backup for yourself...
3) Replace CG39(system) with your system dump:
adb shell:
su
dd if=/dev/block/system of=/sdcard/CG39.smg
copy CG39.smg from sd card to your firmware folder.
4) Compile sbf with MotoAndroidDepacker.
5) Flash your sbf in case of failure.
MAJOR CAVEAT: This sbf will work ONLY on devices with have same full SBF version applied last as your device. I.e. if you have flashed 3.4.2-107 and then upgraded it with nandroid to 3.4.2-177, the sbf you created from your system dump will work only for devices which flashed still 3.4.2-107 sbf last. To install such (custom) sbf, one would need to flash full 3.4.2-107 sbf first.
Technical: this is possible because of bug/feature in flashing process: system signature partiton is not checked if phone signature is already present. Phone signature is generated when flashing full genuine sbf and is verified aganist copy in sp partition and obviously differs for each firmware. It is stored at the end of the system partition.
What you need:
1) MotoAndroidDepacker. With it, unpack sbf of the firmware you use as base.
2) Leave CG35(boot) and CG61(devtree) partition files, delete other smgs. Other files are not that important. You can delete all partition files if you're making backup for yourself...
3) Replace CG39(system) with your system dump:
adb shell:
su
dd if=/dev/block/system of=/sdcard/CG39.smg
copy CG39.smg from sd card to your firmware folder.
4) Compile sbf with MotoAndroidDepacker.
5) Flash your sbf in case of failure.
MAJOR CAVEAT: This sbf will work ONLY on devices with have same full SBF version applied last as your device. I.e. if you have flashed 3.4.2-107 and then upgraded it with nandroid to 3.4.2-177, the sbf you created from your system dump will work only for devices which flashed still 3.4.2-107 sbf last. To install such (custom) sbf, one would need to flash full 3.4.2-107 sbf first.
Technical: this is possible because of bug/feature in flashing process: system signature partiton is not checked if phone signature is already present. Phone signature is generated when flashing full genuine sbf and is verified aganist copy in sp partition and obviously differs for each firmware. It is stored at the end of the system partition.
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