yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Yes, you should backup your EFS. If you ever lost IMEI you could restore with a backup.

Do me a favor, don't flash any retail TAR's, then we won't have to go down the path of restoring your aboot. Most of the folks that have recently screwed up their DevEd's had flashed 5.0.1 (fuse2) or higher retail Tars, rendering their original (fuse1) backup of aboot worthless.

The good news is that now if you retail your DevEd, you could perform [MENTION=766721]ryanbg[/MENTION] 's bootloader unlock and clone it into a DevEd.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] stueycaster:
Yeah the only things I've ever flashed were stock restore tars, modems or custom roms with TWRP. So I guess as long as I never flash anything else my bootloader will be ok. I was just wondering if there is any other way it could get damaged and how would I repair it. I have my aboot.tar.md5 plus my non-hlos.bin, rpm.mbn, sbl1.mbn, sdi.mbn and tz.mbn.

Sent from my SM-N920V DE
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] thuddome:
S5 Dev

I screwed up by installing an old rom off my SD. Now I hope I'm in okay shape, this is a Verizon Dev Edition and I backup up the aboot years ago it's aboot.img 2048 . I also have the nandroid factory image backup up with TWRP, all partitions. Please tell me I can build an ODIN image from that? I can't even get the S5 to boot now, stuck in boot loop, gets to setup and reboots. Any help would be fantastic....
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
pm me your aboot, dropbox or such.

If you flashed old retail prior to 5.0 its a good chance to flash back to DevEd.

When you put it into oden download mode fuses must be 1's (KK Note 4 DevEd AP SWREV: S1, T1, R1, A1, P1)
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] jal3223:
Has anyone upgraded the boot loader to their Developers edition to lollipop yet and unlocked again? Would there be any drawback to this?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] gcounts:
I've thought about it but not done it yet. If you are on one of the s7 ports, upgrading the bootloader should give you the brightness control that we don't have on the og dev ed. The retail to dev ed guys have a newer bootloader than us, and have brightness control on the s7 ports. I have to use the Twilight app to turn down the brightness, it's been a good workaround for me. That's the only difference I've been able to distinguish between the two dev eds.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] krishaun27:
If he has a dev ed that's on BOAF Bootloader (like mine) then he should not have brightness issues. I don't.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] gcounts:
You're one of those lucky og guys with the newer bl and is probably the same as the retail to dev ed.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] krishaun27:
Retail guys have BPA1 BL, which is the latest. I have BOAF which came before it. What BL are you on?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] doctor-cool:
I have

I have,works great. Nice to have so many new peers with Developer mode.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] powder012:
Good evening. I've got an aboot modified by a developer, and most if not all of my "mounts" in the form of .bak files (mmcblk0p1.bak, through mmcblk0p27.bak) I also have some TWRP full backups.

How would I go about restoring my Note 4 DE? Do I simply load the aboot into AP in Odin and boot the phone into download mode?

Thanks in advance!
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Yes, The Dev would have made your aboot odin flashable, like: "something.tar.md5" Just flash it in the AP slot of Odin.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] AdilJawad:
Guys I have lost my EFS folder during some factory wipe and data wipe

I have TWRP based backup but it is not getting restored.

Can someone please guide me on how to restore it.

Thanks!!
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] videodave1:
I have maybe i should say i had a VZW Note -4 DE I tried to flash one of the newer roms.I could not get wifi to work tried to get back to 5.0.1 MOROM_6.5_OG5 could not.I made a full backup before.Right now i'm on stock 6.0.1 no root.Can i go back to Morom i can't go on with on without Xposed?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] doctor-cool:
This is off the subject but if anyone would know it would be you guys. What do need to have ready before formatting the efs partition? Anyone know?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Sure,

I can PM you a link to a zip of it. Curious, what do you want it for?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] texasez:
I got the rsa problem fixed but I cannot keep the phone is installer mode long enough to get the backup done. Can you help me?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Try to backup small files. Like just aboot. If you are trying to dump all in one dump, it will most likely choke.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] texasez:
I cannot get the phone to stay on installer mode for more than about 1 minute until it changes to media player and the efs pro will not recognize the phone.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Make sure USB debug is checked under phone's setting "Developer options", tick "USB debugging" (might already be ticked). Also check drop down menu
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] texasez:
I have already checked that. Are you connecting via installer mode or a different method?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
EFS Pro connects via baked in ADB terminal.

