yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] garwynn:
I guess we'll have to wait until the source is released for ICS - I wouldn't be surprised if we find a driver update for the eMMC in there. Since it's embedded and cannot be removed/isolated it seems the MB replacement - as SFHub and Connexion mentioned - is the only realistic solution for now.

The only other case I found even close to this was a borked format of an ext4 partition on a HDD... depending on the version there was a time where the format was not complete but the table was updated as such. (For those familiar with journaling it seems that the journal didn't commit/finalize.) The only solution in that case was a full HDD wipe and start from scratch. Don't think we have that option with the eMMC.

*Edit* I should note that even in the HDD example above the standard Linux commands have been updated to avoid this case. I've been trying to find out more about how CWM itself works and what might be different versus ODIN - this may be the key to moving forward.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] caketime:
I'm going to sprint tomorrow, I had the binary flash counter reset prior to the accident, so it seems to be stock. I was trying to odin EL29 on it, so hopefully, everything works out.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
Usually you can ignore that message and just try to start ODIN D/L mode as normal. Power down, Power+VolDown

In some cases it won't go away. Personallly I've had success using a jig in that case, but YMMV.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] Uh_Andy:
Sorry if this has been posted before but it may save someone some time. Please just ignore it or link if it's old info. I was trying to Odin EL29 yesterday when Odin hung on "Data.img" and wouldn't go any further. I was unable pull the battery and put the phone in Odin download again because it would immediately come back up with get the regular error message about a failed upgrade:

Firmware Upgrade encountered an issue.
Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again

A sprint tech at best buy showed me this trick:

Hold the buttons while putting in the battery (awkward)

This allowed the phone to re-enter Odin download mode. I was then able to run Odin again to completion with a better USB cable.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] Jaymoon:
Sad to say, but I am another one stuck because of CWM Touch. I tried to restore a GB backup, when my ICS rom was running nice and smooth. ...and all because I wanted to backup apps so I wouldn't have to individually restore them from the Market. Sheesh... live and learn.

Anyway, flashing anything in ODIN stops at data.img (like everyone else apparently). The EL29 No-Data One-Click finished without any problems, and then after that, I was able to flash this recovery.

Now, when I go into this recovery, I am able to mount everything (even /data) except for /sdcard.

Yet, when I connect through adb shell, /data shows to be working properly. Also note that I can read/write/delete on /data just fine.

Still can't format /data through recovery though. What gives? :confused:

D:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb devices
List of devices attached
4641XXXXXXXXXXXX recovery

D:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell
~ # ls
ls
cache init.rc sbin
data init.smdk4210.rc sdcard
default.prop init.smdk4210.usb.rc sys
dev lib system
efs lpm.rc tmp
emmc misc ueventd.goldfish.rc
etc mnt ueventd.rc
fota.rc proc ueventd.smdk4210.rc
init recovery.rc vendor
init.goldfish.rc res

~ # mount
mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,mode=600)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p9 on /system type ext4 (rw,noatime,barrier=1,data=ordered)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p7 on /cache type ext4 (rw,nodev,noatime,nodiratime,barrier=1,
data=ordered)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p10 on /data type ext4 (rw,nodev,noatime,nodiratime,barrier=1,
data=ordered)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p11 on /emmc type vfat (rw,nodev,noatime,nodiratime,fmask=0000
,dmask=0000,allow_utime=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,
errors=remount-ro)
~ # cd /data
cd /data
/data # ls
ls
/data # touch test.txt
touch test.txt
/data # ls
ls
test.txt
/data # rm test.txt
rm test.txt
/data # ls
ls
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
From what I have seen, it can fail to different extremes. In lighter failure cases, you might be able to still mount /data but there are sections that are corrupted.

If you want, try to remove all the files in /data, reboot, then let the system recreate the files. Obviously if you need to back stuff up, do it before removing the files.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] Jaymoon:
If the system recreates them all it makes is a "lost+found" directory. Nothing else, and nothing inside that.

