How things can go wrong moving from a2sd to a2sd+

[Guest wcymodaco]

So a few days ago, I decided to upgrade to a2sd+ from a2sd using R8 ROM. So, what can go wrong eh? Plenty.

Here's what happened:

1. In the afternoon that day, I decided that I would bake myself a new R8 ROM when I got home at night. I wanted to stick with R8 because that was what I was already using and it was stable and fast.

2. Got home that night and WTF? R8 baking was removed coz Paul released R9 and R8 became an archive for reference only. What bad timing.

3. So, thought about it for a while, and decided to take the plunge to bake a new R9 ROM and the new radio that was compatible with R9.

4. Fingers were all crossed, flashed the new R9 ROM with new radio using clockworkmod recovery and everything went as expected, except for boot animation logo which was the word "android" in the middle of the screen with a light highlight moving across the word from left to right. I expected to see the HTC "quietly brilliant" boot animation logo instead coz that what what I chose to restore when baking R9.

5. Great then, my internal storage space went from 21MB of free space (using a2sd) to 102MB of free space (using a2sd+). What joy. As usual, did the whole titanium back up thing and nandroid backup using ROM manager just to be safe.

6. I then decided to rebake a new R9 ROM again, with the exact same ingredients, minus the radio. I wanted to flash this ROM again without the radio to see if the HTC "quietly brilliant" boot logo would be restored properly. Should be simple enough, so I thought.

7. So, baked the same R9 ROM minus the radio and flashed again in clockworkmod recovery. Flashing was OK, but boot logo still remained at the "android" word instead of HTC "quietly brilliant" logo. Phone operated as normal.

8. Then I decided to do a normal reboot as I would after every flashing of ROM. Instead of moving from the HTC logo to the boot animation screen, my phone got stuck at the HTC logo screen. It was clear that my phone was not booting normally and I decided to pull out the battery and reboot. That didn't help and I kept getting stuck at the HTC logo. Phone couldn't boot normally.

9. So, I booted into recovery (thank goodness it managed to boot into recovery) and I did a factory reset to prepare for nandroid restore. Tried to restore nandroid but recovery reported "MD5 sums mismatch" and could not restore! What the hell. Panicked a bit coz I would hate to go through restoring bit by bit using Titanium backup.

10. Then decided to try and fix the problem by restoring my R8 nandroid right before I flashed to R9 and if everything went ok, then to flash the R9 ROM again over the R8 nandroid which I would be restoring (praying that this nandroid backup would not have MD5 sum errors). Thank goodness everything went OK and my phone is back in working condition.

11. Only problem is as soon as I restored nandroid, I mysteriously lost about 7MB of internal storage space (from 102MB to 95MB of available memory). I have noticed this missing storage space mystery on previous nandroid restores as well.

12. Wasted a few hours doing all that and got worried many times during all that flashing and restoring that my phone would be bricked. Especially so when my phone could not boot normally.

So a few questions here for anyone who has bothered to read my long story:

1. Why is my boot animation logo still appearing as the "android" word instead of the HTC "quietly brilliant" logo? I baked my R9 ROM correctly to restore "standard stock boot animation", which should be the HTC logo as was for the R8 ROM.

2. Why is it that I have internal memory space being eaten up mysteriously everytime I do a nandroid restore?

3. Anyone has any idea about why we have nandroid backup MD5 errors using ROM manager? It was a nightmare being faced with an MD5 sum error. Didn't realise nandroid backups were that unreliable.

4. Is there a way to test the MD5 checksum for the nandroid backup to make sure I have a proper and valid backup everytime I do a backup so that I can have peace of mind? I can't do a normal MD5 sum check because I don't see any MD5 check numbers in clockworkmod backup folder. The nandroid backup directory contains image files only.

5. I now do 2 nandroid backups each time I backup to hopefully avoid this problem. The first backup I would do within the Recovery menu and right after that is finished and rebooted, I would immediately do the second backup using ROM manager. I checked the file sizes between the 2 nandroid backups and noticed a difference in sizes for "cache" and "data" images between the 2 nandroids. I am guessing that is to be expected?

Thanks for reading!

Edited October 25, 2010 by wcymodaco

[Guest BashyUK]

So a few days ago, I decided to upgrade to a2sd+ from a2sd using R8 ROM. So, what can go wrong eh? Plenty.

Here's what happened:

1. In the afternoon that day, I decided that I would bake myself a new R8 ROM when I got home at night. I wanted to stick with R8 because that was what I was already using and it was stable and fast.

2. Got home that night and WTF? R8 baking was removed coz Paul released R9 and R8 became an archive for reference only. What bad timing.

3. So, thought about it for a while, and decided to take the plunge to bake a new R9 ROM and the new radio that was compatible with R9.