You got SU?

you got busybox installed? Should be either in /system/bin/busybox or /system/xbin/busybox

Note4 drivers?

phone out of MTP mode?

EFS Pro gives hints in display on connection issues,

You vaguely mention got past RSA popup.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] texasez:
finally got it to work by using mtp mode instead of installer.

thanks for your help.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] PaulPizz:
From what I understand the sbl1 is what determines whether Odin can make changes to any partitions. You say your sbl1 is has no data so I'd like to compare the dev edition and the retail edition to see and differences and possibly try a few things.

Thanks

Sent from my SM-N910V
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
I will pm you a copy tonight. My guess they are the same in retail. Sbl1 has data. Sbl1.bak was empty

Using old Tapatalk pro cause I like to know where I go.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] PaulPizz:
Ok. Thank you. !

Sent from my SM-N910V
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Check pm, note 4 DE sbl1

md5 dcf4d3cce6b509c493e730c225de3527
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] doubleplay648:
Did I do it right?

Hi there, I'm one of the poor saps who flashed a retail rom on my LAST dev edition note 4. After completing this process on my new dev note 4 I obtained a winrar file named: SM-N910V_201518_142731.tar -874kb when i look inside the archive i see one file named "aboot.mbn", and the file size is 2,097,152. Is there anything else I need to do? any other partitions i MUST backup?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
That is the correct size of aboot, so I think you're good. Keep several copies just in case. I keep a copy on my DE's external SD, and another copy on my computer.

As far as I know, only one guy with a locked DE bootloader actually had a copy of aboot before locking his bootloader by flashing a stock tar. He was able to restore his DE with the help of a dev that modified his original copy of aboot into an oden flash-able tar.

It's not a bad idea to have backups of all your partitions. There are a few that are huge that you could skip. You could do another EFS Professional backup of blocks 1 through 23 in one big tar.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] rawkusx:
Thanks this method worked great once I got the proper drivers.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
I added the link to the samsung drivers download page on the OP.

Thanks for the feedback :)

radionerd
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] LightCCB:
Problem with reading device

Hey can anyone help me out with this? I keep getting the attached error
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Try to read device again, and save
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] LightCCB:
I tried that and even restarted but nothing worked =/
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Don't know why you have the folder PIT, I don't. Read device, not read pit. I think you might be missing a step somewhere. Maybe look at OP as you do the steps again.

If we figure it out I will add more description to OP

Thanks
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] TTA1326:
Well, what luck. I got my Note 4 DE yesterday and I am seeing this *exact* same error (obviously my laptop path is different). I definitely clicked "Read Device", not "Read PIT", and it says that it can't find the PIT file. I restarted the phone, and the laptop, and it does the same thing. I tried several times, same thing every time. I also verified that there is NO PIT folder. Don't know if it matters, but my phone is NJ5 out of the box.

I have the Nexus Toolkit and have never installed the Android SDK, but I guess I'll be trying that tonight.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] manbat:
You got a Dev Edition straight from Samsung with NJ5 already installed?

Sent from my SM-N910V / VZW Note 4 DE / Factory Bootloader Unlocked / Rooted / Custom Kernel-ed / TWRP 2.8.4.0.trltevzw
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] ebrinkis:
Me too, mine from the third batch was NJ5, mine from the first batch was NJ1.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] jbombs16:
I got the same error. I was eventually able to read and backup the partitions but I don't remember what I did. I think I just tried the "read pit" but and then refreshed the window and my device showed up. I don't really remember.

If I was able to read and backup, I got the correct aboot, right?

I'm just wondering if there's a possibility the backed up aboot isn't actually my aboot. Is that possible? Any way to verify?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
EDIT:

yes,

You can unzip, and see aboot.mbm.tar You might change the name of the tar to something like "Myaboot.tar.gz" or something that you will identify if it's needed later.

Sorry, EFSProfessional updated to a new beta

Thanks for posting ;)
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Edit: Sorry, the developer updated his program, I updated OP

Thanks ;)
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
The EFS pro Developer changed his program, check my op for updated instructions

Thanks ;)
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
SORRY GUYS!

The latest "EFS Professional v2.1.80 BETA" is broken for our device. I will get the link to the working version EFS_Professional_2.1.73_Release from the developer. And will post his link ASAP.

Standby,

Check OP for update.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
If you are using latest EFS_Professional_2.1.80_BETA

new procedure to create PIT

Click read PIT, it will pop up "The specified PIT does not exist" click OK

View attachment 3125653

Click save (I know confusing, but it saves it)

View attachment 3125654

Then continue as in OP, click refresh (it's under the manage button)

Then click on the drop down, your PIT should be there now, select it.

View attachment 3125655

Deselect all then select aboot, click backup

View attachment 3125656

Sip iced tea and chill
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] droidrev71:
So the previous aboot that I saved a couple weeks ago needs to be done over?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] LightCCB:
So I wasn't going crazy. Nice I'll try it tomorrow when I get back from work.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Nope,

Your good. The new tar does have a different checksum, but it didn't change the file within. aboot.mbm is identical, same md5.

I have pulled aboot out of my phone via; adb, TWRP file manager, and several versions of efsProfessional. They are all identical when compared.

Thanks,
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] droidrev71:
Ok, good deal..Ty

Thanks for this thread!
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] rajkabul:
Great Tip
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] LightCCB:
Didn't get enough time to sip ice tea but it seems to have worked. Though I don't know where it was saved to haha. :D
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Cool,

It creates a folder on internal SD and on your computer, same location that you run EFSProfessional from. Look for folder "EFSProBackup"

And be sure to sip Iced tea tomorrow, it's all about hydration man ;)
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] LightCCB:
Can I just say thank you very much your humor made my day. I'd like to offer you 15% from my company if buy any chocolate coffee or tea from me at www.chocolateboxintl.com I just started it a year ago but I have the world's best chocolate tea and coffee :D and I hit that thanks button. Cheers.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
I sent my kallsyms to [MENTION=3975929]zxz0O0[/MENTION] Hope it can help :)
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] iRashawn229:
Thanks for the helping support bro
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] HadesNZeus:
Device Storage Location

Does anyone know how to configure EFS Professional backup all the partitions in EFS Professional to an external SD or the PC? I changed the device storage location under the App. Config tab to /esxSdCard, but the backup failed with the following message:

can't open '/extSdCard/EFSProBackup/temp/non-hlos.bin'

Thank you
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
I think it's a KK permissions thing.

You might be able to write using another path to extSdCard like:

/mnt/extSdCard/

or change permissions

Edit: Tested the above path, it works on mine

View attachment 3142194
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] PaulPizz:
How to Create a &quot;.tar.md5&quot; file to flash via odin

Nice write up on creating an odin flashable file for your aboot.mbn backup.

http://www.rwilco12.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=92
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Odin Flashable partitions

This is a list of partitions that are odin flashable in the Note-4. A backup tar could be made from some or all of these. Will probably do a backup minus the blue ones .

Dark Red is EFS

NON-HLOS.bin

modem.bin

sbl1.mbn

sdi.mbn

aboot.mbn

rpm.mbn

tz.mbn

param.bin

efs.img.ext4

mdm1m9kefs1.bin

mdm1m9kefs2.bin

mdm1m9kefsc.bin

boot.img

recovery.img

persist.img.ext4

persdata.img.ext4

system.img.ext4

cache.img.ext4

carrier.img.ext4

userdata.img.ext4
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] gsmars:
EFS error

I have checked the box for USB debugging, rooted, busybox installed and Samsung drivers installed on my computer (Win 8.1) but every time i try and run EFS Professional I get an error that states "an internal error occurred while trying to interrogate the device!.....)