I did for what it's worth, figure out how to grab my data off the internal storage. With adb, just 'adb pull /emmc Backup', and it'll start transferring everything over.

Which raises another question, the AOKP rom I flashed onto my Epic 4G Touch mounted the physical SD card to /emmc in the root dir. Shouldn't that be /sdcard/emmc as far as a stock Samsung rom is concerned? Maybe that's what is confusing it? Can't figure out where all the paths are?
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
I don't use AOKP or AOSP but my impression is they expect internal sd to be mounted as /emmc and Rogue makes that change for them.

Samsung stock expects internal to be mapped to /sdcard

The actual partitions are the same, just the mountpoints are different.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] fr0st:
any update on this?
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] d12unk13astard:
Im using rogue cwm and indeed it seems its mounting the internal storage partition(11gb) as sdcard. Do the older cwm(non rogue) mount actual physical sdcard, i have a 32 gb class 10 which i need to use as main mount for link2sd to recognize my 2nd ext4 partition.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] garwynn:
Did you try /mnt/sdcard/external_sd? (This is default path for E4GT)

Don't know if it automatically mounts in CWM - didn't see it in the recovery.fstab file - but I've seen it as an option in another version of CWM.

*Speculative Notes/Thoughts*

- aka more "spitballing"

You know, was digging through the logs of the new kernel and found this:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kern...ff;h=371a689f64b0da140c3bcd3f55305ffa1c3a58ef

Is it possible that one version has a MMC driver with the boot write protection off versus the driver in another?

This also appears to be new to 3.0 so it could explain why 2.6 kernels are not having problems.

The metadata issue that some people are reporting keeps making me think that something in the previous data partition was pending due to journaling and not committed - in the IBM i (DB2) this is also possible and it treats the data as locked until commit or rollback. The solution that I read - which the main problem was corrected before 2.6 kernel - is to make sure that fsync is done after file operations.

Looking at CWM build (standalone), Calk's ICS and Darc's CM9 builds to see if it may give any clues.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] connexion2005:
Just a small update (that may never lead anywhere) but I've been working on removing EMMC chips and oneNAND chips on many dead devices I have laying around my skill is getting better. Would anyone happen to have a source where these chips may be able to be purchased?

No need to PM asking for EMMC replacement any time soon as it's much more advanced than you may realize and certainly not a likely solution to ever be available. I'm just seeing if I can actually do it ONCE.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
Those changes are definitely in the 3.0.15 kernel being used by Samsung because the boot partitions are exposed as described in the code changes. That's how Triangle Away works.

Having said that, I don't believe that the journaling theory is what is going on here as that journaling is enforced as a software-based journaling filesystem. It wouldn't be able to prevent a ODIN repartition or JTAG flash, which we have found to be the case.

My gut feel is some change in the mmc code exposed an area that was previously protected or not accessible and that is interacting in a negative way with custom recoveries. It may or may not be the specific code changes you pointed out, but you are probably looking in the right area.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] nico53laval:
Is there something for the Galaxy Note that could fix this exact same problem?
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] Dulanic:
My turn to join the bad data partition train :( Flashed from CM9 to FC24... no touch recovery BTW. Off to sprint I go tommorow.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] imfamouzz:
fix?

still no fix for this?:confused:
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
That is correct, there is no "fix" for crashed hard drive (emmc) other than replacement. This is software action leading to hardware failure.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] iIuvweed:
You are welcome to try also and give another data point.

Some people earlier tried and it didn't work.

The last ODIN One-Click I posted forced a repartition and the data.img still failed to flash.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] cnstarz:
damn, there's no way in recovery to see what volumes there are, and to manually partition the rogue volume as data?

when i show log in steady hawk's fb27 rogue recovery 1.2.2, it says:

"W: failed to mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p10 (Invalid argument)

Error mounting /data!"
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
It isn't a partition corruption issue. It is an EMMC memory failure issue. You could theoretically change the partitions to avoid the bad section of memory, but they seemed to be pretty extensive, so that leaves moving your data to sdcard.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] cnstarz:
word, i should've gathered that from your last response.

how possible would it be to change the partition?
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] garwynn:
The previous poster who was able to do this did so by starting the data partition at a new position of memory outside of the 2GB that was borked using parted. If I remember correctly the user also replaced the phone shortly after so what happens after a day or two is not known. Post should be around page 30-31.

