[KitKat] 4.4.4 System, Boot and FOTAKernel Images

Forboding Angel · Jul 12, 2014

Hey guys, I am not at all new to android, flashing roms/kernels/working with recovery, but this phone legitimately confuses me.

At the moment I have a zu gpe with an unlocked bootloader. No root running stock 4.4.4.

I want to do this: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=53835525&postcount=12

but, his instructions immediately screw me up because he mentions starting out with 4.4.3. I don't have a custom recovery, and apparently the kernel has to be baked in with the recovery (which makes 0 sense to me)?

I'm coming from experience with the m7/s3 (d2spr)/s4(jflte) with a smattering of working with the note 2, and before that the htc evo 4g (supersonic).

Ok, so... I'm fairly well versed, but this phone and methods used confuse the hell out of me.

Can someone tell me exactly what I need to do to get custom (preferably dual) recoveries on this phone so that I can flash cm11 (hoping cm11 fixes the damn camera)?

Thanks for any/all help.

blueether · Jul 12, 2014

Forboding Angel said:
Hey guys, I am not at all new to android, flashing roms/kernels/working with recovery, but this phone legitimately confuses me.

At the moment I have a zu gpe with an unlocked bootloader. No root running stock 4.4.4.

I want to do this: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=53835525&postcount=12

but, his instructions immediately screw me up because he mentions starting out with 4.4.3. I don't have a custom recovery, and apparently the kernel has to be baked in with the recovery (which makes 0 sense to me)?

I'm coming from experience with the m7/s3 (d2spr)/s4(jflte) with a smattering of working with the note 2, and before that the htc evo 4g (supersonic).

Ok, so... I'm fairly well versed, but this phone and methods used confuse the hell out of me.

Can someone tell me exactly what I need to do to get custom (preferably dual) recoveries on this phone so that I can flash cm11 (hoping cm11 fixes the damn camera)?

Thanks for any/all help.

As you have already unlocked the BL all you need to do is flash a boot.img from flashtool or fastboot. If you want to do a nandroid before flashing CM11 then you can hot boot the boot.img, so I'll give you that method:

Extract boot.img from chosen ROM and save on PC
Copy ROM to internal SD somewhere (Carbon & Omni all have working camera, not sure about CM but it should)
Boot into fastboot mode
- Power off phone
- Connect to PC while holding vol up
Hot boot boot.img:
- "fastboot boot boot.img"
or
- Flashtool => Flash => Fastboot => Hotboot boot.img
Enter recovery when LED goes purple during boot by pressing vol up
Make nandroid backup
Wipe /data and both caches
Flash ROM
Reboot

Forboding Angel · Jul 12, 2014

Awesome, thanks for the help!

I am, however, still confused about the recovery issues. Wouldn't your instructions cause me to end up with cm11 (or whatever other rom) with a stock recovery?

I dislike that as I prefer to have all of the abilities and features provided by TWRP (specifically) or cwm.

Or am I missing something really basic here?

blueether · Jul 12, 2014

Forboding Angel said:
Awesome, thanks for the help!

I am, however, still confused about the recovery issues. Wouldn't your instructions cause me to end up with cm11 (or whatever other rom) with a stock recovery?

I dislike that as I prefer to have all of the abilities and features provided by TWRP (specifically) or cwm.

Or am I missing something really basic here?

on the xperia (and other sony?) phones we have to bake recovery into the boot.img, the GPe is different in that it has a full stock recovery as the ZU doesn't. The boot.img from ROMs for the GPe still has a recovery baked in to the boot image. So flashing a boot.img will give you a custom recovery. In the case of CM and Carbon that is CWM and I think Omni uses TWRP. This custom recovery doesn't overwrite the stock one.

Forboding Angel · Jul 12, 2014

blueether said:
on the xperia (and other sony?) phones we have to bake recovery into the boot.img, the GPe is different in that it has a full stock recovery as the ZU doesn't. The boot.img from ROMs for the GPe still has a recovery baked in to the boot image. So flashing a boot.img will give you a custom recovery. In the case of CM and Carbon that is CWM and I think Omni uses TWRP. This custom recovery doesn't overwrite the stock one.

Someone should sticky this and put it in giant red text at the top of this subforum. It answers 99% of the questions I imagine most people have when coming here and trying to figure out a new environment.

blueether · Jul 13, 2014

Forboding Angel said:
Someone should sticky this and put it in giant red text at the top of this subforum. It answers 99% of the questions I imagine most people have when coming here and trying to figure out a new environment.

Adding to the GPe guide

adrienned · Aug 13, 2014

I'm running a locked bootloader so I can't do the img files (I think!) Is there any 4.4.4 full stock/signed zip that I can flash through normal recovery? I fiddled with my sound and completely have no sound and want to try to restore but can't seem to find a full rom (not an incremental OTA)

I just want a stock zip. When I try to use the 4.4.2 it says I can't downgrade

ChrisJ951 · Aug 25, 2014

egzthunder1 said:
Preview comes out ok as the hardware does initialize. The issue is, from what I have seen and other who may have corroborated this, is the AF on the camera. You see, photosphere actually works well, just not the regular camera. Someone else mentioned that apps using infinity focus work as well.

My guess is that something in 4.4.3 and 4.4.4 (maybe in the kernel?) is looking for the missing DRM keys from devices with unlocked BL. Several people have already stated that they have no issues with their cameras, with the only difference being the locked bootloader in their devices. Considering that Sony had done something similar with the Z1 last year, I would not be surprised if it was the case here as well. Not sure why this would be the case for a GPE unit as it has no proprietary software (other than X-Reality)...

As I said, nothing but a guess albeit it does make sense (to me anyways).