What am i doing wrong ?

Thanks
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
You might try running as administrator
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] stueycaster:
Here's a list of the partitions that EFS shows on my Verizon Note 4 DE. I have some that are different than the ones mentioned in this thread. I would guess I should back up all of them except boot, modem, recovery, system, cache and userdata because those are done by TWRP. Are there any others I should omit?

apnhlos

modem

sbl1

sbl1bak

dbi

ddr

aboot

rpm

tz

mdm1m9kefs1

mdm1m9kefs2

mdm1m9kefsc

boot

recovery

fota

misc

ssd

persist

persdata

system

cache

carrier

userdata
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] stueycaster:
Never mind. ?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] stueycaster:
I have a .tar.gz file with aboot.mbn, NON-HLOS.bin, rpm.mbn, sbl1.mbn, sdi.mbn, tz.mbn. I need to get some developer to fix this up as a .tar.md5 Odin flashable file now. Who can do that?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
If it was made with efspro then It is Odin flash able as is. No need to modify anything. :)
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] stueycaster:
Cool beans!! I guess I'm all set then. Thanks for this man. I don't foresee needing it. I'm pretty thorough about what I do with my phone. I just thought this would be a real good thing to have.

Sent from my SM-N910V Dev Ed using the XDA free app
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
That backup is your full coverage insurance plan. Cheers[emoji38]
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Rob,

Nice write up, I'm sure there will be others that somehow take the OTA and lock their Developer Devices to retail. Once a 5.0 LP TWRP is created there will be no need to flash back to 4.4

Glad you had a backup copy of your aboot.mbn, and were willing to throw untested stuff at your precious :)
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Rob [MENTION=5790686]anticloud[/MENTION]

I flashed the latest TWRP twrp-2.8.6.0-trltevzw it failed to install on my phone. I think it just needs a fix. twrp-2.8.5.0-trltevzw installed OK. I sent my recovery log to the web link below. If you try LP again try to capture your recovery log

. Upload /tmp/recovery.log or /sdcard/recovery.log to http://paste.tinyw.in

Thanks
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] bagery77:
How did you figure out your answer to this one here? It's probably obvious huh?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] stueycaster:
Not really obvious at all. What I did was back up everything except what recovery backs up. Once I did that the names changed in my back-up. The one named apnhlos became NON-HLOS and dbi became sdi. The others were named correctly. Once I found that out I was able to choose the correct ones.

Sent from my SM-N910V DE using the XDA free app
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] anticloud:
thanks radionerd - sent a whole bunch of us a note this AM (my time) about the LP TWRP Root - not sure how you knew the tmobile twrp would work, but I'm guessing it was slated for LP and it made sense to try - the SuperSU in that twrp version cannot be use, must use UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.16.zip (one that we use for the VZW Note 4 today) - just works like a champ... rooted, started the debloat process...

and, you probably saw some of the communication between hsbadr and myself - looks like things are a rollin'

thanks again

rob
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] AtlAndroid:
Is the OS locked, or the bootloader? If the latter, could this process be used to convert a retail note 4 to DE?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Boot loader is signed using sha256. The link below describes it.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] AtlAndroid:
I understand that the bootloader on a retail unit is encrypted/locked, and that the bootloader on a DE is not. What I cannot reconcile are the comments above about DE phones being taken to a locked status and back again. Are they discussing the bootloader that was locked, or the OS? If the former, what prevents this same file/'method from being deployed on retail unit, thereby unlocking it, as was done with the post-OTA described above?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] ebrinkis:
The same encryption exists on the DE version as well, but the bootloader itself is unlocked. The aboot encryption is phone / serial number specific. If you make a copy of your specific aboot, you can restore that copy to your phone and thereby restore your unlocked bootloader. Unfortunately, you can not restore your aboot to a different phone, even a different DE device because the encryption won't match. If you don't back up your DE aboot, and then copy over a rom with a locked bootloader, you have created a retail version, and there is no way back.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] Sokudoningyou:
So, I don't recall the partition backup on the guide when I backed up my aboot (or I missed it, one of the two), so here's a stupid question: I backed up my aboot when I first got the phone, now I'm on NJ5. Can I still backup the partitions? Or should I be factory resetting to clear out my rom and backing it up?

