Custom Recovery for the G-Slate

So...now that Chandon has graciously provided us a way to root...now it's time to figure out how to flash a custom recovery.

I already experimented around and tried to flash clockworkmod 3.0...no dice...bricked it. Didn't really think it would work but it was worth a shot nevertheless.

Has anyone tried Amon Ra? Or another recovery? Or built your own?

Would be good to get this done. They did it for the Streak 7. Maybe contact those guys for assistance

Its harder than it seems as we can't even figure out how to get into stock recovery. This means we don't know what partition to flash a custom recovery to as of now. We are looking into it....hopefully when kmobs gets his Slate he will have a better idea of what to do.

How many partitions are there in total? Did you guys ever find out?

I forget, but Chandon did find out what partition our stock recovery is supposed to be. The problem is that it doesn't seem like LG included a stock recovery. Instead, the partition contains the LG Downloader...which i believe is a software updater. It may be possible to flash a recovery image over this partition but we would need someone to compile one for our device. It is somewhat similar to the G2X except that their button combos to get into the LG Downloader mode actually work as opposed to ours. I may be wrong but I think this is a job for a very experienced dev.

Or a foolhardy one with nothing to lose. And 629 bucks to spare

Well it is relatively safe as we can backup any partition we are planning to write over. So there shouldn't be too much worry about bricking the device. I recall Chandon trying to flash the G2X recovery on our device and was able to easily recover.

Can someone help me out here, how to mount my LG into linux or WIndows to overwrite a system file. I did back up the file into my sdcard in my lg, trying to replace it back into the system file in the LG.. My lg keeps rebooting....

atomboy wrote:Can someone help me out here, how to mount my LG into linux or WIndows to overwrite a system file. I did back up the file into my sdcard in my lg, trying to replace it back into the system file in the LG.. My lg keeps rebooting....

Wouldn't you be able to technicly mount it using that apx mode in linux? I'm not 100%, but it would make sense since that's the way we got root.

kronickhigh wrote:

atomboy wrote:Can someone help me out here, how to mount my LG into linux or WIndowsto overwrite a system file. I did back up the file into my sdcard in my lg, trying to replace it back into the system file in the LG.. My lg keeps rebooting....

Wouldn't you be able to technicly mount it using that apx mode in linux? I'm not 100%, but it would make sense since that's the way we got root.

Correctumundo... ;-)

Here is a list of partitions on the device.

Code:


Major minor  #blocks  name
 
179        0  31256576 mmcblk0
179        1    409600 mmcblk0p1
179        2    409600 mmcblk0p2
179        3      4096 mmcblk0p3
179        4  30301184 mmcblk0p4
179        5      5120 mmcblk0p5
179        6      5120 mmcblk0p6
179        7      2048 mmcblk0p7
179        8      4096 mmcblk0p8
179        9      98304 mmcblk0p9
179      10      5120 mmcblk0p10


I'll look at mapping these out this week.

Thanks hopefully we can find the right partition and get a custom recovery compiled.

deez1234 wrote:Thanks hopefully we can find the right partition and get a custom recovery compiled.

I got a sneaking suspicion it's mmcblk0p7, but I've been wrong before. :-)

You should join us on IRC. It's not crazy active but at least 5 of us are in the channel at all times.

I will look into it. I'm so buried right now. I found this, probably nothing at this point:

Code:


lib/libandroid_runtime.so:/dev/block/mmcblk0p7


When I get time throughout this week, i will continue to post my findings. It will probably be easier if i download all the partitions and look at the content of each one.

I'm thinking that the recovery would go on whatever partition consists of the LG Software Updater.

So here are the important partitons:

Code:


  0 /tmp ramdisk (null) (null) 0
  1 /system ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 (null) 0
  2 /cache ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 (null) 0
  3 /misc emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 (null) 0
  4 /data ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p4 (null) 0
  5 /recovery emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p5 (null) 0
  6 /boot emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p6 (null) 0
  7 /radio emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p9 (null) 0
  8 /oemboot emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p10 (null) 0


So I got fastboot working, or apparently...I am going to try and flash the Xoom recovery tomorrow and see what comes of it.

Code:


fastboot oem unlock


Shows it as working ...OKAY. So we shall see, it truly is working, it will let me flash the boot.img.

Nice!!

Any luck with the boot.img?

deez1234 wrote:Any luck with the boot.img?

I haven't even touched it today. I've been putting fires out all day at both jobs. We had a nice thunderstorm roll through last night, and it ended up killing one of our routers. Yea...

Ok, so here is what I got so far. I can actually use and flash with fasboot and nvflash, your choice.

I flashed the custom kernel from chief here. It flashes and boots perfectly, but the problem being, when coming back to the stock kernel, I get:

Code:


[HasValidKernelImage ] Magic value mismatch:
[DetectOperatingSystems ] kernel image is invalid !!!

Starting Fastboot USB download protocol


I'm going to boot into APX mode and see if I can reformat that partition and reflash the backup image I made using the nvflash utility. I used:

Code:


fastboot erase boot
fastboot flash boot boot-orig.img
fastboot reboot


Code:


0 /tmp ramdisk (null) (null) 0
1 /system ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 (null) 0
2 /cache ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 (null) 0
3 /misc emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 (null) 0
4 /data ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p4 (null) 0
5 /recovery emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p5 (null) 0
6 /boot emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p6 (null) 0
7 /radio emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p9 (null) 0
8 /oemboot emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p10 (null) 0


To wipe paritions with nvflash (N = partition #, use table above to prefix):

Code:


./nvflash --bl bootloader.bin --getpartitiontable ptable.txt
./nvflash -r --format_partition N


I think I'm going to need to completely reflash the whole image back to factory. Now I just need to locate the complete stock image.

more updates coming soon.

dasunsrule32 wrote:Ok, so here is what I got so far. I can actually use and flash with fasboot and nvflash, your choice.

I flashed the custom kernel from chief here. It flashes and boots perfectly, but the problem being, when coming back to the stock kernel, I get:

Code:


[HasValidKernelImage ] Magic value mismatch:
[DetectOperatingSystems ] kernel image is invalid !!!

Starting Fastboot USB download protocol


I'm going to boot into APX mode and see if I can reformat that partition and reflash the backup image I made using the nvflash utility. I used:

Code:


fastboot erase boot
fastboot flash boot boot-orig.img
fastboot reboot


Code:


0 /tmp ramdisk (null) (null) 0
1 /system ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 (null) 0
2 /cache ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 (null) 0
3 /misc emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 (null) 0
4 /data ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p4 (null) 0
5 /recovery emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p5 (null) 0
6 /boot emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p6 (null) 0
7 /radio emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p9 (null) 0
8 /oemboot emmc /dev/block/mmcblk0p10 (null) 0


To wipe paritions with nvflash (N = partition #, use table above to prefix):

Code:


./nvflash --bl bootloader.bin --getpartitiontable ptable.txt
./nvflash -r --format_partition N


I think I'm going to need to completely reflash the whole image back to factory. Now I just need to locate the complete stock image.

more updates coming soon.

So the issues was I was flashing to the wrong partition. It appears that the bootloader.bin being used to root our Slate, maybe for the Xoom. Not 100% sure and will find out more soon.

Well we have some very good news..We have CWR actually booting on the G-Slate. Follow this link for details!

I can flash recoveries via fastboot and even via rom manager. It seems there is a LG bug present causing the issue. I'm not sure if the source we have will show button mappings to add a recovery option, but I would surmise this would be at the sbl level and not kernel. So we probably have a defunct bootloader causing a lot of heartache right now. :-( LG needs to release 3.2 and the new bootloader that is not broken.