Need to understand recovery and ROM installation

[mbaker]

Hi, everyone. I'm new to Android (just picked up my Droid 3 about a week ago). With the one-click rooting tools available now, getting my phone rooted was ridiculously simple, and I'm happily using a couple of root-required apps. I would like to understand recovery mode and ROM installation better before I take the full plunge, though. Any good reading material out there that would help?

 

[ItsTrentB]

Hash of Codes: Stock CM Bootstrap for Droid 3 - Download Bootstrap Recovery for Droid 3 Here. You will use this to mainly backup the state of your phone should anything happened to it after installing a ROM, Mod, etc. You can restore your phone, should you not like a ROM or a Mod, to a previous state. Install Zips, ROMS, etc. All of the options will be there once you install and check it out.

 

[Librarat]

Koush has a ClockWork Mod Bootstrap in the market now. Search it (and as always, it costs your $3 unless you build it from source). You must already have Root to use it (and ffs, read his warnings)

 

[mrcastillo]

here's the free bootstrapper from koush: http://t.co/IM110WZ3

 

[mbaker]

Installed clockwork mod recovery and backed up with no problems. The only droid 3 ROM out there right now seems to be Steel Droid; any others?

Thanks!

Sent from my DROID3 using DroidForums

 

[ItsTrentB]

Installed clockwork mod recovery and backed up with no problems. The only droid 3 ROM out there right now seems to be Steel Droid; any others?

Thanks!

Sent from my DROID3 using DroidForums

Naaah Son! Steel Droid is the only one right now. CM7 will be here soon though! No problem

 

[mbaker]

I have several important apps, which I assume would be toast and require reinstallation after installing a new ROM, yes?

Sent from my DROID3 using DroidForums

 

[Librarat]

I have several important apps, which I assume would be toast and require reinstallation after installing a new ROM, yes?

Sent from my DROID3 using DroidForums

That is correct. Data (if stored on your SD card) will be untouched, and any apps that you've purchased via the market, can be freely re-downloaded and installed (as the purchase is attached to your google account).

 

[mbaker]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I installed Clockwork Mod recovery and backed up with it - works great. It seems that it doesn't replace the stock recovery, though; if I boot to the menu and select recovery, I seem to get the stock recovery. And, BTW, it locks up my phone at the exclamation mark, so that I have to pull the battery. Anyway, is that how CM recovery is supposed to work? That would mean, I think, that if my phone won't boot I couldn't get back to CM recovery to deal with it...

Thanks!

 

[flyinglulz]

That would mean, I think, that if my phone won't boot I couldn't get back to CM recovery to deal with it...

Essentially we are dealing with a half-assed ClockworkMod due to the difficulties Motorola provided developers by locking a bootloader. If you get to the point were you are unable to boot because a ROM failed to flash, you will have to use RSBlite and flash manually to stock and reroot.

 

[mbaker]

Essentially we are dealing with a half-assed ClockworkMod due to the difficulties Motorola provided developers by locking a bootloader. If you get to the point were you are unable to boot because a ROM failed to flash, you will have to use RSBlite and flash manually to stock and reroot.

Interesting point; in fact, I've been trying to flash back to stock with RSDLite after uninstalling some stuff I shouldn't have, with no luck.
I also tried doing it with moto-fastboot, but my phone may have been in the wrong mode - th instructions didn't specify. I always get size mismatch errors with RSD.

 

[flyinglulz]

Go to the Steel Droid sub forum of the ROMs section. Use his steps up to number 11 (unless you decide to flash his rom). Let me know if that helps you out.

 

[mbaker]

Go to the Steel Droid sub forum of the ROMs section. Use his steps up to number 11 (unless you decide to flash his rom). Let me know if that helps you out.

At first I thought this try was going to work great - but the flash process failed at step 13 and left the phone bricked. Step 13 is flashing the system image, and I got the same error here that I got at step 1 in previous attempts with file set from a different location:

Failed flashing process. Failed flashing process. 13/18 flash system "system.img" -> Size data returned by phone does not match what was expected; phone connected.

That means, of course, that it DID successfully flash mbmloader, mbm, cdt.bin, lbl, logo.bin, ebr, mbr, and devtree before failing. Several subsequent attempts failed at various steps, between 1 and 8. I edited the XML file to take out the first 12 steps, so that it started with flashing system, and this time it got past that and failed flashing boot. The only thing I can think to do now is keep trying them one at a time and see if I can get them all flashed eventually.

 

[mbaker]

Ok, I finally got there! Thank God - I was beginning to think I was going to have to take it back to Verizon and claim I didn't know what happened to it. This whole thing is very strange, and I'm wondering why when I read that everyone else seems to get through this reflash process with no trouble.

So, as I mentioned before, on the first flash it got through flashing mbmloader, mbm, cdt.bin, lbl, logo.bin, ebr, mbr, and devtree before failing on the system partition with the aforementioned size mismatch error. The phone was bricked at that point, so with nothing to lose I edited the XML file to take out the first 12 steps, so that on the next pass it started with the system partition. RSD Lite hung up, and after 15 minutes I closed it out and rebooted the phone into AP Flash mode. I ran the flash again, and this time it flashed system and failed on boot.

I tried the same process again, and after several attempts and restarts of the phone and RSD, it passed boot, recovery, and cdrom before failing on preinstall (same error once again). After deleting the steps for boot, recovery, and cdrom from the XML it hung up on flashing preinstall and, once again, after several iterations of restarting phone and RSD it got through preinstall and radio, rebooted. The issues I had from uninstalling a couple of stock apps appear to be gone, and all my apps and customizations are still there.

What do you think about the reasons for all this weirdness? This phone is brand new - I just got it a little less than three weeks ago, and it shipped with 5.6.890 installed. Could something have been changed in the latest version of the Droid 3? Or maybe it has something to do with the latest version of RSD Lite (5.5)?

Thanks,
Mark