yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
but there is no corresponding /optional in the ROM, so does it go on the same level as /system? so the root level directory of ROM.zip should look like this?

/META-INF

/optional

/system #updated with gApps of course#

boot.img

sorry to have to have you spell it out for me. but thank you very much for your time!!! i would have NEVER gotten this working without you!
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
You're welcome, no problem.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough on this part.

In /optional you should have two folders : /face & /neon (or something like that, don't have it in front of me). In those folders (or in the folders inside those) you should find folders with corresponding names to the rom's /system
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
got it! now lets try one more time: gonna e2fsck, then flash gapps modified rom, and i'll get back to you!
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
well, i tried using nexess pro rom... i shouldn't have, it's frozen on boot. so, i prepared paranoid android rom by manually added gapps per your method. but when i tried to push the file to /sdcard, the terminal on my computer says that it completed, but when i reboot cwm recovery on the device, it doesn't show (no files found)

so what it looks like i may have to do (just because i don't have any other sd cards laying around) is redo the entire guide, flash cm10 (which is already on the sd card, --and also the only way for me to access the sd card through the computer--), throw the modified paranoid rom on the sd via usb, try e2fsck again, then flash the rom--if it doesn't work i have to repartition the whole thing again... its not THAT bad, once i've committed it to memory, just having to read it step by step is slowing me down faster than anything.... oh and thanks for updating the OP!!! the clarity definitely helps!

---------- Post added at 03:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:15 PM ----------

nexxess pro worked. i forgot to rename p10 DATAFS (DUH)---
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Are you sure you tried both cwm's "choose from sdcard" AND "choose from internal sdcard" ?

It should show up in one of these two if the adb push was successful.

Here's the step by step of what you should do :

- Redo the e2fsck part of the guide, (if your /data's e2fsck isn't clean, then reboot recovery, wipe data, reboot recovery and redo the e2fsck part of the guide)

- Push the modified paranoid with gapps included (by the way I'm releasing pa v2.1 within a few hours, and there are a lot of new awesome features, you'd better wait)

- Flash the rom

- Reboot and enjoy.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
I'm happy to wait. I just needed to update voice search and its working beautifully. Nexxess pro is cool, but I'm getting a play store (942) error for a lot of my apps. Device compatibility issues? Reading up on the nexxess pro thread to figure it out in the mean time. So it DOES look like gapps copied successfully to the ROM. I'll do it again with your v2, as one thing I already don't like about nexxess is the pixel density change.... the fonts were not too small for me.

VERY awesome you love doing this, cus I don't know if I'd have figured any of this out otherwise---linux communities are WAY cooler than iOS or MS devs!!!

---------- Post added at 04:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:08 PM ----------

i thought i added gapps according to your method, i might have messed it up, i tried it last night or this morning. then, as we cleared things up, i tried adding gapps to paranoid android.

okay, now another problem: google voice search isnt working. some apps are installing and some arent from play store, why would that be?

---update--- device incompatibility was the problem. Fixing it now and will see how it goes. --would still need to do this if I switch over to paranoid android, I can just tell, I'm gonna get real TIRED of having to repartition my tablet every time I wanna flash an update... but that part isn't OUR problem...Samsung Samsung....
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
any word on the PA2.1?

also, i'm afraid i messed this up more... adb was getting stuck in a couple of places.... maybe i didn't reboot the tab after a certain operation. what's going on SEEMS pretty simple, but it's like a house of cards, if one card falls, the whole operation messes up. i also try to look for the least amount of work and still maximize effectiveness, so i stopped removing p9 and starting over, cuz it would always wipe from cwm. i'm not sure what i'm doing wrong now, but i was getting IO errors trying to remake p10.... now i'm wondering if there's a way to reformat unallocated space, but afraid that could revive the superbrick. where could i find a good tutorial on how to really understand what parted is doing, what it's capable of, etc? i've looked up parted tutorials, but i keep getting gparted alternatives, people saying, oh use this instead of parted, it has a gui.... but that doesn't help me, cus it seems like adb is the only way to get to internal storage.... unless all theses directories are just hidden on the internal sd....
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Pa v2.1 is released since a few hours.

