[Galaxy S 4 Developer Discussion [Developers-Only]] Absolon:
Abstract

When dumping memory with adb, a device got hard-bricked by just reading it's content. Followup questions on the incident.

Best practice of dumping devices and Knox related issues concerning that process.

Inquiry of the availability of technical documentation. Advice on purchace of correct JTAG.

Some (probably already known) information regarding the disproportional illegal actions caused by Samsung. A hello to Steve!

Hello,

My friend had a problem when Samsung pushed an update she didn't ask for, she got panic, pulled the battery, which of course resulted in a

bad flash.

I tried to save her data, first by installing a different rescue partitions, but it failed so I guessed that the partition info was gone as well.

Since she had important material on her phone, I saw no other alternative then to try to dump the whole phone and try it from there.

The phone still answered on adb so I started to dump the phone.I usually always do a 2>&1 and when I got back the prompt quite quickly and the

file was small so I thought that I probably missed something in the command and rechecked it but it was good and should have produced a full dump.

It didn't spit out any error. Like when you dump a broken drive that shows I/O and you use the noerror flag.

Here I made an error since I should by now know how sinister SS is to it's consumers and I also blame the insane high quantities of morphine I'm

forced to take each day, together with excellent company that took my attention away from a normal dumping of a phone, done before Knox and

on my former devices that always been HTC. (Since the "real" work would be trying to restore the fs, spitting, hexedit etc).

So I restarted it without giving a though of the "rubbish" and it got overwritten. This time by with the size of zero.

Further checking showed no contact with the phone. And the phone had turned itself off and was not in the "Flashing error" (guess bootloader).

The phone was dead. Didn't react to the power button. The usual "battery reset". It was dead. Hard-bricked,

So I missed the size of where it stopped and I should chastise myself by learning all the options of tar and find or something.

So by a READ of a phone I managed to brick it. This has never happened to me. Ever. From dumping memory, FPGA, EPROMS etc.

Is this something that is known? Has anyone experienced this or heard about this? It was a READ. So I don't know if this is a flux or some

Knox related. In their confused post, where they talk about "e-fuse data" (Interesting that a flag needs a data-area).

Dumping a device

What is the practice of dumping a device? I know many does it using the block-devices but the raw-dumping of the phone?

I guess most use a JTAG? Can anyone, please, give me some advice on what JTAG to buy? There are gazillions of them.

Does the board even have pins or do I have to weld? Will the use of a JTAG trip Knox?

I want to take the next step towards the unenviable demise of Knox in one way or another, and here I want to raw-dump 2 phones, but if this

is common and a possible second E-fuse it feels a bit risky, and I don't want the block-devices, I want a full dump since I want (of course) to

re-partition my I9506 that has a too small /system (true). And I need to compare them not by the partitioning, but the full EEPROMS.

Samsung's "VIP-treatment" of it's consumers

We know that the "flag" is so much more. Besides the active intentional (and illegal) destruction of hardware (There are much more but most

notably is the WIFI that either stops to work totally or as for me reminds me of a US Robotics 56K modem) they also run malicious code with the

sole intent of sabotaging the OS to a unusable state and to make it work you need to reflash/reroot it to get to some kind if "normality".

SS is on deep water here.

Samsung's great transparency and cooperation

I've tried to get an address-range to avoid this "e-fuse data" but I get the prefab-answer that we all get on inquiries, from "Steve" @ "Fort Knox".

"I am sorry but we cannot divulge that information". That is on anything. Even the question that I think that needs to be answered, asked

repeatedly, from more then me, "What damage is done to my phone?". That will be asked by many next year when we claim hardware failure.

I got as far as "heavy damage" before "the crazy Swede" got to >/dev/null but I'll give Steve the holidays to gather strength because he will need it

next year that will bring SS interesting times indeed,

Documentation

I also looking for technical info. I tried at Samsung (HA!), but even Qualcomm doesn't have it available at their dev-site?

I find this so strange, since all that I done so far always had 250 pages of documentation from the timing of the stepping with the oscillator to the

intricate details about the thermal expansion so you can cad the marginals right.

Here I find none. Does anyone have something? Anything? Please?

I can't even find the info about the bootstrapping process, the bootloader, if the kernel is baked into it, since all companies have different

methods. I find the lack of information from the biggest mobile company, at the moment, very frustrating,

HI Steve!

Since "Steve" reads this about the same time as you, and if you don't want him to read a reply with a pointer, help that I really need right now,

I would be very grateful and happy for a PM as well. I have some ideas how to make it harder for Steve to read but that is better left our here ;)

Thank you for any input I can get in those matters :)

/Abs

Mods, please don't move this post to "General" or "Q&A". This is a highly technical post and reading the rules of this board it belongs here,

where the wizards sits, read and can, if they wish, enlighten and help me moving forward in my project.

If not here then please PM me and point me to an another technical section where it "fits" better, please :)