[Motorola Droid RAZR] Ohmster:
My my, you do seem to have an issue there, Bri, don't you? :p

The /pds folder and it's contents are hardware settings for the device. They are the same for same model phones, SFAIK. Inside /pds you have

camera

factory

lost+found

public

security

whisper

wifi

wmdm

Each folder has settings setup files for the hardware on the device. The file wifical.sh is a shell script found in /system/bin/. You will also find wificalcheck.sh, another wificalcheck.sh file to help calibrating the system's wifi. Both of these files are shell scripts, plain text files that are given executable permission so that they can "run" as well as be read. I have attached both in a zip file to this post for you to read.

These shell script files (They all have the .sh extension) are similar to Windows and DOS batch files. Remember those, wipdsk.bat? Read them and you will see what they do and what files they call upon to do their job. Even Matt's Utility is a shell script when used in Linux, LinuxMacUtility.sh. You get a Windows batch file in the event you use Matt's in Windows, WindowsUtility.bat.

Sometimes the /pds folder and it's contents can be lost when installing roms and altering the phone. This is why Stargo told me to immediately backup my /pds folder and it's contents when I got the replacement phone. My old phone still worked without /pds but I could never calibrate the wifi anymore, along with some other things I could not longer do.

If you read wifical.sh you see one of the files it calls up for the MAC address is PDS_NVS_FILE=/pds/wifi/nvs_map.bin.

Not having the /pds folder on an XT912 will not stop the phone from working, but it will stop you from calibrating it, getting good battery stats, and other things. Do you have the /pds folder on *any* Razr you have? I kept mine along with a directory listing of the folder and it's contents in the event I have to "put it back" so I can verify the files and folder's ownership and permissions. I just added "pds.txt" into the attached zip file, you can read it, see all of the folders and files within, and the ownership and permissions assigned to each file and folder. "0" means "root" or in this case, "system" ownership of a file or folder.

I am pretty sure you can put the /pds folder from one phone into another, but things like the wifi MAC address will be duplicated unless you alter the nvs_map.bin file and who knows what else will be duplicated on network connections. I do not see how putting a /pds folder into a phone that is missing one will hurt it, you are only inserting a folder and files into the system. If you wanted to, Safe Strap does have a file manager where you could find that folder and delete it if it were to cause problems.

But this is all experimental talk, I haven't done it because I had not need to do it and now, my dysfunctional phone has been returned. There is your info, now see what you can do with it, Brian.

I tell you what, though. If you try to run wifical.sh on a phone with no /pds folder, your wifical script will fail and NOT change your wifi MAC address. Hey, remember a while back, we were all talking about the MAC addresses of our phones and I remember mine was really strange. Not IPv6 nor IPv4, but a strange combination of both with decimal numbers in it. Totally useless. Casper was also in this discussion. The member was saying that the new Safe Strap 3.73 was bad and would ruin the MAC addresses so many of us reverted back to Safe Strap 3.65. It didn't make a difference at all and I put back my Safe Strap 3.73. I believe my issue was because my /pds folder was gone by that time. No way to check now though. I took a screenshot of my messed up MAC, that was a while ago, not sure if I still have it. Let me look.

Yeah, I found it, read this funky about screen and see the problems with it. Old screenshot attached. Have to go, see what you come up with. :good:

EDIT:

By the way, there is a very good search feature in ES File Explorer where you tap the search bar and type in what you are looking for. I knew that wifical.sh was a shell script, I just didn't know where it was. As soon as I typed in wifi, up came wifecal.sh and wificalcheck.sh. This shows the files, not where they are located. Hold finger to select, choose properties, and you get the file location, ownership, and permissions. HTH :good: