(SOLVED)On 4.2.2, just rooted, difficulty booting TWRP.

[Philip k Dick]

Hi, I got my Nexus 7 couple of weeks ago and I'm pretty impressed with it. I'm new to android; been running a jail broken iPhone for a couple years and pretty familiar with all that entails, but I realize that android devices are a whole different ball game. (Theres no way I'll be buying another apple device; they are getting harder to jailbreak and without a jailbreak they are not worth having).

Plenty of people told me that you don't need to root android devices in the same way you do idevices, as they are pretty versatile out of the box. So I decided to hold fire until I hit a reason to root (I knew I'd probably be doing it eventually, I am just a tinkerer, I can't help myself)
This reason came in the form of attaching a USB drive with a OTG. I just wasn't happy with Nexus Media Importer. I want to use a thumb drive as my wife does college work and stores it on one. But Nexus media importer just wasn't good enough. She isn't very technical minded, and so I need it to just be able to work from the drive directly; is: she loads document, does work, hits save and it saves to the stick. NMI doesn't work like this so I could see I would always be doing it for her. I read about stick mount and it sounded better.
(it is....does exactly what I need)

So root it was. (she has actually expressly forbidden me to root this tablet after an unfortunate incident involving a crashed iPhone and some baby photos. But like I say, she isn't very technically minded, I doubt she'll notice!)


I used wugfresh's toolkit. I had a few initial problems with the driver tests. The toolkit was telling the device to reboot, and it was, but the toolkit wasn't recognizing that it had. It turned out I needed to toggle USB debugging after the reboot; after checking the "always accept requests from this computer" box, it all worked fine.


The rooting went fine and all is well. When I first jail broke my iPhone it was for a specific need (to get round ridiculous restriction on 3G download s) but I soon discovered a whole new world of fun and pain. I feel like I'm at that stage again.


I have encountered my first problem: I have read on these forums that you need to make sure your device is hooked up to computer to enter TWRP from fast boot (by holding buttons etc) else you will get little android with red triangle and !. my problem is that even when I do this I still get the dead droid symbol. If I use advanced options in Wugfresh toolkit to "reboot recovery" same thing. I installed Goomanager to try and reboot from there, sane problem.

TWRP is clearly installed and working as I could use it to do a full nandroid backup. If I use "boot custom recovery" in wugfresh advanced options it boots into TWRP no problem too.


So my question is, IS THIS NORMAL? and if not will it cause me problems down the line ( I have had analogous problems when trying to restore old firmware on iPhone, when the software wouldn't reboot the device into the correct recovery mode during restore, and it was a ball ache)

my subsidiary question is, having made a TWRP backup and stored it on laptop, is it considered good practice to also keep it on device? its nearly 4GB.


Sorry to ramble on with what may well be a newbie question; I've trawled the forum but can't establish if this is normal or not. Should I be able to get in to TWRP by (while connected to laptop) manually booting Fast boot then selecting recovery!)

 

[2defmouze]

Re: On 4.2.2, just rooted, difficulty booting TWRP.

Last I checked, there was still a bug in the Nexus 7's bootloader that caused a glitch booting to a custom recovery from fastboot directly.. sounds like that's what you were talking about. The Android with the red triangle you see sometimes is the opening screen for the stock recovery, which you will see if you are running stock Android because it reflashes the stock recovery on every boot. Therefore, when you want to boot to TWRP you either need to boot it via your computer terminal (or the toolkit) or first flash it via GooManager then boot into it, as you have noticed. It won't really cause you any problems down the line as long as you remember that's how to do it.
-- On stock Android, you can prevent it from reflashing the stock recovery by deleting or renaming the file "recovery-from-boot.p" from the /system/ directory, however I believe recent versions of Android added another file you need to alter as well and I'm not 100% on that, so I would say don't bother with it for now unless you really want to (and make a backup first before toying with anything in /system !)

Lastly it's recommended to keep at least one recent backup on the device so that you can restore it in an emergency, especially for a newer root user since doing a factory image restore and having to lose your data directory would not be fun or easy for you (though I'm sure the toolkit would make it easier). Yes the backups are big and if you are needing the space you can keep it on your computer only, but just understand why you may find you need it on the device eventually. FWIW if you are a cautious user who reads well and doesn't do anything foolish then that "backup" safety net will matter less and less to you over time. I myself hardly ever make backups and haven't had to restore to one in quite a long time.. but they are good to have if you are going to be attempting something you are unsure of and need the reassurance.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any more questions!

 

[Philip k Dick]

Re: On 4.2.2, just rooted, difficulty booting TWRP.

thanks for your helpful and extensive reply, however, it turns out that I'm a buffoon. I hadn't installed the custom recovery ( I had misunderstood, thinking that it would install TWRP by default, and the check box 'install custom recovery' was for if you wanted CWM.) I just re did it with box checked and all is in order. its always the way, as soon as you ask a question, the answer hits you! thanks anyway.

 

[Philip k Dick]

Re: On 4.2.2, just rooted, difficulty booting TWRP.

FWIW if you are a cautious user who reads well and doesn't do anything foolish

I guess I'll keep it on device for now then