[Atrix 4G Android Development] NFHimself:
Single Binary Format

Hi,

I thought I would start this thread so that all info about sbf utilities and formats specific to the Motorola Atrix could be in one place. (Kenneth Penn's idea) I don't know everything, not a lot, barely anything really, but I will share what I do. Feel free to chime in and correct anything I say. :)

First off, the software I have found:

Welcome to 2008, Portable SBF Tool / desbf

Motorola android SBF [de]Packer

SBF recalc (waiting for 1.3 edition)

Of these utilities, the one that has done anything worthwhile for me is Desbf. SBF recalc keeps saying wait for version 1.3, and while sbf depacker has been updated for the Atrix, I haven't managed to sucessfully flash anything with it, it has the most promise though and hope for the future.

First, trying these utils is like walking into a shop in chinatown looking to buy a cheeseburger. Where am I? What do I do? How do you say "do something!"? :)

Desbf, I don't know the history behind this or what it has been used for in the past, it was on a list of google hits for the obscure motorola sbf format. You run it, select a sbf file, and it automatically creates a folder with all the files contained in the sbf extracted. You can delete files and then save an sbf that can be flashed. It has a parse CG button, don't know what it's for. It has been used to flash the Telstra radio onto Att and Bell. I have yet to use it to flash something using RDL3, just the radio using RDL1.

SBF Recalc, shows a lot of information, to use you split the file to a folder to start, do your thing with the files in that folder, and then open the folder to recalc checksum and save an sbf. Only problem is that is doesn't work (yet).

Motorola Android [De]packer is obviously the most in depth util, it shows even more information than SBF recalc. It does do things, not sure what, or if it's my lack of understanding of the format, but I haven't sucessfully done anything with it, it creates files, displays information, but complains about RDL files not being needed for the content, even if you delete all the RDL files.

Speaking of files, here is what I understand about them:

The utilities spit out SMG files, it's a motorola format, not sure of the acronym.

RDL1:

RDL3:

Ram downloader 1 is used for the radio, it is flashed after everything else, changing mode to do so, everything else is flashed using Ram downloader 3. I don't know what happened to RDL2. :)

CG2 22KB

CG3 512KB, CDT.bin

CG5 is the radio, plus other things apparently. In [De]Packer it's a virtual collection of mbn files, partition.mbn, amas_sec.mbn (the radio), osb1_sec.mbn, cefs.mbn, db1_sec.mbn. I have no idea what they are about. I know they are from CG5 because an sbf with just RDL1, RDL3, and CG5 spits out RDL1, RDL3, and the above without a CG5.

CG42 3072KB mostly zeros, ends at 0xff0

CG44 3072KB Bootloader

CG47 262144 Microboot (Engine and Slot for hashing in microboot priv.c) (ref to rdl1.bin, ptable, CDT.BIN, BCT.bin, PT.bin, EBT.bin, MBR.bin, EBB.bin)

CG50 is 2KB of 0xFF, no content, probably used to clear a partition

CG52 same as above, (sent to mmcblk0p7 to clear misc? -optionally used to pass commands to recovery, it fed with command line for example to flash an update -)

CG53 1014KB begins with SOL: logo.bin (mmcblk0p8)

CG54 2KB of 0xFF (possibly sent to mmcblk0p9, Kernel Panic Data)

CG55 recovery (header, ramdisk, kernel) (mmcblk0p10)

CG56 boot (header, ramdisk (/), kernel) (mmcblk0p11)

CG57 is the system image in ext3 linux format. (mmcblk0p12)

CG58 osh (webtop) system image in ext3 (mmcblk0p13)

CG59 20MB HFS, CDROM (Motorola Helper) (mmcblk0p14)

CG60 2KB of 0xFF (possibly sent to mmcblk0p15 to clear cache image)

CG61 2KB of 0xFF (sent to mmcblk0p16 to clear userdata image, tested)

CG62 preinstall image in ext3 (mmcblk0p17)

This is a work in progress.

New for Gingerbread 2.3.4:

CG39 looks like fs, pds update?

CG42 bootloader

CG47 same as before, just full partition size

CG56 boot logo

CG58 Recovery emmc image (kernel, ramdisk.gz)

CG59 Boot emmc image

CG60 system image APP

CG61 webtop image OSH

CG62 cdrom image motohelper

CG65 preinstall image

cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name

7 0 7308 loop0
7 1 4190 loop1
179 0 15668736 mmcblk0
179 1 3584 mmcblk0p1
179 2 512 mmcblk0p2
179 3 2048 mmcblk0p3
179 4 1 mmcblk0p4
179 5 1024 mmcblk0p5
179 6 512 mmcblk0p6
179 7 512 mmcblk0p7
179 8 1024 mmcblk0p8
179 9 2048 mmcblk0p9
179 10 8192 mmcblk0p10
179 11 8192 mmcblk0p11
179 12 327680 mmcblk0p12
179 13 786432 mmcblk0p13
179 14 20480 mmcblk0p14
179 15 655360 mmcblk0p15
179 16 2097152 mmcblk0p16
179 17 353280 mmcblk0p17
179 18 11233792 mmcblk0p18
179 32 1931264 mmcblk1 (external sd card, 2 GB)
179 33 1930680 mmcblk1p1 (external sd card, 2 GB)
254 0 7308 dm-0
254 1 4189 dm-1

LINKS: (to be integrated)

http://xdaforums.com/show...&postcount=502

http://and-developers.com/partitions:cdt

https://www.droid-developers.org/wiki/BootRecoverySignature

Cheers!