yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] MHotovec:
With two (or more) rom slots set up you can have one 'safe' ROM that you never mess with, and you know it's always there fully working and ready to go. Then in a different slot you can try out different ROMs or options. If you screw something up or just don't like the results, you simply boot back in to your 'safe' ROM and off you go. It's basically the same as having a favorite nand backup to go back to, but much easier and faster. And as was mentioned before, it's much harder to softboot the device when SS is the first thing that comes up upon boot, giving you the option to get back to your 'safe' ROM.

I used SS on my old Razr Maxx, it was wondrous in the amount of freedom it gives you to just try stuff and look at other ROMs, knowing that you can always QUICKLY get back to a fully working state on the device.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Galaxys4bean:
Is this what was on the droid x2?

Flashing bootstrap recovery but no custom kernel?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] killajoe:
If you read only a few posts above you could easily see your questions have already been answered multiple times. In short no custom kernel only stock with ss
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] slim6596:
That wasn't his question at all.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] :
Deleted

---------- Post added at 08:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:47 AM ----------

Its similar, yes.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] djdmbrwsk:
Ditto.

The D3 is the reason I decided to ditch Moto. I saw the amazing dev following Samsung had with the S3. It sucks to see Samsung devices being crippled now too, but I'm so happy to see Hash helping yet again!
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] ecen92:
Your SS is quite the product, I am looking forward to it on the S4. People like you DHacker, SamuriHL, Obsidian, and of course djrbliss helped me out many times making my old bionic usable. Keep up the great work everyone :good:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] jpi.islas:
Would cm work with ss?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] bfmetcalf:
If they can get kexec working so you can have the kernel cm needs.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] bobosir:
thank you very much for your effort:good:. We are waiting for your good news!:cowboy:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] jova33:
My question, for those of us on the MDK bootloader, would we still be able to utilize SS for multi-booting?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Cruiserdude:
Just to clarify since it's been asked a few times, this will only work with roms that can use the stock kernel, at least at first. SS itself hijacks the boot process after the kernel has booted, allowing a custom rom to load instead of the stock one. So any roms that use or can be made to run on the stock ME7 kernel will be options here. As most roms include a kernel, typically with at least init.d support or something that makes them "not stock", you'll either need to remove the boot.img (well, boot.lok) from the rom, ask your dev to do it for you, or use a script in recovery to remove it or at least block that part from flashing. It's possible Hash could build such a script into SS that would remove or block the kernel for you, so it would only flash the rom. That way the devs don't have to start maintaining 2 builds for each rom.

Google Edition roms should work, at least the 4.2.2 ones should. They use their own kernel, but it's very similar to ours, and basically a TW base. Us MDK folks can boot it on most any TW kernel. So as long as the ram disk isn't a problem, it should run just fine. That may be the closest to AOSP you'll get, but even though it's not really AOSP, I can tell you from experience it runs great and is more stable than any of the CM-based roms I've tried. So no worries if that ends up being y'all's only option. As for 4.3 GPe, we'll have to wait and see. It's alot closer to true AOSP, and doesn't use a TW kernel, so that may be out of reach unless kexec works. 4.3 GPe doesn't yet work on CDMA networks anyway, so don't feel too bad.

If Hash gets kexec working, all the above goes out the window. Kexec still allows the stock kernel to boot, then hijacks the system to load a custom kernel into ram alongside the stock one, then soft reboots into the custom kernel. You'd be able to flash and boot anything us MDK folks can, albeit with a bit more overhead on boot and longer wait to do so, and your system and userdata partitions would be reduced to have multiple slots. But that's a small price to pay considering what you'd gain, and I suspect even some MDK folks may try the app just for multiple slots. Just don't update to ME7 to do so! This will likely prove more challenging than on the early days of the S3, or the Motos that had it, due to some differences in security that I won't bother to explain here.

But have faith that if there's a way to do it, Hash will find it! It'd be awesome to have an alternative method for you ME7 folks to join us on the dark side. And until a proper hardware exploit or true unlock is found, this will keep our community active and growing. Best of luck Hash, and thank you!

