[Samsung Galaxy SL i9003] chongns:
Experiment again to restore imei.

[COLOR="Red"]DO NOT PLAY WITH IT IF YOU DO NOT KNOW OR YOU HAVE NO ABILITY TO RESTORE IT BACK[/COLOR]

IF YOU NOTHING TO LOSE AFTER YOU SCREW IT UP, BE MY GUEST

:fingers-crossed:

now, i screw up my imei partition, below is how I do it.

Two partition i screwing.

1. bml3

2. stl3

i actually did not know what is indside the bml3 partItion (or can we call it partition).

so i try to peek into it.

i dd it out, and use Hex editor to read it, i found that it content the nv_data.bin and others file same in the stl3 which is our efs folder.

so, before that i dd backup it and also the stl3 by below command

it was about 10mb of size

it was about 6mb of size

than, i delete every thing inside the efs folder by

the 1st rm -r is to remover all visible file and folders

the 2nd rm -r is to remover all the hiddern file and folders

after that i reboot.

after the reboot, the phone did not ask for the sim card pin code. it direct go to the home screen,

it give generic imei

than i dd back my bml3.bin file

dd if=/sdcard/bml3.bin of=/dev/block/bml3

it went through, than i reboot again.

after reboot, i found i have no signal, no base band, no imei, but have wifi mac address.

in th efs folder i only have a folder smc-storage

than, in adb shell i key the commnd

df

it show a list of mounted partition.

king@Ubuntu:~$ adb shell
# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 249140 32 249108 0% /dev
tmpfs 249140 0 249140 0% /mnt/asec
tmpfs 249140 0 249140 0% /mnt/obb
/dev/block/stl9 329920 309916 20004 94% /system
[COLOR="Red"]/dev/block/stl3 6064 6064 0 100% /efs[/COLOR]
/dev/block/mmcblk0p3 1963888 157648 1806240 8% /data
/dev/block/stl10 74008 3552 70456 5% /dbdata
df: /mnt/.lfs: Function not implemented
/dev/block/stl11 30792 12 30780 0% /cache
/dev/block/vold/179:1 1595136 436064 1159072 27% /mnt/sdcard
/dev/block/vold/179:17 15553280 2057696 13495584 13% /mnt/sdcard/external_sd
/dev/block/vold/179:17 15553280 2057696 13495584 13% /mnt/secure/asec
/dev/block/dm-0 5200 3212 1988 62% /mnt/asec/com.quoord.tapatalkxda.activity-1

i found the red line is gone.

so, i trying do dd it back form my backup in adb shell

dd if=/sdcard/stl3.rfs of=/dev/block/stl3

but it give error

so i check again the parttions list by

cat /proc/partitions

it give you list below

# cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name

7 0 5229 loop0
139 0 513024 tfsr0/c
139 1 256 tfsr1
139 2 256 tfsr2
139 3 10240 tfsr3
139 4 1280 tfsr4
139 5 1280 tfsr5
139 6 7680 tfsr6
139 7 8192 tfsr7
139 8 8192 tfsr8
139 9 341504 tfsr9
139 10 79872 tfsr10
139 11 35840 tfsr11
139 12 512 tfsr12
139 13 17920 tfsr13
179 0 3866624 mmcblk0
179 1 1595360 mmcblk0p1
179 2 305088 mmcblk0p2
179 3 1966016 mmcblk0p3
137 0 513024 bml0/c
137 1 256 bml1
137 2 256 bml2
137 3 10240 bml3
137 4 1280 bml4
137 5 1280 bml5
137 6 7680 bml6
137 7 8192 bml7
137 8 8192 bml8
137 9 341504 bml9
137 10 79872 bml10
137 11 35840 bml11
137 12 512 bml12
137 13 17920 bml13
[COLOR="Red"] 138 3 6400 stl3[/COLOR]
138 6 3840 stl6
138 9 331776 stl9
138 10 75264 stl10
138 11 32000 stl11
179 16 15558144 mmcblk1
179 17 15557120 mmcblk1p1
254 0 5229 dm-0
#

again the red line of stl3 is gone too.

so, i can conclude is

1. bml3 screw up

2. stl3 will screw up too

so if you lost imei or efs parttion, and you have tried to dd the backup and flash with odin also no success. than you have to flash the bml3 backup.

i restore my imei like below.

1. dd the bml3.bin back into it by

dd if=/sdcard/bml3.bin of=/dev/block/bml3

2. flash my stl3.rfs using heimdall-frontend, (suppose odin also work, but never tried)

* put in the pit file without repartition check (incase something is screwed, the phone forgotten the partition location);)

* add in the EFS flash and choose the stl3.rfs (odin should put in the PDA)

OK, i restore it successfully

from my experiment, i hope can give some light to member who trying hard to restoring back their i lost mei. :fingers-crossed: