Apps2SD for the LG Eve GW620

 GW620  No Responses »
Dec 312009
 

Update:

Tolemac has made an Apps2SD image based on 1.0g that is way better than mine.  I highly recommend that anyone looking for an update check out his image at

Get it here

Cheers!

Features:

  • Pre-rooted with su/superuser.apk
  • sh replaced with bash (yay for tab-completion!)
  • full busybox setup. (cp/mv/less/grep and more!)
  • Terminfo set up for curses based apps
  • Nano pre-installed – nice to have a small/fast text editor on the command line.
  • Swapped out the Rogers bootup logo with something a little nicer stolen from (MyHangOutOnline) – minus the “It’s not Windows” line.
  • Auto mounts the 2nd partition of the SD card to /data/app if available (for apps2sd action!)

Instructions for installing firmware:

  1. Download the firmware (boot.img and system.img) and unzip it somewhere.
  2. Make a full nandroid backup of your phone! Really. Do it. Better safe than sorry. If you don’t make a backup and brick your phone then good luck recovering it with the LG software.
  3. Remove the battery from your phone
  4. Ensure it is NOT plugged in to USB
  5. Open the Keyboard
  6. Plug the phone in to USB, wait 2-3 seconds till the screen brightens slightly, and then hold down the space bar
  7. If you get the fastboot screen, proceed. Otherwise unplug and try the previous step again.
  8. At a command prompt type:

    cd <place where you unzipped the file in step 1>
    fastboot flash boot boot.img
    fastboot flash system system.img

  9. Unplug from USB
  10. Plug the battery back in, and hit the power button to boot up.

Now, you have an apps2sd rom installed, but your SD card is probably not set up for it. You’ll still get all the features of the firmware, but your apps will still be in the phone’s memory instead of the sd card.

There are a few ways to get your SD card set up properly. The one I used on OSX went something like this:

  1. Power off the phone, and remove the SD card
  2. Plug it in to a micro-sd USB reader.
  3. copy everything off the card in to a directory on your desktop
  4. use Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) to delete the existing partition on the SD card and then create 2 new partitions. I have an 8gb sd, so I created the first partition as 6gb for data and the 2nd as 2gb for apps. Have Disk Utility format the first partition as FAT and the 2nd as Ext2.
  5. Copy everything from step 3 back on to the first partition
  6. Reinsert the SD card in to the phone and boot it up. The firmware should automatically detect the 2nd sd card partition and move all your apps over to it.
  7. You can verify it worked by doing an “adb shell mount” at a command line. The 2nd-to-last line of the output should read:

    /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 /data/app ext2 rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=continue 0 0

If you are using Linux or windows you’ll have to follow a different process, but the results will be the same – an SD card with 2 partitions. The first partition is for data and must be formatted as FAT. The 2nd partition is for apps and must be formatted as ext2.

Here are some pages detailing SD card preparation:
This one looks like it does it all from the phone! Cool if it works!
Here’s another that works from the phone. This may be the best way to go – you boot the phone up with the nandroid recovery image and do all the partitioning from there. Sweet!

Google has many more how-tos to get the sd card set up.

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

Nandroid for the LG Eve GW620

 GW620  No Responses »
Dec 182009
 

Important note:  There’ve been a few reports of people being unable to boot their restored backups.  This is due to the version of unyaffs installed on the system.  It is very important that you use the patched version detailed here.

If you use the ‘stock’ version of unyaffs then permissions are not correctly extracted, and the backup of your system partition will be corrupted.  You may still be able to get around this by restoring the system.img from whatever firmware you’re using and then restoring the userdata.img from your backup.  YMMV.

Nandroid for the LG Eve GW620. Modified by Zacpod (www.zacpod.com) from Nandroid 2.0 I’ve modified Nandroid and the CM Recovery image to (Mostly) work on the Eve. So, we can now take backups of our devices. Yay! Unfortunately this will not work from Windows – you need to use MacOS or Linux. Windows just doesn’t have the tools required to make it work. It might work in Cygwin under windows, but I’ve not tested it. Here’s the tool! Disclaimer: This software is provided as is. I take absolutely no resposibility for anything that may break while it is in use. All I can say is that it works well for me. Your mileage may vary. Instuctions for use: Backup:

  1. Boot the device in to Fastboot mode. (e.g. power the device on and hit space within about 2-3 seconds)
  2. From a Linux root command prompt (#, not $) cd to the directory you unpacked this archive in to
  3. Type “fastboot boot everecovery01a.img” You may need to specify the full path to the android sdk. E.g. “/usr/android-sdk-linux/tools/fastboot boot everecovery01a.img”
  4. Wait while the recovery image boots on the device
  5. Type “./nandroideve01a.sh <backupname>” where <backupname> is the folder you want the img files to go to.
  6. Wait patiently, especially for the system and data partitions
  7. Study the output. Ensure there are no errors! I can’t stress this enough. If there are errors listed you probably do NOT have a valid backup.
  8. To verify your backup you can use the unyaffs command on the system.img and userdata.img and examine the results to ensure they match what’s on the device.

