rooting

[SamuriHL]

Yea, you can just re-root it after the update. The beauty of unlocked bootloaders.

 

[Sasazuka]

Hm, I restarted after the downloading 4.3 and it's still showing 4.2.2. I think I remember seeing an issue about this.

 

[SamuriHL]

Did it install in recovery?? You have stock recovery on there right?

- - - Updated - - -

Wait, you didn't use CF Auto Root did you? If so, we have work to do.

 

[Sasazuka]

Don't think so - at least nothing that I can find. I can do a factory reset but I don't know what other recovery options I have.

EDIT: I think this was one of your findings. Not sure if I saw another one or not.

 

[Sasazuka]

Ahh yes, I did use CF Auto Root linked here.

 

[SamuriHL]

Right so your recovery partition is from an i9505 and not from our i9505g. I'm not at my laptop right now so I don't have the link to the stock 4.2.2 odin flashable tar md5 I made, but I'll post it for you soon. Pda flash it in odin with just auto-reboot checked and it'll restore a proper recovery and you'll be able to apply the update.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 4

 

[SamuriHL]

http://www.mediafire.com/download/30hi8i0eeuccx5h/stock_422_recovery.tar.md5

As promised the odin flashable stock 4.2.2 recovery img. This will allow you to install the OTA update.

 

[Sasazuka]

Will I lose any data this way?

I've been checking for OTA updates, but it seems I can't download it anymore. Should I flash the stock then check or just wait until I can get the OTA update then flash the stock image?

I've seen people post about clearing the cache to get the update, is that something I should do as well?

Thanks for all your help!

 

[SamuriHL]

No loss of data. You should flash this before you get the ota update. It won't install without it. Yes, wipe the cache... It may help. You can test this stock recovery image once you flash it by going in and wipe the cache from there.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 4

 

[Sasazuka]

Did flash to stock, wiped cache, got the OTA, rebooted, installed, and now I'm stuck at boot animation?

Did I miss a step?

EDIT: Right now, I don't mind data loss if I can get things working again...

 

[SamuriHL]

Yikes. You can try going back into recovery and performing a factory reset. That will wipe the data partition so you'll lose everything. I don't get what happened at all. It should have booted up fine. Any errors during the ota install?

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 4

 

[Sasazuka]

None that I could see. I go into recovery (power + vol up), does an installation, errors out, reboots, and is stuck. I think it succeeded the first couple of times but it always became stuck at booting up.

I'm OK with whatever data loss that might occur but I can't seem to factory reset it. I did power+vol up+vol down and I didn't see that as an option.
EDIT: I get recovery mode, restart bootloader, power off, and start. I see bootloader version I9505GUEUAMFD.
EDIT: Perhaps, there's some key combination to do a reset on this screen?
EDIT: Whenever, I do recovery mode, it would say "installing system update" followed by error, and then endless boot animation.
EDIT: As far as I can remember, there weren't any errors during OTA update but I could be wrong.

 

[SamuriHL]

It's not finishing the update and is continually trying to install it. I can't even begin to comprehend what went wrong here. I know how I'd try to fix it but it's ugly. I'm also extremely tired so I don't want to detail steps right now and screw something up. However I'd try to odin flash twrp recovery and boot into that. Then wipe the cache (not a factory reset as that isn't necessary). That should get it booting again. Again I can't give the exact steps right now but if you're still stuck in the morning I'll help you. Very strange situation!

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 4

 

[Sasazuka]

Well, I seem to be hitting all the speed bumps. I tried this first but they didn't have the TAR so I tried this which seems to work. I boot into recovery and see TWRP then I go Wipe > Advanced Wipe > select Cache > then wiped. I had something like this show up:

E:unable to find partition size for '/data'
Updating partition details...
E:unable to mount '/preload'
Running boot script...

Finished running boot script.
Formatting Cache using make_ext4fs
Done.
Updating partiion details.

It complained about root permissions being wrong and if I wanted to fix it - first time I said no and it's still stuck at boot animations. I re-did the wipe and this time said "yes" to fix permissions - same results.

Thanks for all your help so far, don't worry if you can't post right now. Maybe the best thing is to just start all over? Would the factory reset get me back to how I first got my phone?

 

[SamuriHL]

VERY VERY bad. DO NOT use things that aren't designed for our phones. You can really screw things up. The i9505 is NOT the same as our phone and the partitions are all different. So if you use stuff for the i9505 and it applies things to the wrong partition it can really mess up your phone. Enough lecturing, let's get this thing fixed.

[ODIN][TAR] I9505GUEUAMFD 4.2.2 Full Rooted Restore - xda-developers

Flash that. It'll reset your world back to 4.2.2. Once that's done, you can let the OTA upgrade take place again.

 

[Sasazuka]

I'll be sure to pay attention to the versions more carefully in the future, thanks for the warning.

I never unlocked my bootloader, will that still work for me?
EDIT: Did the restore, unlocked bootloader, re-downloading 4.3 OTA. Hopefully this time it'll install just fine. I'm going to hold rooting/installing anything for now.
EDIT: 4.3 updated successfully, re-installing apps seems to be going alright (need to look into restoring settings)

 

[SamuriHL]

Sounds like you're on the right path now. I've never unlocked my bootloader either. So far haven't needed to. If you need any further help, let me know.

 

[Sasazuka]

Many thanks for getting me back on the right track. I'm on 4.3 now without root and I've been looking more carefully this time for a I9509G root solution and found the following:

• This seems like a safe approach with no data loss albeit a bit overkill
• This is what is mentioned in this thread and probably the wrong approach since it's not for I9505G
• This seems like a good solution but would result in data loss
• This looks like another easy solution but it ended up pointing to the above thread that would result in data loss
• This looks OK, but it's pointing to a I9505 instead of a I9505G but people says it works

Any suggestions for which path I should go? Or maybe an alternative?

 

[SamuriHL]

The easiest solution by far is to install twrp recovery, boot into it, and flash the su zip. Done. But that does overwrite the recovery partition which isn't all bad. Twrp is rather useful. Alternatively you could temp boot twrp using fastboot and then flash the su zip. That's a fair bit more work. I'll see if I can put something together later to help male this easier.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 4

 

[SamuriHL]

Anyone looking to root the S4 GPE can follow along here:

xda-developers - View Single Post - [HOWTO] Root Stock i9505G 4.3 (Google edition)

I automated the process outlined in the OP of that thread.