Razr OTA won't install.

[toyoman]

New to the smartphone hacking thing and started out with rooting my Razr so I could install LightFlow. Phone still works fine but will not install the OTA update. I did uninstall some apps that would let me, but I also deleted some other things with root explorer and can't really remember what they were. I realize now that I screwed up badly with not creating a backup and not just renaming instead of deleting. I really want to be able to update the phone going forward. What are my options if I wanted to reset the phone to factory? Thanks for any info.

 

[havok702]

Im in the same boat I uninstalled the bloatware apps not knowing you needed them to update your phone, I found the files in a system dump but when I try to install them back on my phone it says application not installed, and im back to square one. Now I downloaded razr bootstrap recovery and im going to try to flash someones back up but I cant find a backup anywhere! and factory reset wont work if you deleted the apps from system/app those are the apps that load up when you reset the phone but if there erased they cant load up.

 

[toyoman]

I'm starting to get annoyed by the constant reminders to install an update that won't install.
I'll probably just unroot the thing, bring it into the store and play dumb. Maybe they'll just replace it since I bought the insurance from them. Should never have rooted in the first place since I have no real need to. Live and learn I guess...

 

[anon(558804)]

Go here: DROID RAZR System Dump!

Copy the dump to your PC. These are all the files you need.

You'll need Root Explorer or equivalent to examine the /system/app directory on your phone. Look for all the cases where you have a .APK file but no .ODEX file. Write them down. Connect the phone to your PC via USB so you can access the filesystem on the phone. Find the missing files in the dump and copy both APK and ODEX files to a directory on the phone (like /sdcard/download). Some files in the dump will not have ODEX files. That;s OK, and you can skip them. Then disconnect your phone, boot up, and use Root Explorer to copy the APK/ODEX pairs into /system/app. Now you can run the update and it should complete. You might want to unroot first, just in case.

 

[toyoman]

Thanks! I may give it a try before throwing up the white flag. Nothing to loose at this point.

 

[toyoman]

Okay, I went thru and checked the apk and odex files and compared them to the dump. The only ones I could find different were livewallpapers and livewallpaperpicker which I specifically remember deleting. So I copied all 4 files (apks and odexs) onto sd and copied them into sys/app folder. Unrooted update still fails. Sigh...back to the old drawing board.

 

[jackslater]

same here. copied the missing files (kindle, motoactiv, some status thing and social location app, unrooted, rebooted, and ran the update again. It still fails at about 20% of the progress bar.
Do we need to remove certain root-only apps? are there additional files for the bloatware that need to be restored first? did rooting change permissions somewhere and these have to be reset?

Thanks!

 

[anon(558804)]

Unfortunately I can't answer that. I'm a newbie myself. All I know is that what I suggested worked for me and another member.

What I can suggest is to look at the file /cache/recovery/last_log. Toward the bottom it should tell you why the script is aborting.

 

[jackslater]

my cache folder is empty...
I tried opening all bloatware and installing the latest updates (e.g. motoactv and VZ Navigation) but still no luck.
I'll keep trying....

EDIT
OK my bad. I was still unrooted when looking in /chache.
The log file ends with:
/system/app/statuswidget.apk doesnt have any of expected sha1 sums;
checking cache, failed to stat /cache/saved.file No such file or directory

so its failing because of statuswidget.apk. This one I had deleted and copy/pasted back from the system dump as per instructions above.
I don't have any saved.file file in my /cache. Any ideas on how to fix this?

EDIT 2
OK, so I tried to click on socialstatus.apk and it asked me if I want to replace the system application. I click OK and INSTALL and it fails with 'Application not installed'. So this might be the issue right there...

 

[anon(558804)]

I did a google search the other day for the name of the application that was aborting my update, and I found that this problem has been going on for months with no resolution. It's like someone wants to punish those of us who remove bloatware from our phones.

Unfortunately the update doesn't roll back when it fails. It leaves you with some updated applications, some not, so who knows if the phone will work. Otherwise I'd say forget the update and wait for a custom ICS ROM.

Maybe someone can tell us how to get the update ROM and flash it independently of the update script. I don't know if that will help. My only advice as this point is to persevere and try to get the update to complete one way or another.

 

[jackslater]

yeah, seems like waiting for cyanogenmod's ICS is the answer....
the strange thing is that the app (social networking) is working fine, I just posted a FB status update with it, so I don't understand why the update errors out on it....

 

[toyoman]

I'm getting the same error message in the cache log files for the app I deleted:

system/app/LiveWallpapers.apk doesnt have any of expected sha1 sums;
checking cache, failed to stat /cache/saved.file No such file or directory

Something must get corrupted or lost between deleting and re-installing.

 

[jackslater]

There we go!

I finally got it to work!

I checked the permissions for all the re-loaded bloatware and saw that statuswidget.ODEX (the one I copy/pasted back from a pre-root system dump) had permissions rw- rw- rw- but every other ODEX file had rw- r-- r-- so I changed permissions for statuswidget.odex to rw- r-- r--. Since my error message talked about sha1 I also calculated sha1 and md5 checksums for both statuswidget files and the update finally worked!

Now this might have been coincidence/not sure if permissions or check sum calculation fixed it - so this is exactly what I did after my latest failed attempt:

-Update from sdcard failed so I rebooted.

-re-rooted with voodoo OTA rootkeeper

-went into ES File Explorer and checked files in /system/apps:

-compared permissions of restored bloatware with existing apk and odex files, saw the difference

-changed permission of restored bloatware to match other files (rw- r-- r--)

-checked check sum for restored bloatware and it said N/A for md5 and sha1

-calculated check sums for md5 and sha1 (ES File Explorer responed with "checksum saved as statuswidget.odex.checksum")

-unrooted with voodoo

-rebooted into recovery mode

-ran update from sdcard-ext

and this time it worked like a charm

From now on I will freeze and not delete my bloatware - lesson learned!

Hope this helps some of you....

P.S. I had all my preinstall files intact (never deleted any of them)

 

[anon(558804)]

"From now on I will freeze and not delete my bloatware - lesson learned!"

It might also be a good idea not to move anything from internal to SD Card or vice versa.

What I'm not sure about is whether we can update those bloat apps we are using when updates become available in the Android Market. Will that screw it up?

Somehow I think we're going to go through this all over again when the next update hits.

 

[toyoman]

I was really hopeful after factory data reset. Looked like everything was back to normal but alas, update failed again. Lesson learned here too. No more rooting or hacking for this boy...

 

[bwmtnbiker]

Hey Guys, i have done everything step by step that you have talked about. Even the permissons. When i try to update from the sdcard i get an error saying

assert failed: apply_patch_check("/system/app/Term.apk",......)
E:Error in /tmp/sideload/package.zip
(Status 7)
Installation Aborted

I tried factory reset and I tried what jackslater did and no avail. What was weird is that i did not have the term.apk or .odex on my phone. I copied them from the dump folder supplied here. Any suggestions?