[farangcm]

Note 7/3/2012: I haven't heard from the developer in over two weeks. This project is suspended until he returns.

I did a search for Clockworkmod Recovery but only found this old December post:

phati (Posted 29 December 2011 - 01:04 AM}

"...I installed Clockworkmod thinking that maybe I could boot up in recovery mode and load the image from the SD card or maybe RKBatchTool 1.4 would detect it on the USB. But not luck either way. Once the tablet is in recovery mode I don't know how to get it to look for the image from the SD card."

Which, if any, Clockworkmod Recovery version works on the Cube U9GT2? I don't see the Cube tablet listed here:
http://www.clockworkmod.com/rommanager or here: http://download.clockworkmod.com/recoveries/. Is there a generic version that works on the Cube?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update: also found this post, but seems the code was never posted.

Aditya Xavier
Posted 26 January 2012 - 07:33 AM
Got clockwork mod completely working. Now the device boots fabulously once done with recovery. Would post if its not already done by db.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allen

 

[damonfeuer]

Christian Troy has ported CWM to the Mediacom Smartpad 810c which is a RK2918 tablet. I'd imagine with a little/no? modification it should on all RK2918 tablets. His latest custom firmware for the 810c is even based on Cube U9GT2 v1.11.

Info and sources at http://www.androidiani.com/forum/modding-mediacom-smartpad-810c/132261-recovery-cwm-v5-5-0-4-a.html

 

[farangcm]

Thanks for the reply and especially the link. I am able to download what I think is the source (two folders, "bootable" and "device"), but I keep getting a network error on the first Mediafire link. I think the first link should be recovery.img. Almost certainly, the recovery image can be recreated from the source, but I don't know how to do it

.

Do you have a copy of the recovery image you could share?
Update: I think I got the recovery image from the rom, 1.47MB (1,550,806 bytes)

This week has been my first experience installing and using ClockworkMod recovery. I found a CWM which I installed on my Galaxy Mini phone, flashing with Odin. I also have an older Flytouch 2 tablet, which someone name Barsuk had created a custom CWM for. I was able to flash that one with IUW.

In both cases you only flash the recovery image, so it shouldn't erase your data and settings. I think the worst case is you would have to reflash the whole rom, if flashing the recovery destroyed it. The Smartpad recovery image could be flashed with the MoageRKtool (With it you can flash one or more of the firmware images, while with the Cube Rockchip Batch Tool you have to flash the full firmware image).

Now as you noted, it might require a little modification before it actually works on the Cube U9GT2, but the current Moage recovery image just displays a picture of an Android robot lying on its back with a big red exclamation triangle

.

I don't know the button combination on the Cube to get to the recovery screen, but you can also use the Rom Manager or Rom Toolkit apps to reboot to recovery (that's how I found the dead robot). So I hope your link is the start of a working Clockwork Mod Recovery for our Cube

.

Update: I can now get the dead robot by pressing Vol- & Power buttons, releasing only the Power button when "Moage" appears.

Thanks, Allen

 

[farangcm]

I think this is worthy of a new post. Thanks to Christian Troy who created the rom and ClockworkMod Recovery for the SmartPad 810c and DamonFeuer who posted the link and understood the significance of it for our Cube, we now have a ClockworkMod recovery for our Cube U9GT2!

I can't say yet that it is fully working, for all I have done is flash the recovery image from the MediaDroid rom and created a CWM backup with it. It created a 536MB backup in the external_sd clockworkmod/backup folder. The backup includes system.ext4,data.ext4,.android_secure.vfat,cache.ext4,sd-ext.ext2 tar files, and a nandroid.md5 file. I haven't tested the backup or tried other options in the CWM menu yet. I would be surprised if a few tweaks aren't needed for our device, but the CWM menu and the backup it created both look good to my inexperienced eye.

It's very late here and I have to get some sleep. If needed, I can post more details tomorrow.

Allen

 

[damonfeuer]

Sounds like you've made great progress in such a short time

.

I should have mentioned yesterday that Christian is also registered here. From what i've seen of him, he'd probably be happy to help you - http://www.slatedroid.com/user/110137-christian-troy/

 

[farangcm]

Sounds like you've made great progress in such a short time

.

I should have mentioned yesterday that Christian is also registered here. From what i've seen of him, he'd probably be happy to help you - http://www.slatedroid.com/user/110137-christian-troy/

Glad to hear Christian is a member of SlateDroid. It is difficult to understand what they are saying on that Italian Android forum, even with Google Translate.