You're complicating things too much man, you don't need to remake the partitions every time you wanna flash. You can't "revive" the superbrick once you're on a safe kernel.

Just redo the e2fsck part for /system and /data.

If the e2fsck isn't clean on /data then just format /data in cwm and redo e2fsck, it should now be clean (0% non contiguous).

Same thing for /system except you can tolerate about 5% non contiguous.

Once both are clean you can flash the rom.

You need to repartition only fomatting the partition isn't sufficient to get a clear e2fsck afterwards.

Another thing, when mkpartfs gets stuck and return an I/O error, just reboot recovery and try again with a smaller start/end value gap. Do this until you find somewhere/some size that mkpartfs can achieve till the end.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
okay, well, the first time i did this i got DATAFS up to nearly the full drive: 5400-15300, both DATAFS and FACTORYFS (which was at 4500-5372 and is still there) once i started getting errors trying remove and make p10 at 5400-15300, i would remove p10, mkpartfs a smaller value (6400-15300 and so on). so now i'm trying values in 2GB increments.

i started with the e2fsck and was getting 2.3% non-contiguous for DATAFS, hence started trying to repartition again. ugghhh... i'm going start using smaller increments, i need at least 500 MB, right?
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
so if they have to be in order, and p8 is MODEM, doesn't CACHE have to be < MODEM?

i think i know what's going on here, but wow, has this been a problem. i got it working, and now i'm having serious trouble.

--edit--- well, i got p7 fixed. it can go in the same spot, and then it stops giving me the error.

so my question now is: i'm getting movement in the progress bar when i try to flash a rom, but it keeps getting stuck at like 80% or so. trying this one more time with a rom i KNOW has worked.

well, now cwm is lagging BAD... ugghhh... i'm starting to want to give up....
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Yeah this happens to me often, the blue bar going nearly till the end but then getting stuck.

When this happens, just reboot recovery, recheck /data and /system with e2fsck and try flashing again. Generally it'll work after one or two tries.

Don't give up, it's just that it's not an exact science, with the time being you'll be able to predict when your tab will be able to flash and boot, and doing this will become an habit when wanting to flash a rom.

This has been a pain in the beginning but now I can live with it, not that much of a big deal. Still hesitating to buy a Nexus7 though....
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
last night, it took an HOUR just to factory/data reset. corrupt /cache again? is this permanent? or does resetting work? i tried rm7 again and it got stuck. it even got stuck printing the partition table.

the problem is, when i go to wipe/data reset again, it gets stuck.... like i said, i finally just let it run to see what would happen, and it took an hour.

about to start trying again today
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Read the OP carefully. /cache is corrupt only if cwm says "can't read /cache/recovery/last_log" when booting or navigating the cwm menus, this generally happens when "wipe data/factory reset" gets stuck on "wiping cache...". An easy other way to know if /cache is corrupt is to go to mounts & storages and try mounting /cache, if it won't then it's corrupt.

It takes a lot of time, but it's useless to let it run for an hour. If I see that mkpartfs is stuck, after 30secs i will force reboot recovery and try to put the partition elsewhere.

If wiping /data or /system gets stuck, after 1min you know it's stuck, so reboot recovery, do an e2fsck, reboot recovery and try wiping again.

Basically it works like that, 4 possibilities (Don't forget to reboot recovery after each step ("--->") you really need to reboot recovery after each e2fsck, each wipe, each parted,etc...)

1) I try to flash ---> it works, awesome

2) I try to flash ---> it get stuck--->e2fsck both /data and /system--->/data & /system are clean--->back to the beginning

3) I try to flash--->it gets stuck--->e2fsck both /data and /system--->/data & /system are NOT clean (over 5% non contiguous for system and over 0% for data)--->I wipe the dirty partition(s) in cwm--->I run e2fsck on both again--->it's clean--->back to the beginning

4) I try to flash--->it gets stuck--->e2fsck both /data and /system--->/data & /system are NOT clean (over 5% non contiguous for system and over 0% for data)--->I wipe the dirty partition(s) in cwm--->I run e2fsck on both again--->it's still not clean--->I remove and recreate the dirty partition(s) with parted--->I run e2fsck--->back to the beginning
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
that is kinda what i figured out. workin on it....

