[Miscellaneous Android Development] caine0001:
Summing up successfully installing CWM recoovery onto Exress step by step

I noticed that throughout this thread that there are those who are having a hard time getting CWM Recovery installed permanently on their Express. All the steps are found in the thread, but I am going to give my experience step by step so that anyone interested who is having a hard time putting it all together will hopefully find this post helpful to get CWM installed permanently. I am going to use the simplest steps (there are other options for some of the steps, but I will detail the simplest way) in demonstrating this.

First I will let you know that on other threads I found suggestions and tried and tried but couldn't get it installed at all, so I went ahead and rooted my phone first. My phone had the Jelly Bean 4.1.2 update when I started. I used the motochopper.zip file found in this thread:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=40327472

to do the rooting and it worked perfectly. A lot of people have asked on other forums if this method worked on the Express with the Jelly Bean update, and it does. Just make sure your Samsung drivers are installed, you have the USB Debugging option set in Developer Options, then plug the phone into the computer and run the file "run.bat". The link for the rooting file is:

http://vulnfactory.org/public/motochopper.zip

Once rooted here are the steps I took to solve the CWM installation:

1) Although I am experienced at Linux and have Terminal Emulator installed, I opted to download and install Root Explorer which makes working with the file system on the phone so much easier.

2) I located the file "install-recovery.sh" in the /system/etc folder and since it is read-only, I used Root Explorer to mount that directory in R/W (Read-Write) mode and changed the file's name to "install-recovery.sh.old". I didn't want to delete it since I may one day need warranty service and this way I can rename it back and the stock recovery will reinstall and I can do an original factory reset which, when I tried it, unrooted the phone and put it back to factory new condition. If you aren't worried about this you can just delete the file.

3) I also located the file "recovery-from-boot.p" in the /System folder and once again mounted it in R/W mode and renamed it to "recovery-from-boot.p.old" for the same reason.

4) As everyone knows by now, these files in their original state will cause the phone to reinstall the original stock recovery once you reboot, so to get CWM to be permanent you must rename or delete them.

5) I now went to the OP for this thread and used the version 1.0.3.3 of CWM for the Express along with Odin 3.04 to install CWM according to the instructions exactly as they appear in the OP for this thread. There is one minor change that is needed in step 5 which states "Press and hold volume down and power to enter download mode". To get to download mode, at least on my Express, you have to hold the volume down, the home key, and the power key. Once the screen comes up release the buttons and then hit the volume up in order to get to the actual download screen. The only change in the step 5 instructions is that you have to add holding the Home key.

If you follow these instructions to a tee along with the ones in the OP, you will have CWM 1.0.3.3 installed permanently on your phone and finally get to use all its valuable functions. But I will save you some time also, just in case you have it in your mind to try to use any other version of CWM other than the one in the original post, it will not work. I tried three different ones other than this one because I thought they might be newer with more features, but after their install it will not boot to recovery mode. All you get is a black screen. So use the files we were so graciously granted access to in the OP and no others.

On another minor note, some people have been asking how big the recovery image that you make with CWM's backup is, and I can tell you that with almost a total of 290 apps reported as installed on my phone (some of course you can't see and don't control), the backup is exactly 1.89 gigabytes in size.

I hope that this helps clear things up for those who were getting confused as to what to do, or who were simply scared to give it a try. I just happened to notice that everything that a person needed to do was in the thread(s), but it was scattered here and there as questions were asked and answered, so I figured I would put everything in one place to make it easier for people like myself who have been waiting patiently for solutions for the Samsung Express and might be confused trying to extract from a number of different posts, the needed steps.