:thumbup:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] yankeesfan714:
Sorry if I missed it. But I hope this process will work on s4active too.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] sparky697:
Even though I have the s4 dev I do miss the ease of SS on my old Bionic. Being able to change ROMs in seconds with a reboot was awesome. You guys are in good hands. It will be interesting to see if any devs pick up where Hash leaves off and work on Kexec.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] jlopez1286:
Im really excited for this, Im from the At&t side, I hope this would work for us also..
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] jeboo:
This looks promising and may very well be the avenue for future locked bootloaders.

IMO, the conditions of the bounties need to be modified, and perhaps combined. The 2nd bounty is so unlikely at this point, only an insider leak would fulfill it. And $5k wouldn't cover the 1st legal consult from the massive litigation VZW would bring against him/her.

How about one for custom ROM/recovery and then one for custom ROM/recovery/kernels (irrespective of how it's done)?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] bobby janow:
That sounds like a good idea if you want to continue on with a bounty. At this point the original bounty thread can probably be deleted since a large percentage of those that pledged are probably onto another device. For those of us still with the S4 we'll probably stay at this point unless they unlock the One or the X soon. I actually think that if someone is successful at getting ME7 users able to flash another rom then the donations would flow even without a bounty. I'm on Loki now but I'd even throw into that donate pool just for support. These bounty threads are become a problem to wit, the one over in HTC One by Gray Wolf.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Hashcode:
Building / flashing ROMs in SS is seemless to the users and only requires some minimal changes for devs. Currently SS filters most attempts to flash the boot.img directly as that would break signatures on most locked devices.

Thinking about this, I may need to do some additional clean up on how 2nd-init ROMs are handled (it's been a while since the Moto OMAPs used it). Currently, devs place the new ramdisk contents inside the ROM at /system/etc/rootfs. That would be much cleaner if it was the ramdisk portion of a boot.img flashed in SS to a virtual "boot" partition. That ramdisk could be "cleaned up" before overlay into the rootfs during the bootup.

We'll see if I can get that in for the first version on the S4. Probably not right away.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] sppatel:
Does that imply that technically you could flash an AOSP based ROM (skipping boot.img)? Whether it launches, runs smoothly, or breaks anything running on the stock kernel is a different question, but is it out of the realm of possibility that we get lucky and everything works?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] sparky697:
From my Bionic experience we were able to flash aosp Roms before kexec but they were really sketchy. Once those guys got kexec going and a new kernel everything fell into place quickly.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Jayrod76:
SS made having the Bionic and RAZR a lot better.

Sent from my Platyraptor extreme ultra maxxxx 4gLTE/GSM/ABC/123 Nick Knack Pattywack Ermegherd GED, MD,RNA,DNA,YMCA Edition S4! Via the 4th dimension....NOW RUNNING ECLIPSE
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] sub1287:
Yeah, it really made my bionic with safestrap running IcarusHD worth having.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] cannon_fodder:
Ditto with my girlfriend's Droid 3. I must have tried at least 8 different ROMs on it.

Thank you for taking your time and helping. I'm so ready to break into this phone and play musical ROM Slots.:fingers-crossed:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Anthony825:
Is there an ETA on SS? Just curious really....
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Galaxys4bean:
Never ask for ETA no no
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Anthony825:
Oh, ok I'm sorry. Didn't mean to upset anyone, honest.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] sokrboot:
Just keep an eye out for posts from [MENTION=4243514]Hashcode[/MENTION] or [MENTION=430073]Obsidian[/MENTION]. When when SS is announced it will likely be from one of them. :)

««I used to be a Serial Flasher...now I'm just a Cereal Flasher.»»
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Anthony825:
Will do thanks guys.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Eric214:
Agreed!!!!!! My Bionic was AMAZING with SS 3.05 and then 3.11 running IcarusHD 1.5 normal and Stripped and once they got Kexec running CM10.1 with working camera and all was bonus!.