I have an unlocked bootloader and my camera takes pictures fine. Just used these images yesterday. I don't believe it is explicitly the bootloader being locked/unlocked causing it.

adfurgerson · Aug 25, 2014

ChrisJ951 said:
I have an unlocked bootloader and my camera takes pictures fine. Just used these images yesterday. I don't believe it is explicitly the bootloader being locked/unlocked causing it.

Were you on 4.4.2 when you unlocked bootloader?

ChrisJ951 · Aug 25, 2014

adfurgerson said:
Were you on 4.4.2 when you unlocked bootloader?

Was on 4.4.4. That's probably why then

anathema_forever · Oct 27, 2014

idk if this is a noob question but would it be possible to go back to 4.4.2 and lock the bootloader then ota to 4.4.4 and unlock to get your camera back?

egzthunder1 · Oct 28, 2014

anathema_forever said:
idk if this is a noob question but would it be possible to go back to 4.4.2 and lock the bootloader then ota to 4.4.4 and unlock to get your camera back?

Technically speaking you can do all that but it will not bring your camera back because when you unlock the bootloader, the DRM keys are wiped out for good (no way to get them back unless you saved the ta partition before doing this).

This is something that can be fixed at a kernel level (as it can be seen from all the other aosp Roms on 4.4.4 with working camera) and I sincerely hope that Sony will roll out in Lollipop.

You want me to put the hammer down?

anathema_forever · Oct 28, 2014

idk what the hammer is but I hope they fix it with Lolipop aswell I might flash CM11 on it in the mean time.

blueether · Oct 29, 2014

anathema_forever said:
idk what the hammer is but I hope they fix it with Lolipop aswell I might flash CM11 on it in the mean time.

"You want me to put the hammer down?" is part of @egzthunder1's sig.

L may or may not fix it, who knows

speculatrix · Oct 29, 2014

When I first had my XZU I accidentally trashed the TA and had no backup. Back then on jellybean the Sony camera would crash but other camera apps were fine.
Since moving to 4.3.x and 4.4.x the Sony camera app worked just fine.

jpark623 · Dec 16, 2014

ekrunch said:
@DooMLoRD
Have you seen a XZU GPe get stuck and be unable to flash the boot partition? I get this every time I attempt to flash it.

Code:

[root@f20 4.4.4 Stock Rooted]# fastboot flash boot boot_4.4.4.img sending 'boot' (20480 KB)... OKAY [ 2.462s] writing 'boot'... FAILED (remote: image is not a boot image) finished. total time: 2.466s

Now before we all start screaming bad download, here's the list of things that I've tried...

I've tried multiple boot images from various sources, validating md5 sums accordingly. I even tried the restoration procedure from your thread about restoring to stock.

I've tried to erase the partition using fastboot (which doesn't return an error) but I still can't flash after that.

I've tried using a different OS with fresh drivers. I normally run on a Fedora 20 box but I've tried on Windows 7 using Flashtool as well.

I've tried to wipe & clear cache. (Didn't think this would help, but what the hell?)

Anyway, I'm out of ideas. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

And thank you for all of your hard work on the Xperia line. I've appreciated all of the posts in this forum, the system images and tutorials, as well as the custom recoveries!

Update : flashing boot.img from CM11 works fine. Clearly I'm missing something about how to flash the boot partition on this device. Apparently not all boot.img files are created equal...
Update 2 : I can flash the Advanced Stock Kernel with Dual Recovery without issue, so I'm going to flash my way back to 4.4.3 and go from there.

Fixed! : In the end, it was because I was using an ELF image and fastboot didn't like flashing it for some reason. I reverted my phone back to 4.4.3 using the stock system.img and FOTAKernel.img, then used the Advanced Stock Kernel with Dual Recovery, since they were all flashable via fastboot. Once the system was up, I used adb to push the 4.4.3 stock boot.img to the device and the did an adb shell, su'ed to root, and dd'it onto the boot device. Rebooted, OTA'ed it to 4.4.4. Done.

What a night. This is what I get for starting this project late...

Thanks for this post! After messing around with the boot kernel, I was only able to access fastboot for some reason. Your method brought my GPE back to life. :highfive:

herrdude · Apr 29, 2015

ekrunch said:
Forgive the long post, I'm sure some of this is repetitive, just trying to be complete for those who don't.

Get a shell going

Code:

adb shell

How are you getting adb shell? It gives an error message.
I can only get adb sideload working. What do I need?

PamelaGirl · May 9, 2017

Hello All,
I have the Sony Edition running a custom GPe 4.4.2 ROM.
Can I use these files to update from 4.4.2 to 4.4.4?
The reason is I am getting frequent opened apps returning to the home screen

T.I.A.

PamelaGirl · May 17, 2017

I switched my mobile network from LTE to 3G and so far my device appears to be more stable.

bam80 · Dec 17, 2017

pudgewack said:
This is what I tried:
fastboot flash system <system.img>
fastboot flash boot <boot.img>
fastboot flash FOTAKernel <FOTAKernel.img>

I got an error for the boot.img (same error as ekrunch), but system and FOTAKernel successfully flash.

ekrunch said:
Code:

fastboot flash FOTAKernel FOTAKernel-4.4.4.img fastboot flash system system-4.4.4.img

That should do it.

I tried it for Xperia Z but it fails:

Code:

$ fastboot flash FOTAKernel twrp-3.0.2-0-yuga.img 
target didn't report max-download-size
sending 'FOTAKernel' (10704 KB)...
OKAY [  0.354s]
writing 'FOTAKernel'...
FAILED (remote: Command not allowed)
finished. total time: 0.356s

How to explain it? Any thoughts?

[KitKat] 4.4.4 System, Boot and FOTAKernel Images

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