IMO I would caution against this as it hasn't been tested in the long term and if a part of the eMMC table has been corrupted there is no guarantee that the rest won't fail at another point in the future. It's like when you see bad sectors in a HDD - you know it's time to replace it. Sure, it will get your phone going for the short term - but would you really want to keep it that way?
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] cnstarz:
Very interesting, I just read up on it.

I tried running TestDisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk), but it failed when I ran testdisk_static. i forgot the error it gave me, something to do with line 1 missing a "(". i dunno what that means. is there a reason why none of the recoveries include su or sudo?

on a side note: i'll have my phone in this state for a few days most likely. i'm waiting for a USB jig to come in, so if you guys want me to try anything, let me know. you'll have to be specific as to exactly what you want me to do (spell it out so a 5th grader can understand) since i'm a noob to linux but can generally figure out how things work.

i would like to try drnull's idea of dd backing up the partitions, removing/recreating partition 10 into some of partition 11's space. i just need to figure out how to remove the partition, which i'm sure a quick google search will suffice.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] cnstarz:
i can see partitions this way:

/dev/block # cat /proc/partitions
cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name

179 0 15388672 mmcblk0
179 1 20480 mmcblk0p1
179 2 1280 mmcblk0p2
179 3 1280 mmcblk0p3
179 4 8192 mmcblk0p4
179 5 8192 mmcblk0p5
179 6 8192 mmcblk0p6
179 7 307200 mmcblk0p7
179 8 16384 mmcblk0p8
179 9 524288 mmcblk0p9
179 10 2097152 mmcblk0p10
179 11 12066816 mmcblk0p11
179 12 319488 mmcblk0p12
253 0 31338496 cyasblkdevblk0
253 1 31334400 cyasblkdevblk0p1

however, parted recognizes 0 devices:

~ # parted
parted
Error: No device found
Retry/Cancel?

what does?

edit: fdisk -l mmcblk0 only shows one partition o_o

/dev/block # fdisk -l mmcblk0
fdisk -l mmcblk0

Disk mmcblk0: 15.7 GB, 15758000128 bytes
1 heads, 16 sectors/track, 1923584 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16 * 512 = 8192 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
mmcblk0p1 1 1923456 15387647+ ee EFI GPT
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] garwynn:
Speculation Notes - Mainly for a better understanding of the E4GT

1) Recovery is obviously set on the eMMC - but what about download mode?

2) Is there any way to boot from something other than the eMMC where a basic set of drivers could be loaded and we could try reformatting the eMMC? I know JTAG does a "bit blast" (basically trying to set every bit on/off if I understand correctly) but is that being done when the phone is booted from the eMMC?

I mention this because this because previous investigation showed this possible on HDDs but the only solution was to wipe and start on HDD from scratch - basically clearing any metadata and previous partition tables. With an eMMC I'm not sure you can really get away from using it like you can a HDD - even in a download mode. And without doing that it's hard to verify that the eMMC itself is the problem and not something in the middle, like a driver (which as noted is possible that the ICS driver may have unlocked more of the eMMC.)

Again, this is just speculative - don't take it for anything more than that. Is there an EE in the room that could possibly take the seat of the expert?
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] dadoc04:
ok thanks... im gonna do it now.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
You'll probably want to increase your scroll buffer for command prompt also.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] dadoc04:
stuck at waiting for device..... its not booting far enough
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
Ok, one last thing I can think of trying.

Could you flash the EL29 ODIN One-Click (NoData) from the first post. (It has a built-in ODIN One-Click)

It should flash successfully since I believe it flashed successfully for you earlier.

