yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lyriquidperfection:
It seems the problem everyone is having is a qualcomm specific issue labelled as 'IMEI Not Active'. Here is a solution although it involves use of service equipment:

http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/f47...pair-more-android-versions-supported-1401629/
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] johnhazelwood:
I believe the SV is the software version, which likely would update after you applied the update. I believe I had 2 until I applied the update and now 5 as well.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] 47ohboy:
how did you return to stock? flashed through cwm, odin or nandroid?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] kssxs:
In another thread in which he posted the same text, he said he had flashed through CWM.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] 47ohboy:
so maybe the guy in the other thread was right. to maintain imei when flashing from an open source build back to a stock based rom you might have to use odin. I had been saying that I hadnt had any issues flashing roms but all the roms I had flashed were all stock based. Not going to try flashing back to a stock based rom because it looks like ill lose imei.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] SiNJiN76:
So... I was just randomly looking through my logcat after a reboot... And saw something that said Dangerous File Found... And it pointed to busybox. Is that normal? This is actually the first time looking at a logcat.

S Beamed by my T999
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
So I'm a bit unclear here? This is an issue that will be persistent with Qualcomm chip sets and cannot be avoided? Also, is this good news as it means we will have a fix available soon, or will it not be able to be repaired by the average user? Does it require the purchase of special equipment?

If someone who is familiar with this and has a good understanding of what this means could break this down for me into simple terms, I would greatly appreciate it:)
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] capcanuck:
I restored a stock based backup coming from aokp, no loss of imei..
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] thacounty:
From what I can tell, if this supports our devices at some point, you would need a UART Cable, can be had for 15 to 30 bucks, and this program that he has on the forum. I don't know this for sure, but it seems that way.

---------- Post added at 04:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:14 PM ----------

I have also used Nandroid to go back, but I have never flashed a stock based rom to go back.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Actually, a number of people have lost their imei's flashing cm9 and cm10 roms. This issue is still far from understood, no one knows what is causing the imei wipe. My guess is the first solution to be found will comprise a method for backing up and restoring imei rather than figuring out the cause of its loss.

I personally am not going to flash anything until some solution is found. I am finding this quite frustrating, as I have always really enjoyed trying different roms/kernels/mods. I will bet there are many, many more who share my sentiments.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] SiNJiN76:
Are these people referring to stock as in unrooted stock?

S Beamed by my T999
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] thacounty:
I was thinking we were referring to stock as in a rom with Touchwiz, basically non aosp
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] kssxs:
This is what I had typed in that other thread. It's quite possible that the only 'correct' way to go back to 'stock-rooted' is to use 'Odin' rather than CWM, since it's a Samsung utility.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
Your absolutely not the only one feeling this way. I finally decided to go with twrp & start flashing away, and then warranty exchange if I lost my imei. But, the more I look at different roms, i feel like I have to find one I know I'm gonna stick with because literally every flash increases the risk! This all sort of takes the fun out of the flashing experience you know? I like to try every rom & then decide which one I prefer, but in the end I just want to avoid an exchange if possible because it's kind of a pain in the ass! Right now I keep changing my mind, but I'm mostly leaning towards holding out for a really stable, fully functional jellybean build, and just sticking with TouchWiz in the meantime as it's not too bad compared to how I've felt about previous versions... What a lame predicament :(
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Lol, agreed on a JB build. One guy summed it up perfectly on one of the forums: With the IMEI problem, excessive flashing on this device is like being a porn star in early 80s with the introduction of AIDS.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] SiNJiN76:
So what about this. I remember some of you were thinking that it may have to do with busybox.

S Beamed by my T999
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] kssxs:
What you're referring to there is the watcher process declaring BusyBox as 'dangerous', and that is what changes the phone status to 'Modified' when it finds it installed. As for BB causing the issue, it doesn't seem likely, based on the evidence gathered so far.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] SiNJiN76:
Thanks. A side request...could you tell me what I should be looking for in a logcat to identify a random reboot?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] kssxs:
I myself don't know, perhaps someone else here can point it out?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Hopefully Peter will see this one before he sends back his broken phone.

Great post, very informative, thanks.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lordmorphous:
I just did the backup (I still have my IMEI). I just wanted to point out that I had to change the command to:

dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/efs of=/mnt/extSdCard/efs_backup.img

in order for it to work.