The main test of the recovery is the restore,of course, which I haven't tried yet. I am worried about the 2GB application partition Evolution and Wackym use. With Moage, you can set it to 1, 2, or 3GB. Christian mentioned that it is too easy to change the partition size with the Cube and that is a problem for recovery, but I don't know what partition size his recovery will restore. I thought I had better look into this a little more before attempting a restore.

Update: 5/4 I have been browsing the translated Italian forum, but I haven't learned anything significant about the CWM recovery restoring partitions. So I just flashed Evolution 1.35 from 1.3, using Christian's CWM recovery instead of the non-working Moage recovery. After booting 1.35, I tried to restore my 1.3 system using CWM. It failed trying to mount /emmc/.android_secure and stopped restoring at that point. I don't think we have that /emmc directory. I then tried to boot the tablet, but it just stuck on the Moage screen.

Next I tried the Advanced Recovery option. This lets you restore System,Data,Cache, & sd-ext one at a time. This time it didn't try to mount /emmc/.android_secure, but did restore .android_secure as part of data. I did the Advanced restore for each of the four items, and the restores completed without error. But again trying to boot the system it gets stuck on the Moage screen. So the restore is not working on the Cube.

Allen

 

[sw6lee]

Hope it becomes fully working soon! I would love to use CWM Recovery on my Window N90 as well! Thanks for your testing!

 

[farangcm]

Hope it becomes fully working soon! I would love to use CWM Recovery on my Window N90 as well! Thanks for your testing!

I am surprised there seems to be so little interest in ClockworkMod recovery. This topic only has 155 Views and 6 replies, while the "Cube u9gt2 case?" topic has 5,683 views! That gives an idea where people's interest lie.

I thought there were many people here that were trying different roms for their Cube, but now I am beginning to think there is really only a small group that is actively flashing roms.

Maybe someone should do a poll on what rom people are using on their Cube and how many upgrades they have made?

 

[farangcm]

Christian Troy has ported CWM to the Mediacom Smartpad 810c which is a RK2918 tablet. I'd imagine with a little/no? modification it should on all RK2918 tablets. His latest custom firmware for the 810c is even based on Cube U9GT2 v1.11.

Info and sources at http://www.androidiani.com/forum/modding-mediacom-smartpad-810c/132261-recovery-cwm-v5-5-0-4-a.html

The original CWM 5.5.0.4 link from androidiani.com is finally working. This one is different than the CWM recovery I used from the MediaDroid rom. It is titled "cwm v5.5.0.4-no_datamedia.rar" and is for roms (Smartpad roms, I assume) without /data/media--doesn't "share space with internal memory and data (translated)". The Moage based Evolution rom just has an empty /data/media folder, so this recovery version may be better to test with than the MediaDroiD one.

The following doesn't sound so simple to me:
ChristianTroy 07/04/12 13:40 (Translated)

for others rk2918 now is simple, just downloaded the source of the CM9 (the stuff most Pallosa, are 12 gigs of stuff), enter my sources, change the keymapping (using posson [email protected] apk from Android to see scancode) possibly modify recovery.fstab if they have a different partitioning, the draw, scomprimono the picture because we can not use it as is and while we are entering into misc.img root (used to delete the partition and not to be in misc bootloop in recovery ) and the file rknandxx_ko of their kernel , with the ricompattano signandola rkcrc and is made

 

[farangcm]

Sounds like you've made great progress in such a short time

.

I should have mentioned yesterday that Christian is also registered here. From what i've seen of him, he'd probably be happy to help you - http://www.slatedroid.com/user/110137-christian-troy/

I finally translated Christian's complete CWM Recovery topic on the Italian Androidiani forum. Here is his final post:

ChristianTroy 04/23/12 17:12
for now at least a month since I have little / no free time

After building his Mediacom rom, creating a CWM rcovery for it, and helping people with questions on their forum for the past month, I think we need to give him some downtime before approaching him about help with a Cube CWM recovery. I know I don't have the Android/Linux knowledge to modify his source and build a CWM recovery for the Cube.

But I have flashed his recovery on my Cube, and have been able to create backups through the menu, so parts of it do work on our tablets. Unfortunately that doesn't include the restore function. So I am still exploring what can be done with Christian's existing recovery menu on the Cube.

Some ideas are using Christian's CWM backup files in some other fashion, aside from a direct restore. For example, Moage allows upgrading by flashing just the Loader, Parameters, Boot & System images. Is there some way the recovery files could be used in this updating process to recover part of the system? Also, since the CWM menu seems to work, can we right now do an update.zip on the Cube? I wish I had a simple update.zip to try. A minimal update.zip to test the function might not be that difficult to create. I used a simple one to root my Samsung Galaxy Mini Gingerbread phone.

