Making SBF file ?

[MotoCache1]

I think a few of us would be interested in that. I've talked to others and as near as I can tell the sbf files come from moto. This makes sense that there is a 2.01 sbf file to reload a stock phone if some customer ended up with a glitch from an app or something.

What makes no sense to me is moto releasing a sprecovery sbf file. I hope that guy didn't get himself fired because I doubt it was an officially released item.

SPRecovery isn't a Motorola utility. Perhaps you meant to say it doesn't make any sense for them to release a SBF of just the recovery? Presumably that's what happened, and then the SBF was hacked and the image replaced with the SPRecovery image. It's also feasible for someone who knew what they were doing to have started with the complete ESE81 SBF and then just remove all of the parts not related to recovery.

Likewise, the ese81 rooted stock file is also an odd release.

I've never seen a "stock rooted" ESE81 SBF. Seen plenty of ROMs, but not an SBF. If you have a download link for an ESE81 rooted SBF I'd like to take a look at the file and compare to a non-rooted ESE81 SBF and how they did it.

Of course, moto may have still been making up their mind about open bootloaders at the time too. For them this rooting community may very well have been a marketing experiment to see how it went.....who knows.

My personal opinion on this is that Motorola didn't intentionally make it easy to root these devices, but they didn't go out of their way to prevent it either. I think providing the SBF files to the Verizon stores and repair shops is necessary to prevent getting 10 times the number of returns. If the store can flash a SBF on and send the customer on their way it is a win for everybody.

Also, from Motorola's statement about having a "business reason" for not locking down the boot loader on the Droid, it's pretty obvious to me that we were the business reason. Give the hacker community a nifty hackable toy to play with it and it will become their favorite above other less-hackable but otherwise similar toys. If we like it, then our non-hacking friends will probably also be convinced of how cool it is and buy one, and their friends and so on.

It would be nice to have a 2.2 rooted stock sbf file too. If such a thing was easy, I'd think someone would have made it already, and for those trying such a thing, I wish you luck and the thanks of our community.

Personally, I'd rather install a bone stock SBF and root it myself so I know what I'm starting with. Making a SBF that is rooted is tougher than just replacing the recovery system in the SBF. The recovery system is a monolithic image. Find it in the file, replace it, fix the checksums, and you should be good. The /system partition however -- I have no idea how that is stored (yet) - but tacking a couple extra files into /system/bin and /system/app is bound to be a little tougher.

I'll let you know how it goes.

[MotoCache1]

I was tied up for a bit, but finally got a little time to look at this. I have successfully made a SBF that can flash clockwork onto an unrooted ESE81 phone. It's somewhat amusing how easy it was. I guess it was sort of cheating since I had an ESE81 SBF that would flash SPRecovery on to start with. That told me which code groups I needed to mess with and it was pretty elementary from there. I'm going to see how that knowledge translates into making a SBF for FRG01B that only flashes the recovery. If this works the way I think it does, that will be easy as well.

Wish me luck.

[MotoCache1]

I know the original creator of the ESE81 SPRecovery SBF file was someone on Droidmod who goes by the handle "[mbm]". I hope he sees this post some day and gets at least a little grin.

I found your short note hidden in one of the code groups in the SBF. I Googled the phrase and it doesn't appear that anybody else has ever repeated it anywhere in the whole of the Internet in proper context (or at least that portion of the Internet that has been preserved for prosperity by Google). It looks like you said it once on #milestone-modding in May of this year. You even put a :P after it. Could be just coincidence or could be an inside joke amongst your crew. Anyway, I thought it was a nice touch.

[MotoCache1]

The beast is conquered.

I have built the following SBF's:

• SBF to flash complete FRG01B with SPRecovery for the recovery
• SBF to flash complete FRG01B with ClockworkMod Recovery for the recovery
• SBF to flash only recovery for FRG01B that replaces recovery with SPRecovery but changes nothing else.
• SBF to flash only recovery for FRG01B that replaces recovery with ClockworkMod Recovery but changes nothing else.

I still have some playing I want to do before elaborating as I didn't get a chance to work on the one last thing that I want to play with.

This wasn't a "plug and play" thing -- it took some decent reasoning skills and intuition to look at the output of "mount" and "cat /proc/mtd" and then look at these code groups that come out of the SBF and take some dd dumps of partitions on a live phone and compare it all and decide what is where. Obviously it's not impossible -- I went from never having touched an SBF before (other than installing ones made by others) to building my own in about 5 hours.