Therefore the restore command would need to be changed to:

dd if=/mnt/extSdCard/efs_backup.img of=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/efs_sdcc.1/by-name/efs
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
How large is this backup file?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] drothenberger:
14 MB
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
They zip up quite nicely to about 60k. The partition is mostly empty but the extract still pulls in the bytes that make up the unused space.

I dropboxed mine and gmailed it to myself to make sure I never lose it.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] fireboypr:
should I do this on the same phone right? With the terminal app from market?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lyriquidperfection:
Why would the command be that? If you type this in Terminal:

su -c 'busybox mountpoint -n /efs'

You will see that the efs partition is:

/dev/block/mmcblk0p11
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lordmorphous:
Couldn't tell you. Unfortunately, I'm not a code junkie. I just knew the original commands included an invalid path.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Now I am lost....which code is correct?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lyriquidperfection:
/dev/block/mmcblk0p11 is basically a direct route to the other one which is longer and more long winded. Other than that, they are the same.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
I'm on TMobile, but basically, whichever command works on yours is fine as long as you don't get an error, you're good.

It doesn't hurt to try both, they won't mess anything up UNLESS you get the IF and OF wrong. DO NOT MESS THAT PART UP.. IF is input-file OF is output file.

Just try both, one will produce a file and one will not.

You should probably SU first too so:

Open terminal:

$>su
$>dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/efs of=/external_sd/efs_backup.img
$>dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/efs of=/mnt/extSdCard/efs_backup.img

One of these will produce a file on your external SD card..
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Thanks man, the above command line worked, must be for i747m versions. Final question I have is would this change at all with the lte radio on our model?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] wavrunrx:
Confirmed working on USA, AT&T Galaxy S3

:good:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] sabre31:
But does anybody know if this will actually work if imei gets corrupted and you have this backup and restore it? I thought even with this backup it does no good as imei is no longer stored in efs partition.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] wavrunrx:
for now it is a precaution as we are waiting on a few folks to get back to us on that.

i for one feel a bit of relief having dd'ed my partition now. still wont be flashing anything though....
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] sabre31:
I hear you I did the same wish somebody much smarter then me would figure out how to properly back this up so I can flash away I am same boat as you with flashing for the moment.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
For TMobile users, the quote above from Lordmorphous contains the correct commands for our model.

Now we REALLY need someone to test this! This was stated by KevlarTheGreat a few days ago, but no one ever followed up on it? I'd hate to see it fade away into the thread untested & undetermined yet again. Is there anyway we can prove this concept without patiently waiting for one of the few of us that have created the backup to lose our imei? I think most of us who have the backup created are those of us that have been in thread regularly waiting on a solution, and unfortunately most of us have put our flashing on hold. When we do see a new report of a lost imei, it seems that the user has not been to the thread before to have known to make this backup? We have somewhat of a catch 22 here...
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] es7241:
Does this just back up the /efs partition like what efs pro does?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] johnhazelwood:
I think a backup wouldn't hurt, but find it unlikely it contains the imei. Typically it's contained in an nvdata file, on the captivate, gs2, and international gs3. It seems unlikely they've changed that. Stupid file must be hidden somewhere. I'm assuming in an area written to during rom flashes.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] es7241:
You sir are on to something, my md5sum is completely different than yours... I would post but I'm posting from my phone
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] wavrunrx:
well thats an interesting find;

i checked the md5 of my redata.bin, and it indeed has a different md5.

mine is: ecd52050e9ab933aa11e3570fbf8a19c
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] naturefreak85:
Except it doesn't if you flash stock firmware.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lordmorphous:
My md5 is different too.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] norbarb:
i get permission denied.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lordmorphous:
did you su first? Are you rooted?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] norbarb:
yes and yes
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] woody1:
Are you saying this is the same problem that's being reported here? Do the GSM phones use this Qualcomm chip, because when I hear Qualcomm, I think CDMA. If this is a CDMA issue, seems like it would only affect CDMA carriers, e.g., Verizon and Sprint? If so, why are most of the people having the problem on GSM carriers?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
If I read your post correctly & your on Att, then you don't want to use the command posted by Lordmorphous, you want to use the other command I believe. On the Tmo model our external storage is named extSdCard, and on the other command that Att users were saying is working the command differs there & is something like "external_sd" or something along those lines? Try the other command that was posted I think on Page 35, and I hope it works for you.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lordmorphous:
I'm on at&t and my external storage is named extSdCard.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] norbarb:
You are correct i'm on att

My external name is extSdCard so i don't think external_sd will work..