Update: 5/9 I ran a test using the "- install zip from sdcard" option of the recovery menu. I used Titanium Backup to create an update.zip to install itself as a user app. This option is under Menu/more 'Create "update zip"...'. You have to use the Edify script option since this is CWM 5.5.0.4. After creating the update.zip in internal storage, I moved it to the root of the external_sd. I then uninstalled Titanium Backup. I used Rom Manager to boot into recovery (the key combination I used before stopped working). I ran the update.zip from recovery and it completed without error, but it didn't install Titanium Backup

. Back to the drawing board.

 

[damonfeuer]

@farangcm - Sorry for not replying earlier. I've done some experiments of my own but the results are similar to yours. I have a PMP5080B which is compatible with the Smartpad 810c. I was running a custom ICS rom not Christian Troy's Mediadroid rom.

I flashed CWM - it partly worked, made nandroid backups, error messages, my titanium backup experiment did work, but with enough playing about i ended up with a non-booting tablet

.

Since i could use Mediadroid i gave it a go - everything worked as it should and even menu operation in CWM was much smoother.

From reading the sources, Christians comments and unpacking some boot/recovery.img the key problem for both of us was in the way our roms looked at the partitions versus the way Christians CWM expected them to be.

My rom and your Evolution 1.3 recovery.fstab:-

/mnt/sdcard vfat /dev/block/mtd/by-name/user
/mnt/external_sd vfat /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 /dev/block/mmcblk0
/system ext3 /dev/block/mtd/by-name/system
/cache ext3 /dev/block/mtd/by-name/cache
/data ext3 /dev/block/mtd/by-name/userdata
/misc mtd misc
/boot mtd boot
/recovery mtd recovery
/backup mtd backup

Christian Troy's recovery.fstab:-

/cache ext4 /dev/block/mtdblock6
/data ext4 /dev/block/mtdblock7
/emmc vfat /dev/block/mtdblock10
/sdcard vfat /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 /dev/block/mmcblk0
/sd-ext auto /dev/block/mmcblk0p2
/system ext4 /dev/block/mtdblock9

To get CWM working two main choices exist - compile from Christian's sources a compatible CWM (possibly just swapping recovery.fstab) or adapt roms to Christian's CWM. I'd like to try compiling but i don't have the free space to try. It would be good if a more generic solution could be found. Need to ponder some more...

 

[farangcm]

I found recovery.fstab in Christian's source, but how do you extract recovery.fstab from the Moage/Evolution recovery.img? I can use WinImage on Windows XP to extract System.img, but boot.img and recovery.img are special formats. I do have Ubuntu, and I have installed the "kitchen" there, but I haven't figured out how to extract files from recovery.img.

I found this link about compiling CMW for the droid, and it includes some scripts that might be helpful, but they had to download 6 GB of CMW data for all devices, when only some of it was actually used.
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-development/107873-compiling-clockwork-mod-source.html

I also flashed a recovery image from a CM7 rom for the Cube, but like Moage it doesn't have a recovery menu.

Allen

 

[damonfeuer]

I found recovery.fstab in Christian's source, but how do you extract recovery.fstab from the Moage/Evolution recovery.img? I can use WinImage on Windows XP to extract System.img, but boot.img and recovery.img are special formats. I do have Ubuntu, and I have installed the "kitchen" there, but I haven't figured out how to extract files from recovery.img.

Boot/recovery.img are packed in at least two different ways. Without getting technical you can unpack them with either rkunpack or split_bootimg.pl (http://www.enck.org/tools.html). I don't know what the "kitchen" is but i guess it includes rkunpack. The procedures in linux are as follows:-

>./split_bootimg.pl boot.img
>mkdir boot
>cd boot
>gzip -dc ../boot.img-ramdisk.gz | cpio -i

>./rkunpack boot.img
>mkdir boot
>cd boot
>gzip -dc ../boot.img-raw | cpio -i

If you're feeling experimental you might even try just adjusting the files (probably fstab and init.*) and then repacking them.

But the more i think about it, the best way might be to adjust the roms to Christian's scheme. Christian's system is basically the same as CM9. By adopting it we'd be making the RK2918 roms more like everybody else. The more standard these devices become the better for everyone. Imagine how easy customising your rom would be if it only involved using a zip manager and of course you'd have a full nandroid backup if anything went wrong anyway.