4. Fingers were all crossed, flashed the new R9 ROM with new radio using clockworkmod recovery and everything went as expected, except for boot animation logo which was the word "android" in the middle of the screen with a light highlight moving across the word from left to right. I expected to see the HTC "quietly brilliant" boot animation logo instead coz that what what I chose to restore when baking R9.

5. Great then, my internal storage space went from 21MB of free space (using a2sd) to 102MB of free space (using a2sd+). What joy. As usual, did the whole titanium back up thing and nandroid backup using ROM manager just to be safe.

6. I then decided to rebake a new R9 ROM again, with the exact same ingredients, minus the radio. I wanted to flash this ROM again without the radio to see if the HTC "quietly brilliant" boot logo would be restored properly. Should be simple enough, so I thought.

7. So, baked the same R9 ROM minus the radio and flashed again in clockworkmod recovery. Flashing was OK, but boot logo still remained at the "android" word instead of HTC "quietly brilliant" logo. Phone operated as normal.

8. Then I decided to do a normal reboot as I would after every flashing of ROM. Instead of moving from the HTC logo to the boot animation screen, my phone got stuck at the HTC logo screen. It was clear that my phone was not booting normally and I decided to pull out the battery and reboot. That didn't help and I kept getting stuck at the HTC logo. Phone couldn't boot normally.

9. So, I booted into recovery (thank goodness it managed to boot into recovery) and I did a factory reset to prepare for nandroid restore. Tried to restore nandroid but recovery reported "MD5 sums mismatch" and could not restore! What the hell. Panicked a bit coz I would hate to go through restoring bit by bit using Titanium backup.

10. Then decided to try and fix the problem by restoring my R8 nandroid right before I flashed to R9 and if everything went ok, then to flash the R9 ROM again over the R8 nandroid which I would be restoring (praying that this nandroid backup would not have MD5 sum errors). Thank goodness everything went OK and my phone is back in working condition.

11. Only problem is as soon as I restored nandroid, I mysteriously lost about 7MB of internal storage space (from 102MB to 95MB of available memory). I have noticed this missing storage space mystery on previous nandroid restores as well.

12. Wasted a few hours doing all that and got worried many times during all that flashing and restoring that my phone would be bricked. Especially so when my phone could not boot normally.

So a few questions here for anyone who has bothered to read my long story:

1. Why is my boot animation logo still appearing as the "android" word instead of the HTC "quietly brilliant" logo? I baked my R9 ROM correctly to restore "standard stock boot animation", which should be the HTC logo as was for the R8 ROM.

2. Why is it that I have internal memory space being eaten up mysteriously everytime I do a nandroid restore?

3. Anyone has any idea about why we have nandroid backup MD5 errors using ROM manager? It was a nightmare being faced with an MD5 sum error. Didn't realise nandroid backups were that unreliable.

4. Is there a way to test the MD5 checksum for the nandroid backup to make sure I have a proper and valid backup everytime I do a backup so that I can have peace of mind? I can't do a normal MD5 sum check because I don't see any MD5 check numbers in clockworkmod backup folder. The nandroid backup directory contains image files only.

5. I now do 2 nandroid backups each time I backup to hopefully avoid this problem. The first backup I would do within the Recovery menu and right after that is finished and rebooted, I would immediately do the second backup using ROM manager. I checked the file sizes between the 2 nandroid backups and noticed a difference in sizes for "cache" and "data" images between the 2 nandroids. I am guessing that is to be expected?

Thanks for reading!

But did they all live happily ever after?! I gotta know! :P

1. I've seen various posts on this through the whole r9 thread but not retained the info as i use diff boot screens all the time anyway. You'll have to sift through pages of moaning/cheerleading though, the thread lost it's way!

3. MD5 errors have been covered on XDA Dev site. Chances are so have all your other Nandroid queries.

5. I thought the content would be the same, isn't RM just a GUI for CM? Strange. Does RM do the backup whilst the phone is booted or within recovery?

Edited October 26, 2010 by BashyUK

[Guest trstn]

Sounds like step 8 was you problem.

I'm no expert but I'll give you my opinion like I am anyway :P

Essentially there are a bunch of cache's that get rebuilt when you boot your phone after flashing a) an Odex'd rom like MoDaCo after a wipe, or :D switching to apps2sd / apps2sd+. My guess is you broke that when you yanked the battery out first time around, and then couldn't boot etc etc, and ultimately lost the 7mb of space as the result of you allowing the cache's to rebuild properly on that particular boot.

Always stand way back when you flash a rom, pulling the battery out can be dangerous - particularly if you happen to do it as the radio is being flashed :D

[Guest michaffm1964]

Indeed to boot an A2SD+ ROM it Tages a Kong time to proceed over the boot logo. Bw Patient the next time

[Guest wcymodaco]

Sounds like step 8 was you problem.

