Oops! Corrupted /system partition

[Guest DJBenson]

OK so I thought I was being clever by trying the JIT hack for the Hero but it caused sense to crash endlessly so rather than restoring an entire Nandroid backup, I tried to restore just the system partition by issuing

flash_image system /sdcard/system.img

but this has corrupted the system partition and now the phone will not boot. I still have access to Amon RA recovery console but the system partition appears to be corrupt so I can't write to it?

I've tried a full restore from Amon RA and it fails advising me to use nandroid-mobile.sh backup but that also appears to fail also (second time round it appeared to write all the files but failed at unmount system and a reboot just hung at the "Hero" screen).

Is there any way to get my phone back to the backup previously taken?

[Guest DJBenson]

OK so I wiped the handset, flashed a 1.5 ROM from the Modaco site then restored my Nandroid backup and the phone is still stalling on the Hero splash...could I have actually damaged the phone or is this some Apps2SD or some other thing which I've never noticed before (only utilised Apps2SD yesterday)...

Really concerned I've knackered the phone...

[Guest DJBenson]

Another slight change, before I managed to restore my Nandroid backup, "adb shell" failed (unable to find /bin/sh or somesuch error), now I can do "adb shell" and actually get shell access to the phone but it doesn't want to boot to the UI???

[Guest shenshang]

OK so I thought I was being clever by trying the JIT hack for the Hero but it caused sense to crash endlessly so rather than restoring an entire Nandroid backup, I tried to restore just the system partition by issuing

flash_image system /sdcard/system.img

but this has corrupted the system partition and now the phone will not boot. I still have access to Amon RA recovery console but the system partition appears to be corrupt so I can't write to it?

I've tried a full restore from Amon RA and it fails advising me to use nandroid-mobile.sh backup but that also appears to fail also (second time round it appeared to write all the files but failed at unmount system and a reboot just hung at the "Hero" screen).

Is there any way to get my phone back to the backup previously taken?

flash a new ROM, when flashing a new rom, it's script tells the recovery image to format the system partition

[Guest DJBenson]

I am currently trying installing the ROM from fresh (Villain 5.1), it should pick up my ext3 partition anyway so by the time it's finished booting I should be back to where I was before messing...what's concerning is that my backup appears to be corrupt. I did a logcat which ran for ages (whilst the phone was sat at the "Hero" splash screen) then died complaining about not being able to load core services or something.

EDIT: It now appears to be booting...fingers crossed...

Edited April 8, 2010 by DJBenson

[Guest DJBenson]

Nope, major fail part way though boot...

I/Process ( 84): Sending signal. PID: 84 SIG: 9

I/ServiceManager( 44): service 'power' died

I/ServiceManager( 44): service 'netstat' died

I/ServiceManager( 44): service 'batteryinfo' died

I/ServiceManager( 44): service 'SurfaceFlinger' died

I/ServiceManager( 44): service 'clipboard' died

I/ServiceManager( 44): service 'usagestats' died

I/ServiceManager( 44): service 'entropy' died

I/ServiceManager( 44): service 'telephony.registry' died

D/BootAnimation( 92): SurfaceFlinger died, exiting...

E/installd( 51): eof

E/installd( 51): failed to read size

I/installd( 51): closing connection

I/Zygote ( 48): Exit zygote because system server (84) has terminated

[Guest david279]

wipe the ext3

[Guest R0K2puZ]

I had the exact same problem from the same cause yesterday. There was seemingly nothing that could fix it, in the end I just did a full wipe and flashed Villain 5

[Guest jbr7rr]

Have tried to wipe ANYTHING? and then a reflash?

You could try to flash an orginal RUU

i this wil fix your phone but you will lose your custom recovery. but beware that you flash an old RUU and not the 2.73.*** couze then you will get new hboot and you dont want that.

[Guest DJBenson]

I ended up doing a fresh install (again). I then selectively resored apps using Titanium, some I only restored the app and others app+data.

There is something screwey in Villain as I took a backup of 5.1 that came out of my flash debacle above, tried to install 5.22 and it failed whilst trying to write the /data partition and left the phone in an unbootable state - is Apps2SD actually worth all this effort as the issues seem to stem from utilising it.

What exactly is the update procedure for phones where Apps2SD is installed, surely wiping the ext3 partition defeats the object as you'd lose all your stuff, yet there doesn't appear to be a way to update from say Villain 5.1 to 5.22.

[Guest Dr. dre]

I ended up doing a fresh install (again). I then selectively resored apps using Titanium, some I only restored the app and others app+data.

There is something screwey in Villain as I took a backup of 5.1 that came out of my flash debacle above, tried to install 5.22 and it failed whilst trying to write the /data partition and left the phone in an unbootable state - is Apps2SD actually worth all this effort as the issues seem to stem from utilising it.

What exactly is the update procedure for phones where Apps2SD is installed, surely wiping the ext3 partition defeats the object as you'd lose all your stuff, yet there doesn't appear to be a way to update from say Villain 5.1 to 5.22.

The only way to update is that just use Titanium Backup and backup all your apps installed and then wipe the ext partition and restore the apps through Titanium Backup.