Converting a rom would basically involve unpacking it, modifiying the init.* files, creating/modifying an install script (check the Mediadroid zip file), using Christians fstab, ironing out bugs, something else i've forgotten

and packaging it up in a zip file. Easy

.

 

[farangcm]

Yes, I have seen these utilities on the internet for extracting boot images. They don't seem to work for our recovery images. What command did you use to get "My rom and your Evolution 1.3 recovery.fstab"?

Thanks for your help, Allen

 

[damonfeuer]

Yes, I have seen these utilities on the internet for extracting boot images. They don't seem to work for our recovery images. What command did you use to get "My rom and your Evolution 1.3 recovery.fstab"?

I couldn't understand why it didn't work for you, so I repeated the unpacking - worked, hmmm? I'll try downloading rkunpack from the net, said unpacked but failed at gzip. Aha! you must have an outdated/incorrect/different/? rkunpack. I've attached my self compiled version but if you want to try compiling it yourself grab it from (https://github.com/naobsd/rkutils).

Then make a folder for your image files and do the following (the > is just to show it is a new command):-

>./rkunpack recovery.img
>mkdir recovery
>cd recovery
>gzip -dc ../recovery.img-raw | cpio -i

Edit - In case my rkunpack doesn't work and you need to compile it for your machine, do the following (some people aren't sure what to do if there is no makefile):-

>grab sources from https://github.com/naobsd/rkutils
>unzip/tar them to a folder
>cd into that folder
>gcc -o rkunpack rkunpack.c -O2 -W -Wall -s

 

[farangcm]

Thanks, your version worked. I don't know how to compile anything, so I'm glad I didn't have to try.

 

[farangcm]

...
>./rkunpack recovery.img
>mkdir recovery
>cd recovery
>gzip -dc ../recovery.img-raw | cpio -i

Damonfeuer, I think I need your help again.

1. I was able to unpack the recovery images using your rkunpack.

2. I replaced Christian's init,init.rc, & recovery.fstab with files from Evolution/Moage. (Christian has published two recovery images, one in his CWM recovery thread, and the other in the Mediadroid rom. I think I used the rom version).

3. I tried repacking Christian's recovery image using mkbootfs and mkbootimg without success--missing a kernel file from the recovery.

4. I also tried unpack and pack perl scripts, but couldn't get them to work with our recovery images--missing "Android magic" in the recovery.

5. Finally I found this site: http://www.bossink.net/rk2918/?q=node/7 which I hope you can take a look at when you have time, to see if you think it should work or not. I don't know if our recovery images are "SDK2.0 images", which don't work. The procedures do unpack and repack our images, but the repacked images just give a blank screen, no recovery menu so far.

6. The first step of the unpack procedure is not working. The size value I calculate is way too small, so I just make "count" very large and it ignores any garbage past end of file. They say use "bytes 4..7", but 17001F8B appears in all these images. Here's the beginning of the recovery image:
4B 52 4E 4C CA A9 17 00 1F8B 08 00 ... I think the size field should be CAA9 or 51,881 decimal. The 4B524E4C is "KRNL" and I think the rkcrc -k option in the pack procedure restores those characters.

So far I have created 3 different recovery images, using mostly Christian's files.

1. The first test used the rkunpack folder, with the changes in (2) above, repacked with the "Bossink" procedure, and no errors.

2. The second test only changed the recovery.fstab to rule out the init files being the problem. It resulted in the same blank screen.

3. The third test used both the Bossink unpack and pack procedures with the changes noted in (2) above. With the same result.

So, it seems, either the Bossink procedures don't work with Christian's image, or just changing recovery.fstab is enough to stop the menu from showing? What do you think?

Update: 4. I ran a fourth test, packing and unpacking Christian's recovery without any changes. The recovery menu came back! So, I conclude the Bossink procedures work, but the recovery image changes cause the loss of the menu. Either we can't change recovery.fstab or we also have to change the code that is affected by recovery.fstab.

Allen

 

[damonfeuer]

Damonfeuer, I think I need your help again.

I'll not quote the rest as it's quite a lot. Firstly don't worry about asking for help, documentation on these devices is unfortunately scattered all over the internet and your interest has rekindled my interest. I'd became lazy hoping somebody would make a great rom or eventually I'd get round to making my ÜberRom

.

So far I've seen two types of RK2918 boot/recovery.img - a type that includes the kernel in the image and one that has it separate. If it includes a kernel split_bootimg.pl will unpack it. If the kernel is separate rkunpack will unpack it. Rkunpack simply removes the first 8 bytes and the last 4 bytes i.e a header and footer. The first 4 bytes identify it as a kernel (4B 52 4E 4C), the next four bytes the size of the image (AB CD EF GH) and the trailing 4 bytes are a CRC. The Bossink site omitted to say that the size is swapped bytewise so if the size is (AB CD EF GH) at the header it should read (GH EF CD AB).