I'm no expert but I'll give you my opinion like I am anyway :P

Essentially there are a bunch of cache's that get rebuilt when you boot your phone after flashing a) an Odex'd rom like MoDaCo after a wipe, or :D switching to apps2sd / apps2sd+. My guess is you broke that when you yanked the battery out first time around, and then couldn't boot etc etc, and ultimately lost the 7mb of space as the result of you allowing the cache's to rebuild properly on that particular boot.

Always stand way back when you flash a rom, pulling the battery out can be dangerous - particularly if you happen to do it as the radio is being flashed :D

I'm curious about what you said here about pulling out of battery in step 8.

Just to be clear about what I did:

Step 7 - I flashed R9 ROM without radio. After flashing, I obviously had to reboot from within clockworkmod recovery screen. This reboot was done without any problems. Phone appeared to boot normally and my phone was functioning as normal.

Step 8 - I did a normal reboot here while my phone was switched on. So, this would effectively be the second reboot after flashing the ROM. This second reboot is where the phone got stuck at the HTC logo.

If I understand you correctly, moving from a2sd to a2sd+, the caches should have gotten rebuilt during my first rebooting in Step 7, not Step 8. Correct?

Rebooting in step 7 did take a while but I waited patiently and it rebooted correctly.

It is step 8, the second reboot, that I waited a very long time and it appeared to hang before yanking out the battery. But the second reboot would not be rebuilding the caches, would it?

[Guest wcymodaco]

5. I thought the content would be the same, isn't RM just a GUI for CM? Strange. Does RM do the backup whilst the phone is booted or within recovery?

ROM manager does the back up from within recovery as well. But it has to go through the process of booting into recovery, mounting the SD card then backing up.

I have no technical knowledge about how it does all that.

I am just being ridiculously careful since I have been let down by a failed backup done by ROM manager when I needed it most.

[Guest wcymodaco]

I think at this stage, it is important to find a way to test the MD5 sums created by clockworkmod right after each nandroid backup so as to prevent restore failures.

Will have to do some research on how to do this. Anyone has any thoughts on how to test MD5 sums created here?

[Guest aidfarh]

I've encountered problems when restoring from nandroid backup, and I've deduced that the reason is that nandroid doesn't wipe the data partition when restoring. Maybe somebody can confirm whether this is true. Anyway, now whenever I perform a nandroid restore, I always perform a wipe to make sure the data partition is empty.

[Guest navodwickra]

1. Why is my boot animation logo still appearing as the "android" word instead of the HTC "quietly brilliant" logo? I baked my R9 ROM correctly to restore "standard stock boot animation", which should be the HTC logo as was for the R8 ROM.

I've seen this with R9 ROM so I did this. make sure you do this in recovery mode ( assuming you don't have S-OFF)

mount -o remount,rw /system

cd /system/media

ln -s /data/local/bootanimation.zip

Then copy what ever boot animation you want to that local dirrectory :P

[Guest [email protected]]

Have you wipe before you flash..?? (Wipe in recovery...data factory reset) maybe try another rom to test that have a2sd+ in....

Don´t know if you know..but:

foyo a2sd (fat app2sd)

a2sd (ext app2sd)

a2sd+ (ext app2sd + cache to sd)

you are sue you have a ext..?

with kind regards..Alex

[Guest [email protected]]

Have you wipe before you flash..?? (Wipe in recovery...data factory reset) maybe try another rom to test that have a2sd+ in....

Don´t know if you know..but:

foyo a2sd (fat app2sd)

a2sd (ext app2sd)

a2sd+ (ext app2sd + cache to sd)

you are sue you have a ext..?

with kind regards..Alex

edit: for bootanimation i think there is a thing in the modaco online kitchen...don´t know exactly i only a normal member...but i think you can select htc or different boot animation...also it can be symlinked to data/local...did you have one bootanimation in data/local...original place is: system\customize\resource

[Guest BashyUK]

I've encountered problems when restoring from nandroid backup, and I've deduced that the reason is that nandroid doesn't wipe the data partition when restoring. Maybe somebody can confirm whether this is true. Anyway, now whenever I perform a nandroid restore, I always perform a wipe to make sure the data partition is empty.

+1

Also my experience and I now do the same.

[Guest [email protected]]

I've encountered problems when restoring from nandroid backup, and I've deduced that the reason is that nandroid doesn't wipe the data partition when restoring. Maybe somebody can confirm whether this is true. Anyway, now whenever I perform a nandroid restore, I always perform a wipe to make sure the data partition is empty.

..yes its true...Nandoid restore data...ext3..cache from that point you make the backup...and did not wipe anything...

Edited October 28, 2010 by [email protected]