I did try bout and no go all i have is permission denied.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lyriquidperfection:
Qualcomm manufacture chipsets for gsm aswell as cdma and from what I have read on the gsm forum, it looks like the same problem you guys are having with your SGS III devices.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] laylovj:
I haven't seen people who flashed custom roms lose their imei....but I have seen people lose by reverting to stock through (PC) Odin. (Tmo)
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
It seems to have happened with different recoveries, but if you go to the thread linked you'll find many different variables. I myself am not an advanced user, but I'm an informed user who makes sure I know what it is I'm doing before I do it, and if I don't I read. My goal is to warn ppl of the risks, as well as get more advanced users, such as yourself, involved in hopes that your knowledge may contribute to a solution.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] AvatarOfFrost:
i have lost all my connectivity just now after restoring a stock factory ROM backup. I have no connectivity no matter what ROM I flash.

I am on Sprint though and I still have an IMEI number so don't know what the problem is.

Help!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] mt3g:
I don't like this one bit. Holding off on flashing anything else from here on out til thesis sorted out. Insurance or not, it's not worth it just to be able to run custom TW or CM9, CM10 stable, I'm flashing away, haha.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
I'm not asking anyone to hold off flashing anything? That's everyone's own decisions, I only want ppl to be aware. From your statistics you seem to have been here for a long time, and I highly doubt you will be posting HELP!!! in the development section should something go wrong, lol. I just want ppl to be warned that's all, I have no intention of scaring anyone.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
Well if you see anyone having the imei issue, maybe you could just direct them to the link I've posted.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
I haven't heard of this happening to sprint phones, but you could always go to the linked thread & report the problem. If it's an imei issue dial *#06# and if it returns your imei number then it's not related.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] AvatarOfFrost:
i can't dial anything because i have no connection
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] id_twin:
Is it possible that the people who are losing their IMEI are flashing from a different carrier? I know that a lot of people have been using T-Mo/AT&T roms interchangeably..
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
Hmmm.... It may still bring up the imei, because it's not dialing out as far as I know it triggers an internal phone command to display the imei. I could be wrong, and if I am, try going under settings-about phone-status, the imei should be several numbers listed there. If it says 00/02 or 00/01 or anything along those lines under the heading imei, then you've corrupted it. (or something did?)
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] ingenious247:
This is actually quite concerning.

Perhaps they have found a way to stop us all from hacking our phones.. at least until we figure out how to bypass it.

Remaining stock until this is solved.

I'll tell you, though, if this is something done on purpose, they'll pay the price in the end. More exchanges, that's all this will be..
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] AvatarOfFrost:
I still have the IMEI. Don't know if it's good but I still have it.

Also, I was restoring a factory stock ROM after which this happened. So I wasnt flashing anything from another carrier.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
That's been one of the many theory in the thread, and they've been advised to stay away from roms that are universal supported, and stick to the ones specific to your carrier. But any theory should be posted in the thread I've linked, as I'm not qualified to really say, and I just want this thread to more redirect ppl to a unified forum where it's more likely we will come up with an answer or solution.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
Well I'd say your problem is probably unrelated & maybe consult some of the awesome sprint devs & they may know a very easy fix?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] mt3g:
I know you aren't implying for people not to flash. Even with insurance, I'm still careful not to have a paper weight. I've had 4 devices HTC LG and now Samsung no bricks I couldn't revive lol. I'm curious as to this being mostly user error... improper flashing, maybe even bad downloads of some sort.