So to unpack try:-
>./rkunpack recovery.img
>mkdir recovery
>cd recovery
>gzip -dc ../recovery.img-raw | cpio -i

And to rebuild try (I'll attach my rkcrc):-
>cd recovery
>find . | cpio -o -H newc >../newrec.img (OLD)
>find . | cpio -oa -H newc >../newrec.img (EDIT more strictly correct)
>cd ..
>gzip -n newrec.img
>./rkcrc -k newrec.img.gz newrec.img

If the image includes a kernel the we unpack with split_bootimg.pl, remove the kernel and then repack it as above. This is the difference between old and new SDK images. As far as I'm aware nobody has been able to rebuild an image in the new style (it appears to require an SHA-1 checksum that hasn't been reverse engineered yet).

Your experiments don't appear too encouraging although I'm surprised it wouldn't even boot with changes. If you'd asked me to guess I would have said it would boot but still not work correctly. If this kept on happening it'd probably be worth giving up on the path without compiling

. When I changed/edited the init.* and default.prop (see following) it still booted.

But remember there are two paths - keep the weird naming scheme or adopt the CM9 scheme. If we adopt the CM9 scheme then a recompile or fstab change isn't required.

I can exclusively reveal that my tablet is now running the rom I referred to above, converted to an update.zip, installed from CWM and so far working well

. I'm sorry that I don't have the time right now to do a step by step guide on converting a rom but if you're interested I can. On the whole this seems the better path but it would mean wiping your tablet.

Edited typos and command

 

[farangcm]

Just saw this link on FlashmyAndroid. It gives a more step by step approach than what I got from Christian Troy's Italian forum:

https://sites.google.com/site/dutchtabs/clockworkmod-for-rk2918

 

[farangcm]

I'll not quote the rest as it's quite a lot. Firstly don't worry about asking for help, documentation on these devices is unfortunately scattered all over the internet and your interest has rekindled my interest. I'd became lazy hoping somebody would make a great rom or eventually I'd get round to making my ÜberRom

. ...

Thank you for the detailed reply. Without your input this would be a dead topic. Also, now I realize you are a Dev yourself, having created your own rom for your tablet.

I am afraid this is going to be another long post, so I hope you can bear with me, as I am on a new tangent about the "Dutchtabs" link I posted (I'll discuss your post in a new post). About in the middle of the Dutchtabs link he mentions which files need to be modified. I replaced or edited those files in Christian's extracted recovery image folder. This time I just modified Christian's recovery.fstab instead of replacing it with the Cube recovery.fstab. I repacked the image and flashed it on the Cube U9GT2. Finally, I get Christian's SmartPad recovery menu again. I did a backup from the recovery menu and it created a new clockworkmod folder in internal memory rather than in external_sd. The backup seems to match the Cube better than the backup I did with Christian's original recovery menu.

latest backup:
boot.img........... 16.00 M
recovery.img..... 16.00 M
system.ext3.tar.. 221.27 M
data.ext3.tar..... 237.32 M
cache.ext3.tar... 11.00 K
nandroid.md5..... 237 B

original backup (different rom version):
system.ext4.tar...............229.15 M
data.ext4.tar...................303.46 M
.android_secure.vfat.tar.....3.08 M
cache.ext4.tar..................10.00 K
sd-ext.ext2.tar..................2.00 K
nandroid.md5...................256 B

Following is the new and Christian's recovery fstab. Can you make corrections to my changes? I know I left out sd-ext. Is that why the clockworkmod folder is not on the external_sd?

# mount point......fstype...device
/boot..............mtd......boot
/cache.............ext3...../dev/block/mtd/by-name/cache
/data..............ext3...../dev/block/mtd/by-name/userdata
/recovery........mtd......recovery
/sdcard..........vfat...../dev/block/mtd/by-name/user
/system..........ext3...../dev/block/mtd/by-name/system

# mount point.....fstype...device
/cache............ext4...../dev/block/mtdblock6
/data.............ext4...../dev/block/mtdblock7
/emmc.............vfat...../dev/block/mtdblock10
/sdcard...........vfat...../dev/block/mmcblk0p1 /dev/block/mmcblk0
/sd-ext...........auto...../dev/block/mmcblk0p2
/system...........ext4...../dev/block/mtdblock9

Allen