Then boot into recovery and wipe data/factory reset.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] atharchian:
the only thing i think we have different is that i dont use tw roms unless if im updating prl/profile. im usually on bubbys cm7 (which has cwm 5#) or lately sbrissens cm9, i been going back and forth between the two.

you could try flashing cm7, and make sure you flash it twice.

the first time i temp flashed cwm while on the stock ics leak, i got stuck on samsung screen on first boot, so i rebooted back to recovery (which was stock) and temp flashed cwm again, then flashed cm7 a second time. that not only got my device booting, but it also restored cwm 5 again.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] dadoc04:
sure gimme 1 sec .... i still have that downloaded

---------- Post added at 03:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:32 AM ----------

thanks homie... ill give this a try in a few.... i really appreciate both of yalls help
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
I do have another thing you can try if the current attempt doesn't work.

Flash Rogue CWM like you suggested earlier and do a nandroid restore of one of your earlier backups.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] dadoc04:
did something different this time...

after ODIN the file you specified, it booted to the "SGS2" screen... then went to recovery, it said "installing apps" and flashed off.... the went back to the "SGS2" screen and then back to screen with the gray battery...

---------- Post added at 03:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:43 AM ----------

started a restore... not looking good tho... its stalling now that its at "restoring data"

---------- Post added at 03:55 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:52 AM ----------

it said "error restoring data and crashed... rebooted to the "SGS2 with a yellow triangle" screen
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
That is actually promising news. It is supposed to do that as that is the stock recovery installing the preinstalled apps from the hidden partition.

Did you do a step without mentioning? After the ODIN one-click, you should have had stock recovery, which doesn't have a restore option.

Did you flash Rogue CWM in between?
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] dadoc04:
^ yea, i did the ODIN to rogue recovery as you asked me to. then did the restore

should i have waited?
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
Nah, it is ok, if it went back to the gray battery, something is still probably wrong with /data.

While booted into recovery, can you do an adb shell and go into /cache

Poke around and see if you can find a recovery.log or something like that.

It might have some information on why things are failing.

All the issues are related to /data being messed up. Rogue CWM recovery can't write to it. ODIN can't write to it.

I'm really wondering what the cause is and how it got into this state, but that is another problem to tackle. First thing is to try and get you booting.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] dadoc04:
its all good man... im bout to get some rest. Thanks a ton for your help.

wheres your donate link?
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
Don't take donations. Thanks is good enough.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] dadoc04:
well i really appreciate you trying to help out... THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

soon as i get the app, ill thank a bunch of your posts
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] caspersfi:
Morning guys.....just got up and read thru the thread. Looks like were still trying to get this figured out.

Just flashed thru odin the rouge recovery file from patrao_n.......wiped data.....still got hung at formatting /data for a good 2 minutes. Wiped cache/dalvik. Now restoring a nand of a stock rooted backup.

Just got a "Error restoring /data" message

E:Can't open /cache/recovery/log

E:Can't open /cache/recovery/log

E:Can't open /cache/recovery/last_log

E:Can't open/cache/recovery/last_log

Now what..............
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] caspersfi:
Also on the samsung boot screen after I flashed thru odin the rogue_ET-recovery-1.1.4-rc0-odintar.md5 on the samsung boot screen it says gt1900 with a yellow triangle at the bottom.

I thought I remember reading somewhere that this is the "International" version of sgs2 and can brick our phones.

Alright....I'm just going to slow my roll here and pull the batt. and hope some ppl smarter then me can offer some suggestions before I eff this thing up even more.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] Dalmus:
From wading through the FBO7 thread, there is a bit of suspicion that the touch recovery is to blame.

OP, for gits and shiggles, try using Odin to flash the ICS ROM and see if you can boot, then.

If this works, there, try using ROM Manager to flash an SGSII recovery.... Yes, SGSII, not E4GT. Then boot to recovery through ROM Manager and then restore your backup.