T-Mobile SGS III
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Serious_Beans:
I've flashed the first cm nightly, aokp, touch recovery and the latest nightly and no imei problems so far.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] jgalan14:
This is a known issue in galaxy nexus gsm only, so yeah is possible on our gs3 but we need to find a way to be able to recover I'm holding off flashing for now I been thru night lies and aokp and back to touchwiz, so I'm staying like this till something comes up of how to recover
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] SilverSpade:
Flashed AOKP, then back to stock and then back to AOKP. I've still managed to keep my IMEI but I'm stopping here and counting myself lucky. I'm just hoping this all gets sorted out before a really solid build of Jellybean comes out, the temptation would be too great...
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] jgalan14:
Same here I wanted to flash jellybean from cm but ill wait
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
You know, I emailed zedomax to see what his opinion is and which recovery he uses & his overall opinion on the matter. He seems to feel it's probably user error like ppl formatting the system or not flashing roms for the right carrier? I tended to believe the same, but I've seen so many cases now, and alot of them who are long time xda members and very experienced, so I'm leaning more towards a system error somewhere that is kind of luck of the draw? I say if you have backup phones & feel confident that you can pull of an exchange under warranty then flash away, no worries. I have several phones, but I just don't want to deal with it. When I see something great pop up, like a stable, solid jellybean build, then I'm on it. Otherwise, I'm fine with stock rooted rom for the moment... But to users who don't know how to unroot, don't carry insurance, and don't have a great deal of experience, I want them to be warned so that we aren't getting the development thread flooded with noob HELP posts, that literally drives me nuts!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
If you get "permission denied" that means you didn't properly get root.

Make sure you use the 'su' command before you use 'dd'. If you type 'whoami' on the terminal, you should see 'root'. If you don't then one of three things probably happened:

1) (Most likely culprit) At some point, when prompted by the superuser app's dialog for your terminal emulator asking for permission to grant root access and you clicked "Disallow". Check your superuser app settings and make sure you don't have the terminal app you are using marked as 'disallowed' or 'blocked'.

2) You're using an adb shell and you haven't checked the Settings>Developer Options>Root Access>Apps and ADB setting.

3) You're not working with a rooted phone :)

FYI everyone, I recommend Chrome-to-phone to run these commands.. Remember, you can select text on a web page and send it to your phone's clipboard with Chrome-to-phone so you don't have to type terminal commands on the android keyboard.

If you're able to plug in USB to a computer, I recommend using 'adb shell' (google it)
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Same for Rogers. We all (att, tmobile, canadian variants) should be using this command.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
All North American versions are using dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] norbarb:
any other command tru terminal works

1 everything is in order there

2 like you said

3 my phone is rooted i check TB is working like should Root explorer too etc app are ok with how phone is rooted.

FYI i did check so many time if i type correctly, yes i did. I will try Chrome-to-phone and post info.

Edit: i clear memory in task manager and everything worked... Thanks all for help.. :)
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
This does NOT work. I tried this with user lumbu; it sure looked good though. I have my new phone and my old with the blown out serial # and IMEI, so if someone else would like to to try something, PM me.

Speed Reading is NOT good! I did not read to the end...I will give this a shot since I have both working and non working phones!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] buvk:
Try restoring a complete dd from your working device to your busted one
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] jethro650:
Running Bell here with AOKP and it was external_sd. Just look in a file explorer if your not sure.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Poser:
FWIW: though tedious, typing the commands in terminal serves to begin at least a rudimentary comfort with command line tools in a unix environment.... Which can all agree serves an android user well. (your comments regarding DD are gospel as far as I am concerned....and as soon as location of IMEI data is confirmed, DD backups of partition should be implemented into ALL flash instructions for first time flashes until root cause for corruption is identified) /soapbox

Sent from my SGH-T999
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Intercrew:
Does this only happen when you flash another rom or could it happen from rooting the phone? I'm fairly new to the rooting stuff but following up the instructions have always worked out for me. But if it's possible to lose the IMEI from rooting than I'll hold off for now
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Andrew_han:
Is the warranty one year through Samsung? So if I lose IMEI I can just triangle away, back to stock and return to Samsung?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
With all due respect, it would do nothing but confirm we have a needle in a haystack, and we already know that.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
Idk, but I'm sending back to Tmo. I would assume this is not truly covered under warranty.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] buvk:
fair enough, but it would at least confirm that it's possible to restore it, and people could flash roms without being afraid :)
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] wavrunrx:
@zonly1

PLZ before you return your bricked phone, read this post and report back to us.

also, it might be helpful if you can share your redata.bin with us.

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=29095544&postcount=368
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] drothenberger:
It would confirm that the information is stored on the internal SD card. We don't even know that yet. And, as someone else mentioned, it would show that we could recover from a lost IMEI.

It would be a great piece of information.