I guess I'm asking if the partitions are in any different from "stock" after I've installed a rom.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] yearn2burn:
So does the Tmobile LP TWRP work for our Verizon DE with LP? And does that mean we can simply take the LP OTA, Odin our aboot.tar.md5 and then Odin the Tmobile TWRP?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
If you have a valid copy of your aboot safely stored, your good to go. Aboot shouldn't be overwritten when flashing developer edition safe Roms. I keep copys in the device and externally.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Download the latest TWRP for our device.

http://dl.twrp.me/trltevzw/

Follow the instructions in the Developer Edition thread

Flash this DevEd LP update.

https://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=95916177934552514
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] armyofsquirrels:
So I followed your directions and should have a good copy of my aboot. However before I start messing with my phone can someone on here look at my file and make sure it is indeed a good copy. Maybe even make it flashable so I can just TWRP flash it if I ever screw up? would I post the file here or PM it to someone?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
Yes, pm me your aboot. If your on LP i will create a flashable zip for you
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
[MENTION=5611831]armyofsquirrels[/MENTION]

I received your aboot, thanks.

Files size is the same as KK aboot (2,097,152 bytes). As I suspected There is more code, and changes within.

Now if I could get one more aboot from one more of the Dev Ed's that came with LP.

Thanks,
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] krishaun27:
Using EFS Pro and I am gettin "dd: can't open '/SdCard/EFSProBackup/temp/aboot.mbn': No such file or directory

How can I fix this?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] armyofsquirrels:
I'm glad to help. Hopefully someone else can get you a copy so we can get these flashable. I've noticed something strange with my phone, I flashed KK 4.4.4 onto the phone but its randomly installing crap apps, I have Drippler, Uber. Sugar Smash, Empire, and trivago. I used a file from these forms located here:

http://xdaforums.com/note-4-verizon/development/firmware-firmware-kernel-modem-recovery-t2942937

Did the KK came with these apps forced onto it? I was downgrading from LP and know they weren't on that one. Or is this file dirty with something that auto downloads junk apps?

The only other changes I have made is following this thread step by step to add TWRP and SU:

http://xdaforums.com/note-4-verizon/development/how-to-custom-recovery-root-t2923340

Any suggestions?
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] bagery77:
My phone did come with those apps (or installed themselves fairly quickly on first boot) then deleted just fine.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] ebrinkis:
You used a valid clean ROM. The Verizon standard Rom comes with a junk installer -- DTIgnite or Ignite,( I forget exactly what it is called), but if you freeze or delete that app,it should take care of the problem. When I first fired up my phone and started getting rid of bloatware (on the factory shipped Rom), it kept bringing it back.
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] armyofsquirrels:
OK I just wanted to make sure I didn't get a virus or something. I hate bloatware to begin with now self installing/reinstalling bloat!? That should be illegal lol
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] ebrinkis:
One word -- Verizon
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] armyofsquirrels:
Lol so true... great coverage though... That's about wear their awesomeness stops lol I'm stuck with them since I have unlimited data with them
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
You might have to change the "device storage location" of saved backup. I use location:

/mnt/extSdCard

Click on the attached screen capture

View attachment 3329868
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] krishaun27:
Thanks Ill try that
[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] radionerd:
DT Ignite

Bingo!

Digital Turbine's DTignite will install a bunch of crap. It waits until you reboot, then all of a sudden you got apk's like: Instagram, Dominos Pizza, Cookie Jam, "Panda Poop", Drippler, RetailMeNot Coupons, TopApps, Uber, and a bunch of other garbage.

I just delete or freeze it before rebooting, just after installing a new rom.