Restore prep:

  1. Boot the device in to Fastboot mode. (e.g. power the device on and hit space within about 2-3 seconds)
  2. From a Linux root command prompt (#, not $) cd to the directory you unpacked this archive in to
  3. Type “fastboot boot everecovery01a.img” You may need to specify the full path to the android sdk. E.g. “/usr/android-sdk-linux/tools/fastboot boot everecovery01a.img”
  4. Wait while the recovery image boots up
  5. Type “adb shell” to get to the phone’s command prompt. Again, you may need to specify the full path to the adb command if you haven’t put the sdk in to your $PATH
  6. From the devices command prompt: (Note: These commands are destructive. Make SURE you have a complete and valid backup of your device before executing!) We zero out the system and userdata partitions because simply restoring an image, even if you “fastboot erase” first, results in a corrupted filesystem
  7. Type “cat /dev/zero > /dev/mtd3″ to erase the Cache partition (you’ll get an error about device full at this point. That’s ok, it just means the command finished.)
  8. Type “cat /dev/zero > /dev/mtd4″ to erase the userdata partition (same error here as in the previous step. Ignore it.
  9. Type “cat /dev/zero > /dev/mtd6″ to erase the cache partition (same error here as in the previous step. Ignore it.
  10. Type “exit” to get back to your Linux shell prompt
  11. Now you can do the restore!

Restore:

  1. Boot the device in to Fastboot mode. (e.g. power the device on and hit space within about 2-3 seconds)
  2. From a Linux root command prompt (#, not $) cd to the directory you specified as your <backupname> in backup step 5
  3. Type “fastboot flash boot boot.img” (specify sdk path as before if req’d)
  4. Type “fastboot flash system system.img”
  5. Type “fastboot flash userdata userdata.img”
  6. Done! Reboot, and you should have your system back!

Note: For steps 3, 4, and 5 of the recovery process. If you get a FAILED message when writing the img file, simply reboot in to fastboot mode and try again. Sometime fastboot can only write a few times before it needs a reset. Also, for any of these processes I find it easiest to take the battery out and leave it out till I’m done. Fastboot and the Recovery image will both happily work via USB power, and it makes the resets as simple as unplugging the USB cable.

LG Eve GW620 Rooted!

 GW620  No Responses »
Dec 092009
 

A few of us over at XDA have been trying to root the Eve for a few weeks now, and we’ve finally done it! W00t!

This guide assumes you already have ADB access to your device. If you don’t you need to google for the android SDK and get yourself connected.

Let me know how this works for you all, or if anything is unclear. :)

  1. Download this version of Superuser Whitelist and unpack it somewhere safe
  2. On the GW620 dial “3845#*620#” to get in to the secret menu
  3. Tap “Module Test” then tap “Stability Test” then tap “Enable Root Permission”
  4. Open a shell/command prompt/terminal. (cmd, or bash, or zsh, or whatever you use)
  5. Type “adb shell” (You may need to use “/path/to/android/sdk/tools/adb shell”)
  6. You should get a #. If you get a $ then something didn’t work. Shutdown the phone and PC and start again from 2)
  7. If you get a # then all is well. Type “exit” to return to your PCs command prompt.
  8. Type “adb remount” to remount the GW620′s file system as read-write so we can make changes.
  9. Type “cd /path/to/the/unzipped/superuser.zip”
  10. Type “adb shell cat /system/xbin/su > /system/xbin/su.original”
  11. Type “adb push bin/su /system/xbin/su”
  12. Type “adb push bin/su /system/bin/su” (You need this one too, as some apps look for it there. E.g. Quickboot)
  13. Type “adb shell chmod 4755 /system/xbin/su”
  14. Type “adb shell chmod 4755 /system/bin/su”
  15. Type “adb install bin/Superuser.apk”

Done. That’s it. You should now be able to run apps that require root. If an app needs root access a window will pop up on the phone asking for permission to use root.