I didn't take the update so i'm good on MDK but it's nice to see SS coming over and Hashcode helping out. SS is the reason i will only use TWRP on my GS4.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Obsidian...:
With the Bionic (and all other Moto devices) Hashcode0f and DHacker made all the base aosp roms for us (CM, AOKP, CNA etc...). The other "devs" took those bases and built from them. So without Hash doing his vodoo to get the hardware to work with our stock kernels and DH to build the roms. Things would have been much different.

I just don't want everyone to get too far ahead of themselves.

Let's just be glad Hash is working on taming this beast.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] coolsilver:
Too bad that a custom bootloader can't be coded, placed on on microsd card that is ExFat from a microusb reader with a few files and reflash the stock bootloader. I mean Samsung has to have a way to refurbish junked devices or load the initial boot loader.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] JediMindTrixx:
Ahhh... The days of the Bionic and Razr... Love it!!! :)
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] klick37:
All this locked bootloader crap is making me miss my bionic. Hashcode and SS were the tits and kexec only made it that much better.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Obsidian...:
Hey peeps I have a quick question for you. Does Samsung have anything that's like rsd lite for Moto? A way to flash factory images if Hash bricks a locked device? I'm working with him to figure out if we need to get him a dev edit, an unlocked or if an me7 will work.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] JediMindTrixx:
Absolutely... At least with the S4 it's in better shape than the HTC One.

Verizon blows!
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] joshuadjohnson22:
Odin flashes is the only thing I can think of. We flash it to fix softbrick. Not every s4 have the available. US s4 active users still have a odin flash ability
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] dysfunkshun:
I believe what youre looking for would be odin
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Obsidian...:
Thanks guys I'm aware of Odin I just didn't know how extensively you can use it. I know there is a me7 tar as well but is there any situations that Odin can't save you from?

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Cruiserdude:
Yeah, there's a few. Odin replaces fastboot on these phones, and is supposedly an improvement since you can flash individual components as well as a full image. But with ME7 devices it's basically like the locked Motos with fastboot/RSDLite. As in you can flash a factory image, but it must be signed. Just like Moto as well, they have blacklisted the signature for MDK so you can't downgrade. How they did this exactly I'm not sure, neither is anyone else, apparently.

I have a consumer model with MDK, so I'm not the best source. But I would imagine a plain ME7 would do fine. You'll have to talk to someone with a Dev edition, but my understanding is there are no factory recovery images available for the dev edition yet. People who have upgraded their dev editions to ME7 are complaining about the same things as others on ME7. I can't imagine you can't downgrade, but that's what people have been saying. It's like it's unlockable out of the box, but take an update and its locked up. So basically no different from MDK. Hopefully there's an experienced user with one that can shed more light, but I dunno if any devs got one, ironically enough.

But there are full factory images available for ME7 that will fix everything down to aboot. You can always break a phone where Odin can't fix it if you flash something for an Exynos model, as they have different partitions. Simple partitioning errors can often be fixed by flashing the proper PIT file in Odin, but Exynos roms can switch entire partitions and corrupt things. Still, there's always JTAG, which to my knowledge will fix anything short of actually burning something up on the chip.

Unfortunately that's all I can tell you. Haven't explored the dev edition or specific ME7 quirks myself, as I'm safely on MDK, where I hope to remain.

:thumbup:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Obsidian...:
All right cool so as long as non system partitions don't get messed with odin can fix it. He only messes with System, userdata and cache so we're all good.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Jayrod76:
Still have both my Bionic and RAZR. Have Flying Jelly on slot 3 and CM10.2 on slot one.Mainly have them for theme testing and the occasional help with ROM testing for those who are still stuck in OMAP land. Gotta love the out of the box thinking to circumvent those bootloaders.

Sent from my Platyraptor extreme ultra maxxxx 4gLTE/GSM/ABC/123 Nick Knack Pattywack Ermegherd GED, MD,RNA,DNA,YMCA Edition S4! Via the 4th dimension....NOW RUNNING ECLIPSE
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] nicholi2789:
Hehe, awesome. :)
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] asharad:
Thanks for the reminder to turn off the default tapatalk sig.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] uvbeenzaned:
That's a good point you have there. I wish someone from Samsung would leak something about loading these things.