Anyway, thanks to christim for this nudge. I'm sure he didn't intend it as a nudge, but it was a little bonus incentive:

If such a thing was easy, I'd think someone would have made it already, and for those trying such a thing, I wish you luck and the thanks of our community.

[MotoCache1]

Note for my "to do" list. Make SBF to do nothing but put stock recovery back on without blowing away the whole phone. It's as easy as any of the others I just didn't think to do it yet.

[christim]

Note for my "to do" list. Make SBF to do nothing but put stock recovery back on without blowing away the whole phone. It's as easy as any of the others I just didn't think to do it yet.

I'm definitely impressed!

I am pretty sure that in the 3rd link of my signature is a link to a file Pete passed along (he did not make it) that is a rooted stock ese81 file.

And you are correct, the context of my phrase was that I thought moto released an sprecovery sbf file. I did not mean to imply moto created the sprecovery file only that to me it looked like someone at moto took the existing sprecovery file and turned it into an sbf file that RSD Lite could use.

So the next question might be....if moto is not the only entity that can create sbf files can one be made to flash over the stock recovery app on the DX and D2?

I'm in complete agreement that the hacking community is vocal and brought in additional sales for motorola. I guess not enough to repeat the same process on their newer phones though.

It did not cross my mind that someone would hack an existing sbf file to make it do something different. That's why I thought it odd moto would release sprecovery via a moto created sbf file.

[jstafford1]

Are any of these rooted, or just stock with the custom recoveries?

[tktouch12]

i'm pretty sure p3droid from mydroidworld knows the most about this stuff. i think he make the ese81 with sprecovery sbf. and i think he has an understanding (i think he may have released an actual rom in the sbf form)

if developers could figure out how, it would be helpful to romming motorola phones

[Tallica]

The beast is conquered.

I have built the following SBF's:

• SBF to flash complete FRG01B with SPRecovery for the recovery
• SBF to flash complete FRG01B with ClockworkMod Recovery for the recovery
• SBF to flash only recovery for FRG01B that replaces recovery with SPRecovery but changes nothing else.
• SBF to flash only recovery for FRG01B that replaces recovery with ClockworkMod Recovery but changes nothing else.

I still have some playing I want to do before elaborating as I didn't get a chance to work on the one last thing that I want to play with.

This wasn't a "plug and play" thing -- it took some decent reasoning skills and intuition to look at the output of "mount" and "cat /proc/mtd" and then look at these code groups that come out of the SBF and take some dd dumps of partitions on a live phone and compare it all and decide what is where. Obviously it's not impossible -- I went from never having touched an SBF before (other than installing ones made by others) to building my own in about 5 hours.

Anyway, thanks to christim for this nudge. I'm sure he didn't intend it as a nudge, but it was a little bonus incentive:

If such a thing was easy, I'd think someone would have made it already, and for those trying such a thing, I wish you luck and the thanks of our community.

Wow, great job Moto! If these end up working this is gonna take a whole step out of rooting...just keeps getting eaiser for these kids.

[MotoCache1]

I am pretty sure that in the 3rd link of my signature is a link to a file Pete passed along (he did not make it) that is a rooted stock ese81 file.

Oh, OK, you're talking about SPRecovery_for_ESE81.sbf. I thought you meant a whole ESE81 that was already rooted. SPRecovery_for_ESE81.sbf is just the ESE81 kernel and recovery partition with SPRecovery in place of the stock recovery.

So the next question might be....if moto is not the only entity that can create sbf files can one be made to flash over the stock recovery app on the DX and D2?

For those phones, Motorola is (at the moment) the only one who can make the files because of the encryption they are using to protect the phone. If your file isn't signed by the right keys it's not going in. The Droid 1 doesn't even care if the file is signed or not, much less who it's signed by.

I'm in complete agreement that the hacking community is vocal and brought in additional sales for motorola. I guess not enough to repeat the same process on their newer phones though.

They got what they needed from us.

It did not cross my mind that someone would hack an existing sbf file to make it do something different. That's why I thought it odd moto would release sprecovery via a moto created sbf file.

The best hacks take something the phone trusts and use it against it. :-)