support.zip FAQ
Q: What is it?
A: It is a sanitized (sensitive information like username or device id redacted) logs to help understand / troubleshoot in case anything goes wrong.
Q: What good is it?
A: See
this response
Q: Do I really have to provide one?
A: No, but it helps the community if you do (help me help you and the community, win-win).
Q: How do I get one?
A: PixelFlasher | Help Menu | Create a Sanitized support.zip submenu
Q: What's in a log file?
A: Let's take a look at a
support.zip file provided by
freonchill in
this post for the issues experienced in
this post.
Unzipping the support.zip we get:
Code:
support.zip
│ PixelFlasher.db
│ PixelFlasher.json
│
└───logs
PixelFlasher_2022-05-21_17h16m03s.log
PixelFlasher_2022-05-21_17h27m32s.log
PixelFlasher_2022-05-21_22h19m08s.log
PixelFlasher_2022-05-22_06h20m13s.log
PixelFlasher.json is merely the last options selected in PixelFlasher
PixelFlasher.db has the boot.img related information (the ones you see in the list)
Logs folder is where the most useful information lies.
Let's look at each log which is dated, in chronological order.
PixelFlasher_2022-05-21_17h16m03s.log
Not that at this point nothing has been flashed to the phone, or anything potentially destructive / problematic has been performed, the only thing that has been attempt is to reboot into bootloader mode.
Let move on to the next file.
PixelFlasher_2022-05-21_17h27m32s.log
Application is restarted, that is why there is a new log file
I will not comment similar sections of the log that were commented in the previous file, I will only highlight the observations and differences.
PixelFlasher_2022-05-21_22h19m08s.log
PixelFlasher_2022-05-22_06h20m13s.log
Observations:
Commenting on the user experience.
I have magisk hidden, so i manually did the process on the phone to patch the boot.img
Actually there is no need to do it manually even if magisk is hidden, as long as the shell is given root rights, PixelFlasher will be able to do the patching.
See details in OP.
and it rebooted my phone, and rebooted and my phone, and oh crap a boot loop
Can't be 100% certain, but I suspect that the user was observing
dryRun behavior.
This is a May 2022 flash-all.bat file shipped in the firmware.
So all in all a
dryRun would do
1- reboot to bootloader (to place the phone in bootloader mode)
2- reboot to bootloader (line 18)
3- reboot to bootloader (line 21)
4- reboot to system (at the end)
The few reboots might give the impression that the phone is bootlooping.
Of course, this is no certainty that it's what happened with the user, however looking into the logs, at the point this is reported to be the case, PixelFlasher has done nothing but rebooting the phone and then not detecting the phone anymore.
the annoying thing was I couldn't do anything in adb, b/c it was unauthorized
This can happen when the phone is in adb mode, and it displays the message to authorize the device.
Even if the checkbox is clicked, it will remain in unauthorized state until it is disconnected and reconnected.
Code:
adb disconnect
adb devices
This happens with me, and possibly could happen to others, I have no explanation on why it happens, my cables are solid and the connections are solid, I have no driver issues, however sometimes the phone keeps on disconnecting / reconnecting for no apparent reason, and this is outside of PixelFlasher.
Sometime slight touch to wire causes this to happen, normal times hard shaking the cable does not disturb it.
How do I know that it is disconnecting / reconnecting?
1- Audio feedback of USB connect / disconnect
2- I run
EventGhost script that displays on my screen anything a USB device is connected to disconnected, and it reports what device it is, and I see that it is the phone.
The fact that PixelFlasher repeatedly could not detect the phone, could be a sign of that, or an actual bootloop.
If it is the former, then the cables / connections / drivers should be looked into.
If it is the latter, why a phone would bootloop by just a reboot? I truly don't know and can't answer that.
I hope this helps people who want do troubleshooting when things go wrong.
Of course, I will do that myself if support.zip is provided.