GS4A ST AT&T
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] SamuriHL:
Samsung does, in fact, have a way to refurb phones. It's called the signing keys. :)
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Alxoom33:
OK, simple just have to figure them out. Good luck on that, lol... ;)

Glad Obsidian got HC on our side! SS is the best chance we have short of a Sammie leak:cool:

HC has a proven track record, we should all get behind him and fully support his efforts.

Is it too early for the House of Sam(ie) to open its doors?

Sent from my Xoom on 4.3 thanks to Dreamcwli, kept alive by BRD.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] SamuriHL:
I've been doing some work on the GPE but nothing I work on will work on the VZW version.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Jayrod76:
I have different goofy signatures for each of my devices. :D

Sent from African coconut carrying swallows via an XT907 otherwise known as the Motorola midget phone
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] sound-mind:
Hard bricked developer edition on ME7

As others stated, Odin can help, but *only* for soft bricks.

I am the proud owner of a hard bricked ME7 developer edition. As mentioned I've been looking at the bootloader and kexec bits. At first this was an MDK phone. At some point I hosed it fairly well and decided to flash it with Odin. Without thinking I flashed the ME7 I had around for my non-dev, personal phone that was already on ME7 when I bought it. Well, that turned my dev edition into a non-developer edition, locked bootloader, signature verification, TIMA enforcing, "normal" phone. I had no option but to continue developing on it like usual. At some point my gentle molesting of the phone's kernel and bootloaders got a little aggressive and I hard bricked it.

It shows up as the dreaded "qhsusb_dload" USB device. I have two USB UART rigs and I get some activity on the serial port but nothing useful. I wanted to learn to JTAG it myself but need the device back up and running fast so I'm going to send it out.

If someone knows of an ME7 build for the developer editions that won't, um, un-developer edition a phone, please let us know.

BTW I sent you a PM - the MDK is on the way since developer editions don't help here. Just going to have to be careful I guess.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Anthony825:
I seriously looking forward to this SS program. I've been dying to get into ROMs! This is my first phone outside of flip phones and iPhones lol.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Captain Crypto:
That really sucks and I'm sorry to hear that. I'm hoping I don't do the same to my dev phone, but that fear is causing me to not be as free with ROM'ing it. I am no coder/programmer so I have no idea if this is even possible, but I would love to see some sort of code built into ROMs that checks for dev edition unlocked bootloaders and give a warning when the dumba** owner (me) is about to do something stupid to lock the bootloader.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Serk102:
Hmm, does someone think they can catch me up on what's been going on recently as far as a bootloader unlock goes? From the bit of skimming I've done it seems that we still don't have one, but might have a workaround for flashing ROM's and such, is this correct?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] graydiggy:
You could just read the last few pages...
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Serk102:
I did, but my knowledge of the topic is limited, so I wanted to make sure I was understanding what happened. Really all I was asking for is confirmation.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] jmgib:
Nothing has been gained at this point.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] :
Then you know as much as we do, we can only see what you see in the thread.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Ryno77:
It's possible something may be coming that would allow you to flash roms using the stock kernel. Hashcode has thankfully decided to attempt safestrap for the s4. If you would like more info on safestrap I'm sure Google will help you out.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Obsidian...:
You're awesome...

Just so everyone knows what's going on. Sound-mind just bought Hashcode a mdk S4 to use for testing/building SS for all of you. At the point where Hash has a good build up and running we'll return the phone to sound-mind or purchase it from him for Hash.

Hashcode did not want me to start collecting donations to buy him a phone until he at least had a beta build working.

So you all need to thank sound-mind for putting up the $ for a phone for Hash.

Once Hashcode gets this going I'll start collecting the donations to get him a S4 for SS updates and debugging.

Thanks again sound-mind
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] sokrboot:
Now that's what I call stepping up. Thanks [MENTION=335907]sound-mind[/MENTION]!

