Question about Flashing a ROM in a Specific Way

[ibejack96]

right now I have a completely stock, non-rooted jelly bean gnex. I'm gonna flash a ROM, which I did frequently when I was on ICS, but I was wondering, is there a way to flash a rom from the bootloader with fastboot, since the ROM will be rooted anyway?

 

[Andrew Martonik]

You need to unlock the bootloader, flash a custom recovery, and use that custom recovery to flash your ROM and it's related zips.

The fastboot method for flashing is only used for manipulating the bootloader, and flashing stock Google images, not custom ROMs.

 

[fender7217]

Yeah, you can't flash ROM's from a bootloader. You need a custom recovery.

 

[ibejack96]

You need to unlock the bootloader, flash a custom recovery, and use that custom recovery to flash your ROM and it's related zips.

The fastboot method for flashing is only used for manipulating the bootloader, and flashing stock Google images, not custom ROMs.

Yeah, you can't flash ROM's from a bootloader. You need a custom recovery.

Ok, maybe I didn't state my question right. I was wondering if I could simply flash ClockworkMod temporarily (like in Jerry's post on how to flash the JB update), and then just flash a ROM without rooting it in the first place. My bootloader is already unlocked.

 

[fender7217]

In that case yes, you do not need to be rooted before proceeding to flash a ROM, since most CWM.zip's will have a root file in them.

 

[Andrew Martonik]

Yes you could boot into CWM and flash, rather than permanently flashing CWM, but I'm not sure why you'd want to do that. There's no downside to flashing CWM, and no upside to keeping the stock recovery if you have a custom ROM. You're probably going to want the custom CWM recovery to do some other functions with your custom ROM like backups, flashing other zips, wiping data/cache, and flashing other ROMs.

 

[ibejack96]

Yes you could boot into CWM and flash, rather than permanently flashing CWM, but I'm not sure why you'd want to do that. There's no downside to flashing CWM, and no upside to keeping the stock recovery if you have a custom ROM. You're probably going to want the custom CWM recovery to do some other functions with your custom ROM like backups, flashing other zips, wiping data/cache, and flashing other ROMs.

No, but it'll be easier to permanently flash CWM after I'm rooted in the ROM. Instead of rooting it, flashing CWM, and then flashing the ROM, I'm rooting it and flashing the ROM in the same step, and then easily flashing CWM through ROM Manager.

 

[craZDude]

But it's just as easy to flash cwm as it is to boot into it, so I think you are actually adding steps. Although don't let any of us hold you back from doing it how you'd like