This is what i've sort of picked up on two other long threads... It's a shot in the dark...
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] caspersfi:
Damn.....my impatience is starting to get the best of me. Trying not to eff with this phone. Been searching around and it seems more then a few guys are having this problem. Just not sure there in as deep as I am.......
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] dadoc04:
Casper,

i think we are screwed man... me and sfhub tried for hours and the **** wont even boot at all.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] caspersfi:
Wow....this really sucks. I just got this damn phone a few weeks ago.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
JTAG is being written over a hardware serial bus. It bypasses all the middle-men.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] cnstarz:
sprint's ordering me a refurbished phone. yay!
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] Kebetz:
If I can help....

I'm more than willing to be a lab rat for the next couple of hours if it could help at all. The only issue is that my E4GT is in the state that it is so FUBAR I can't access recovery therefore ADB.

I have read this entire thread and don't QUITE hit the profile. I have used touch recoveries in the past but always without issue and never for flashing.

I was using rogueETrecovery 1.2.3 for all backup/restore/flashing....

However everything problem wise was the same.. errors, mnt fails.. etc

I was using the XPLOD MINI (which is friggin awesome, btw) and decided to try another new ROM so I flashed the same kernel that I've been using for all flashing and made a backup of the current ROM (what? I had it set up juuuust right :)

OH YEAH, can't forget to tell you... I've been reckless and know that I am to blame but it may help you to know that I have flashed incompatible kernels/roms (Siyah3.1/Hydrogen Rom) onto my phone in the past few weeks and had similar problems to these.

So this time when my problem started I assumed it was like the other times and rebooted recovery and tried again. Once I realized how screwed I was and read this thread I (for shoots and googles) reinstalled the Siyah kernel that I had used a week or two ago and tried to set up a "secondary rom." it let me install it all the way and got past bast boot logo but forever hung on kang animation.... dead again...

The difference is the permanence. I now can't even get odin to install a kernel...

UPDATE:

IDK what happened exactly... I tried one last time to do the EL29 OC from earlier in the thread and it stuck on data again. This time I left it there. for a very long time. It was actually going the whole time I was researching and posting and what have you.

When I tried to boot into recovery it gave me the "encountered problem during update" message with the pc/phone connection symbol which had done before only this time when I unplugged the usb it briefly flashed the rogue recovery logo and rebooted. on reboot it showed the GT-I9100 with triangle image followed by the sprint audio playing with the "android" boot animation that occurs if you have boot animation off on AOKP build 30 (probably all but that's where I've seen it)

It still wont get passed there but I can now access recovery. (which is rogue 1.1.2 which I don't remember ever using)

Anything I should do?

PS still no ability to mnt /data. (and sorry for the loooong post)
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
Bravo for at least owning up.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] Kebetz:
I'm a big boy. I have no problem admitting my fault in this but I feel that branding all touch recoveries the devil for a few user errors is extreme. I have used Siyah/redpill/(some other trK) all without any serious issues. (other than not talking to the modems I had available)

If you need anything from me just let me know. I think I have about 3 hours until the woman gets home with the car.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] sfhub:
The problem is this issue is not always deterministic. You can be doing the same operation fine repeatedly, then have the same operation fail. That is what happened to Steady, developer of Rogue CWM recovery.

This problem never occured with GB kernels and we know they made changes in ICS to expose new partitions in EMMC.

It isn't about lumping everything together. It is about letting people know about the issue with the ICS-kernel and custom recovery. Once they know, they are welcome to take whatever level of risk they are comfortable with.
[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] Kebetz:
Teehehe, well I'm probably not your average client. Albeit true it good for most... I have a deep seated urge to take things apart and put them back together. So I see "don't use touch recoveries" and what was the next thing I did? lmao you better believe I went and found some incredible I9100 kernels and changed my build.prop accordingly. This was several flashes ago and I think unrelated but still... I don't even remember why I started this reply now... sheesh

I should have learned a little bit more about Android before seeing what I can and can't break though, I feel this little problem has a little solution and we are all just blind. Lol. Well, good luck to everyone... and sfhub, sir, master, I salute thee. From reading this thread I feel I got to see who you are. Thanks for being you.