««I used to be a Serial Flasher...now I'm just a Cereal Flasher.»»
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] meowenf:
Thanks sound mind!
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] hollovoid:
Thanks sound mind, that's incredible.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] joshuadjohnson22:
Can the s4 active community buy him an Active also? Would he be OK with that?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Z.Z.Z.:
Question

So would the Eclipse TW rom work with SS???
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] my-blue-snog-box:
[MENTION=335907]sound-mind[/MENTION], you're the man! I have half a mind to promise my first-born son to you, Obsidian, and Hash /sarcasm
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] graydiggy:
Wow... Way to try to get your post count up.

1st, either contribute good info or don't post.

2nd, there is no way of knowing if it will until it is tested. Plus you question is too vague.

I suggest you read a bit and learn before posting. This is not a topic for asking about what will work. This is a discussion for people to contribute to the thread.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] dooperman:
[MENTION=335907]sound-mind[/MENTION] you are a hero to this vzw s4 community.

---------- Post added at 09:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:39 PM ----------

I don't think so because it uses its own kernel. Maybe with some Broken things, though I doubt it.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] mmw68666:
Thanks sound-mind
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Obsidian...:
Let's get the vzw S4 working first. I'll talk to him about it though OK?

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] joshuadjohnson22:
Thanks!
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Alxoom33:
Man, you are crankshaft!

As thumper's dad said, if you don't have something nice to say, shut the bleep up! :p

HE WAS ASKING A LEGETIMATE QUESTION THAT DESERVES A THOUGHTFUL ANSWER!

Z.z.z, the answer is that SS uses the safe system's kernel, and the Eclipse TW rom has its own kernel. So unless the developer builds a SS version with the kernel disabled or someone adds a script that disables the Tom's kernel it will not work in SS.

However, this is nothing unusual and has been done for many custom Roms for the Motor Bionic and Razor that use SS very successfully.:cool:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] killajoe:
[MENTION=335907]sound-mind[/MENTION] thank you thank you thank you thank you then you thank you thank you!!!!!!!
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] SamuriHL:
[MENTION=335907]sound-mind[/MENTION] that's definitely the way to be a team player, man. I don't own a VZW S4 but you deserve major props and a hearty thank you for doing that for the benefit of the community. Well done, sir.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] phobia09:
From a member of the AT&T GS4 community, I'd like to thank you for doing this. Your contribution will hopefully lead to SS for my device also.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Hashcode:
Quick Question:

Is the initial boot screen light or dark (right before the boot animation)?

For example which of these would be a better fit for the Safestrap bootmenu:

EDIT: FYI [MENTION=335907]sound-mind[/MENTION] is nuts for putting up a device before he's seen anything :) I'll be sure to get it back to him in good shape.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] hexitnow:
I think the dark looks better.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] graydiggy:
dark. Definitely.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] dynospectrum:
dark

Sent from my SGH-M919
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] gadget!:
Definitely dark

Sent from a Galaxy S4... Far far away
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Jayrod76:
Very true. Not everyone knows what SS is. They only have seen what has been posted here. The answer that was given to that member is a big reason many people don't like asking questions. You don't have to be rude with your answers...even if the question or a similar one was asked,even if it's annoying.

Sent from my Platyraptor extreme ultra maxxxx 4gLTE/GSM/ABC/123 Nick Knack Pattywack Ermegherd GED, MD,RNA,DNA,YMCA Edition S4! Via the 4th dimension....NOW RUNNING ECLIPSE

---------- Post added at 12:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:43 AM ----------

Dark

Sent from my Platyraptor extreme ultra maxxxx 4gLTE/GSM/ABC/123 Nick Knack Pattywack Ermegherd GED, MD,RNA,DNA,YMCA Edition S4! Via the 4th dimension....NOW RUNNING ECLIPSE
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] my-blue-snog-box:
I personally like the light one >_<
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] dooperman:
They are both pretty good.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] killajoe:
Dark looks sweet!
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] texaswickedtoys:
Both look really sweet
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] JaeKay:
I'd say dark since it's an AMOLED
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] michaelg117:
Dark.

But, why not both? Why not have the option to choose either?

Sent from Navi