--edit--- (parted) print is stuck. just giving me a cursor--- and it finally returned: error /dev/block/mmcblk0: unrecognized disk label ?????

--update--- people in the superbrick gNote forums recommend reflashing pit files. so i'm trying it. ughhh... what a pain. apparently, some of these chips are worse than others. we're just not getting as large of a problem because the 7.7 didn't sell 10 million units world wide.... i think i may have to start moving back and forth between the gTab and gNote forums on this issue. grrr...

thanks for all your help though! will keep trying, i really don't want to have to sell this for parts...(screen being most valuable)
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
reflashing the pit file from forest's gNote forum worked for getting recovery going again, but now i'm hung up on the boot animation for cm10. gonna try AGAIN.... blech.... at least there's progress, and it's not DEAD

---------- Post added at 02:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:28 PM ----------

GOT IT WORKING!!!! using CM10, picked up wifi, signed in with my google account and ---it's hanging on the playstore, and the browser isn't working.... will keep messing with it... ;-P

so apparently, sometimes it just hangs on the boot animation... i rebooted the tab a few times, was about to start the whole process over, and it gave me the intro screen

one question though, will i EVER get stable partitions on this again?

does this have anything to do with not being able to get DATAFS off of ext2? no matter how i reformat, won't give me ext3 or 4
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Most likely, your partitions already are stable as you got it working.

I personnally didn't have to repartition for the last 5 or 10 flashs I've done. e2fsck is sufficient most of the time after the first time repartitioning.

Been wondering about that last part too, I need to know if /data is formatted to ext4 on a safe tab.

But I guess it's not, as /system and /cache will format to ext4 properly, even after they've been corrupt.

Also wanted to say that my tab hangs too after a few minutes when downloading pretty much anything. I use my phone to download apps, which I backup and send to my tab, that's my "workaround".

And yeah, sometimes it might take 3 reboots to get the tab booting, but in fact, if you let it boot like 30min at first boot, it should finally boot up.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
okay, i do get impatient, i can't say i've ever let it go more than 20 minutes. my main problem now is finding a stable data partition. also, i think tune2fs MAY format DATAFS to ext3. the first time i did this i got 10GB. from p9=4100 4972 p10=5000 15.3, but i didn't combine gapps with the rom before i flashed. i didn't even have a file manager. i guess i just thought of the fact that i could

adb intall /extStorages/SdCard/.../apps/totalcommander.apk system/app

huh?

i've been looking for 1000GB chunks afterward, just because i was afraid the rom i had at first might have been more than 500MB.

i now have CM10+gapps.zip and i've gotten it running, so i'm going to start looking in 500MB chunks and just worry about space later. i don't have a computer --long story-- so i've made myself TOTALLY dependent upon it. i've been using friend's laptop to fix it so my time has been relatively limited. i've painted myself into a corner, but i have great friends so i've spent about 20 hours or so of the past 10 days to fix it. i've had 4 or 5 successes, but problems, mentioned in previous posts, have gotten me to reflash and have to go through the whole process. you might want to mention that you can reflash the 6800ato-stock.pit for deeper problems.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
also, i'm wondering, should p7 (cache on the p6800) be contiguous also? i had cm10 running and now i'm having problems. when was the last successful install you had with no more than a 500MB data partition? i'm beginning to see more failed installs (after successful e2fsck checks) from cwm than when i was trying 1GB data partitions.

another thing i'm wondering, is it possible that parted's inability to mkpartfs primary ext4--or the inability of tune2fs to format data as ext4 is what's fragmenting the unallocated space? like i said, first time i tried this, i got a 10GB data partition 0.0 non-contiguous and flashed nexxess pro v1.9 successfully. but no gapps. so i wiped/data/factory/dalvik and couldn't get my 10 GB partition clean again, so i removed the partition and started looking for 5GB blocks, then 2, then 1, now i'm down to 500MB blocks, and i found one that i've been able to flash--it freezes-- wipe data/factory/dalvik, e2fsck, get a clean check (i just started unmounting cache and adding it to my e2fsck list) --yes i'm remembering to reboot after EACH operation, successful or unsuccessful.

but this is the third time flashing CM10_plus_gapps.zip, which i've gotten to run once (problems described above), but now i'm getting nothing. stuck on flash for over 15-20 minutes. i'm giving it 30 this time just to see if that helps. then i'll have to wipe data/factory/dalvik again, e2fsck again, and reflash. would you mind upping a rom that you KNOW works on your bricked tab? whats the current size of your data partition?
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Don't let the flash run more than 5min if it's stuck, this is useless.

My data partition is 2.8gb atm, but I used (parted) resize 9 (i'm on p6810).

I'm using my latest paranoid build (2.10), I don't use the gapps as my tab hangs when downloading. So i just adb install the apps I need. Otherwise, whenever you got an update or sync, your tab's gonna hang, pretty annoying.

The easiest way to adb install an app is to put the apk in your platform-tools folder so you just have to do this to install it :

adb install thisapp.apk

And yeah obviously, the biggest the partition, the more likely it is to have corrupt sectors, that's logical. I personnaly never bother trying to mkpartfs more than 500mb, even less most of the time. I just resize it little by little afterwards.

I'm pretty busy with paranoid atm, but I'll try to write a script that'll allow us to swap ext-sd with internal-sd when I got time. Maybe it would fix the dl freezes. We'd still need to do what we do to flash but we wouldn't really care about th size of /data anymore.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
maybe something like this is what you're thinking?

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1772234
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Yeah exactly this kind of script, thanks for the link, will give me a good base to work on.

I'll take a deeper look at that asap.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Thvmh:
I've softbricked my device but I can't flash anything with odin because it fails constantly. Does somebody know how to fix this?
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Follow the step by step guide in the OP carefully. This will allow you to revive your tab.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Thvmh:
I can't acces the recovery for some weird reason!
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Try to flash a PIT file for your particular model (links & instructions in the OP) and then try to flash the latest cwm.

But yeah if you can't access recovery after that, I can't help you.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Thvmh:
Thankyou I will try it!

---------- Post added at 09:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:19 PM ----------

Thankyou!!!! You fixed my problem!!!!

---------- Post added at 09:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:22 PM ----------

How do I Flash CWM?
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
is it possible that e2fsck hanging after returning 0.1% non-contiguous for DATAFS and never giving me a command prompt is part of my problem??? i have to reboot the device and it closes adb shell. but even while i type this, i'm getting the "working" cursor, but it never returns me to the command prompt. i'm just wondering what's giving my problems. i was really trying to stick with the guide, and not trying to resize my partition until i get a few stable runs and actually am able to operate my tablet. i HAVE gotten it running a few times, but a reflash because market wasn't working and i had no file manager... i think i'm beginning to get the hang of things finally, and should be able to sideload gapps without flashing a zip from recovery. i only need the market for autodesk and photoshop touch. i got this thing primarily as a sketchpad--that could also be my phone, and my e-reader, and my music player....etc etc. i should have been more patient with my initial clean install where i had the full 10GB... what bothers me, is how did i get 10 GB the first time, and everytime i reflash, it seems like i wind up with less and less space? is the chip corrupting as i go??? that's where i'm confused. is a failed mkpartfs corrupting the file system every time it starts to write and finds a bad block? also, is mkpartfs and parted actually manipulating the .pit file? i'm going to try one more time if i get a clean e2fsck for /data /cache and /system, flash cm10 no gapps, and go from there. if that doesn't work, what i may do is just reflash with the original ATOICS.pit file and see what happens if i try to format from within CWM.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Thvmh:
My device won't boot for some reason! I flashed everything allride but It just won't start! And I can go into download mode but I cant go in recovery
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
did you have the superbrick? or is it just all of a sudden not booting? you can always reflash the recovery through odin. use CWM 6.0.1 if you're running ICS!

