New Life Project: Gingerbread only

Edward McInnish

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What is this?
This is a project to revive the Viper. It simply will start out as a security check disable and go on from there. By the time this is finished, I will try to have CM ported to this phone, and a fully working CWM. The difference between this dev and the other devs, is I have the phone ready to test, and can spare it if something goes wrong.
What does this project need?
ANY devs that can guide me through this process. I have both Windows and Debian to work with.
What can you do?
1: DONT SPAM!!! I am completely new to the dev scene, but I also learn super quick. One of my strengths is I'm not afraid to tread on unknown territory. I do have some basic understanding of the system and will need help in modifications. Asking "when, how does this, or other pointless and unhelpful questions will not make this go faster or smoother. Information regarding know technical information is welcome, as well as help in the dev.
2: Feed me info, files, and resources!
3: Beta test... IF YOU DARE! (NOTE: I am not responsible for briked devices, WWIII, Your cat raping your sister, or any other crazy thing that can happen)
4: LOGCAT or GTFO!!! dont simply say so and so is wrong. LOGCAT it! Here is a link to a logcat tutorial: [Tutorial] How To Logcat - xda-developers
5: Commen sense, but I'll add more as I can think of it.
What is needed?
People to compile roms for me as I do not have a powerful enough system (according to AOSP)
 

Edward McInnish

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well either way, i posted this same thread twice, lol and the other one already had a reply so i asked for this one to close, but either way, its fine. lol
status update:
got debian installed and running. but it refuses to accept my admin password for root (su.... no literally my admin password was su... stupid debian...) so now im going to try and figure out which ubuntu to use and hopefully recover/change it.
needed root for git.
 

Edward McInnish

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hehe uniflash (and something else i cant remember) reports this phone as a lgoptimus variant. more details later.
I need a 100% complete dump of this device on zvd. and by 100% I mean EVERYTHING from recovery, to boot, to system, and everything in between.
either that, or i need someone to guide me on how to do it as i have had no sucess with adb.
 

garbb

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Isn't the files that you can flash from this thread just basically full dumps? Either that or couldn't you just flash the phone to ZVD and then use adb to dump everything from the "cat /proc/partitions" list like so:
Code:
adb shell "su -c 'cat /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 > /sdcard/mmcblk0p1.img'"
adb pull /sdcard/mmcblk0p1.img
adb shell rm /sdcard/mmcblk0p1.img
then do it for mmcblk0p2, 3 etc...
 

Edward McInnish

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finally! I spent hours online looking for that adb code to no avail. I'm already on ZVD, rooted, busyboxed, but nothing more than light personalization that I can strip out easily (and personally dont mind losing again if I need to. Thanks garbb.
The only other question I have is what is semi-boot? Searching for the answer only showed where someone else documented this from the lg menu, but no further details.
 

Edward McInnish

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hadnt thought of bartpe. and @troark97 the original password was literally su.
i tried every possible combination from su to SU to us, etc. ony so many combinations with su are possible lol
 

Edward McInnish

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ok, unfortunately from looking through the vipers systemdump, there isnt much i can do with gb. i do however have the official ota of ics if someone wants to comb through and help me find out where it patches the bootstrapper bootloader. if we can eliminate that, and the security error, (and maybe even unlock the kernal, though i dont know much on kernals) then we have a fighting chance to revive this. i (actually my friend mike) attempted to remove the security error only to brick. I tried using a de-securitied one from another source (smartviper after hours of digging), and it also bricked my device. both were gb. we know we can use custom recoveries, so that isnt the issue, its finding and eliminating the patches that ruined zvi and up. we eliminate those, were home free for dev. the thing is, there is no uboot in the update, witch means it already uses the gb bootloader, and possibly the update modifies it for ics and locks it in the same process. so all we have to do is eliminate that lock, and viola, unlocked bootloader. correct me if im wrong. ill be uploading the zvi update later today. the most notorious parts of it are the fact it replaces recovery and boot. again, correct me if im wrong, but research has led me to believe that uboot is the bootloader, while boot is the kernal. the significance of recovery is we may can use this to make a cwm recovery out of it.
 

gollum18

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ok, unfortunately from looking through the vipers systemdump, there isnt much i can do with gb. i do however have the official ota of ics if someone wants to comb through and help me find out where it patches the bootstrapper bootloader. if we can eliminate that, and the security error, (and maybe even unlock the kernal, though i dont know much on kernals) then we have a fighting chance to revive this. i (actually my friend mike) attempted to remove the security error only to brick. I tried using a de-securitied one from another source (smartviper after hours of digging), and it also bricked my device. both were gb. we know we can use custom recoveries, so that isnt the issue, its finding and eliminating the patches that ruined zvi and up. we eliminate those, were home free for dev. the thing is, there is no uboot in the update, witch means it already uses the gb bootloader, and possibly the update modifies it for ics and locks it in the same process. so all we have to do is eliminate that lock, and viola, unlocked bootloader. correct me if im wrong. ill be uploading the zvi update later today. the most notorious parts of it are the fact it replaces recovery and boot. again, correct me if im wrong, but research has led me to believe that uboot is the bootloader, while boot is the kernal. the significance of recovery is we may can use this to make a cwm recovery out of it.
And that my friend is why we need a safestrap, unfortunately we do not have Internet and that's kind of the reason why I stopped working on the viper.

Sprint GS3 Running TN's Msg and Chubbs
 

garbb

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The zvi update does change the bootloader (and probably also zvk?). The bootloader is mmcblk0p7. How do I know this? If you try to flash a custom recovery when the phone is running ZVD, the custom recovery will work ok. If you update the phone to ZVI and flash a custom recovery and try to boot into the custom recovery the phone will go into fastboot mode. So I dumped mmcblk0p7 from ZVD and the updated the phone to ZVI. Then I flashed a custom recovery and flashed the ZVD mmcblk0p7(bootloader) and then tried to boot into the recovery and it worked. (of course booting into android would not work until I flashed back the mmcblk0p7 (bootloader) from ZVI.

So anyways, as far as I can tell mmcblk0p7 is the bootloader which is checking signatures on the recovery and mmcblk0p8(android boot image/kernel).

What I don't understand for sure is why the bootloader will decide to load a recovery/android bootimage or not. Is it actually checking signatures or is there something else wrong or that would have to be modified to make it work? I know that a boot image has a base address. Maybe the zvi/zvk boot image base address have changed?
 

thenameisnigel

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Whoa, nice. Seems I'm a little late to the party. :p

But great job in supporting the device. :thumbup:

If you need any help, I'm available on IRC, and G+ anytime.
 

thenameisnigel

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And that my friend is why we need a safestrap, unfortunately we do not have Internet and that's kind of the reason why I stopped working on the viper.

Sprint GS3 Running TN's Msg and Chubbs

Same here. I don't hex editing, and all that other crap relating to the bootloader. I'm a lover, not a fighter, lol.