[Q] How-to Mount/Partition/Clone Asus TFP on Linux?

[robotneg]

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| SUMMARY: How to clone an MTP / MMC device, like the mmcblk0 found in the Transformer Prime?
| Edit: Haven't found any anwser yet, could anybody please help.There should be a way, isn't it?
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I've recently acquired a TFP an dI'm struggling to interact with its physical storage from Linux. I mean, how can I:

1. access it with GParted or any other partition manager (fdisk, parted…)?
2. clone the drive/partitions, like with Clonezilla or dd?

I've had some preliminary success with mounting the main storage partition but I still can interact with the device in itself. Could you help?

Part 1 — What worked: mounting the main partition

I used this xda guide to mount the internal storage in Linux [0]. At first, “lsusb” showed me a Google Inc. device. [1] But it didn't worked, with or without USB Debugging.

Later on, after a factory reset on my tablet, “dmesg | tail” showed me a new USB device. [2] “lsusb” shows it as an ASUSTek Computer, Inc. device. [3] I tried with this new info and everything works fine by now.

Did my factory reset saved the day? No way to tell. Anybody to confirm this?


Part 2 — What failed: how to interact with the device???

The only clue I got is these lines from my “dmesg” output :

[ 3.772062] usb 2-6.1.2: new high speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd
[ 3.876060] usb 2-6.1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0b05, idProduct=4d00
[ 3.876065] usb 2-6.1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 3.876068] usb 2-6.1.2: Product: Transformer Prime TF201
[ 3.876070] usb 2-6.1.2: Manufacturer: asus
[ 3.876072] usb 2-6.1.2: SerialNumber: C<snip/>
[ 4.045902] Btrfs loaded
[ 4.705334] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic Ultra HS-SD/MMC 1.91 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ 4.736286] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[ 4.744326] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk

So I supposed my TFP goes to the “/dev/sdc” but it doesn't show in GParted and “sudo fdisk /dev/sdc” outputs “fdisk: unable to open /dev/sdc: No medium found”. So I'm not sure it's the correct “/dev”-ice.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Footnotes

[0] Linux Mint Debian Edition AMD64
[1] idVendor=18d1
[2] idVendor=0b05, idProduct=4d00
[3] but the Google Inc. line is no more…

 

[robotneg]

Part 3 — What Asus Support told me

I contacted the Asus Support about my questions. I told them I'm a CS teacher (as a matter of fact, I am!), hoping they won't be afraid to use technical mumbo jumbo with me.

At first, they answered

• there are no partition on the TFP
• the only thing we can see is the free space vs what's used

Asking for more, I was eventually told

• the filesystem used is FAT
• there is no way we can interact with the recovery and os partitions because they are internal level, factory settings
• there is no way to clone the drive

To say the least, I'm quite disappointed with Asus support, so far. Because, some of their answers are obviously wrong, as we shall see in the fourth part!

 

[robotneg]

Part 4 — Further investigation

I then installed the Android SDK [1] on my main computer and began to experiment with the Android Debug Bridge (the adb command).

Then I tried

$ adb shell mount
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
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /acct cgroup rw,relatime,cpuacct 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
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 /system ext4 ro,relatime,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/mmcblk0p8 /data ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,journal_async_commit,nodelalloc,data=writeback 0 0
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 /cache ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,journal_async_commit,nodelalloc,data=writeback 0 0
tmpfs /Removable tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000 0 0
/dev/fuse /mnt/sdcard fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1023,group_id=1023,default_permissions,allow_other 0 0

$ adb shell ls /dev/block/mmc*
/dev/block/mmcblk0
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2
/dev/block/mmcblk0p3
/dev/block/mmcblk0p4
/dev/block/mmcblk0p5
/dev/block/mmcblk0p6
/dev/block/mmcblk0p7
/dev/block/mmcblk0p8

No partitions, uh? FAT partitions, uh? Neither.

As we can see, the main device seems to be /dev/block/mmcblk0 containing as many as eight partitions! Three of which are Ext4 mounted as /system (read-only), /cache and /data.

A ls -l /system/bin reveals a wealth of tools embedded in a busybox excutable called toolbox and the use of the mksh shell (probably in restricted mode as we can't use the cp command).

I have to investigate further about this and I still don't know how I could clone the tablet content. But, I'm very desappointed by Asus tech support!! Why are they giving blatantly false info to their clients?

Does anybody have more info about all this? Help appreciated!

[1] As mentionned in the official guide, I also needed to install ia32-libs and sun-java6-jdk. In order to connect to the TFP, you have to activate the USB Debugging mode, in the Developper Options of the tablet.