---------- Post added at 03:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:43 PM ----------

alright, after getting a corrupt CACHE again, i flashed the ato_p6800_stock, i have been able to get a clean ef2sck on /data, and format it within cwm6.0.1 (a full 14.3GB or something). it hangs (after reboot) on an ef2sck for /system. but i just rebooted, formatted /system, it took a little long-ish, but it went through. now it's hanging on wipe cache in cwm.

i'm trying to isolate this oddness.... so i may try remaking the cache and system partitions exactly where they are, e2fsck all three just to make sure everythings clean, and see if i can just restore it, is that a stupid thing to even think? that it might have something to do with being unable to restore DATAFS back to ext4?
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Thvmh:
Me battery was fully empty that the reason why I could only launch Download Mode. Now I'm the happy user of a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 (P6800) with ICS
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
i have now wiped /data and /system twice with the original .pit file. here's a collection of all the tools, roms pit files etc. including mini-adb which will run from a jump drive, or just directly from a folder.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5eM4rH3azruSUs2d2hqeTRzYlU

so can i move CACHE without moving MODEM? and just naming p7 CACHE even thought it's positionally after p8 MODEM? in other words, can i remove and remake CACHE DATA and SYSTEM where CACHE is AFTER modem, but still p7? (CACHE=p7, MODEM=p8, FACTORYFS=p9, and DATAFS is p10) i see you guys with the p6810 don't have this problem, but i'm guessing MODEM is alot like EFS and should NOT be messed with.

---update---

and now it seems i can't unmount /cache in CWM to remove it with parted. its hung, not giving me the option screen after completing a change (unmount /cache), and i'm just going to leave it. it's taken 30 minutes before, but is it actually possible that two problems are arising simultaneously? ONE or TWO bad blocks, that corrupt the file systems their in? or is there a difference between a corrupt file system, (sound like metadata, for example a partition table) and a bad sector on the disk? which is an example of superbrick? is it literally a burnt out spot on the internal memory chip? i'm just trying to make sense of the actual mechanics of whats going on, how was is that i was getting such horrible errors looking for a data partition to give me a 100% complete and a clean e2fsck, and it only happen 20% of the time, but then i flash the stock ics pit file, and i can now format /system and /data. and get 0.1% non-contiguous for /system and 0.0% non-contiguous for /data with their original partition sizes and locations??? i've gotten those results TWICE and moved on to /cache, and that's where i'm hung up now.... i can't unmount cache to remove it with parted. will look to see if i can do it from adb instead
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Do NOT under any circumstances change the order of your partitions.

You can move them wherever you want as long as you keep them in the same order.

Yeah if wiping the cache hanged, then you need to remake the cache partition. And yeah of course data, system and cache can corrupt simultaneously.

Try to umount your cache with adb :

adb shell
umount /dev/block/mmcblk0p7

I don't know exactly what happens hardware-wise sorry.

Anyway, darz released exactly the script I meant to do, here's his thread : http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1874485

Didn't have the time to try it already, please post your results if you give it a shot.
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] aletheus:
it is only temporary on boot. i asked if there'd be a way to do this permanently, as the superbrick bug is frying people's internal storage.... back to it today, so, i should just have to remake CACHE in its spot? if i have to move MODEM, how to i extract it's contents and back them up first? second, if i'm getting a clean e2fsck on both original /system and /data partitions, shouldn't i just go ahead and try to flash as normal?
[Galaxy Tab 7.7 General] Androguide.fr:
Yeah just put cache back in its original place, it should work, if it doesn't try several times.

And yeah if e2fsck is clean on both /system & /data and that you can mount&unmount /cache properly, then just go ahead and flash.

And of course it is set on boot (about the script) but it might fix the tab freezing when downloading anything, and even if it doesn't, it allows you to just use 250mb /data partition when u have to repartition it, and still have 64gb of internal storage^^ I personnally find this awesome.