[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S 4] Dandman808:
[Rooting fail: Kernel not seandroid enforcing / Reflashing issue / knox counter]

Greetings all! I have been an avid lurking fan for quite some time and have gained great insights from this forum. So first, I would like to thank the community for being what it is. Second, I would like to apologize for the looming wall of text. :p

Now onto the show...

So I thought I was being smart when I got one of those cheap memory cards off ebay (generic 32GB). Why pay the extra for the brand name stuff when it was just a piece of plastic, right? Oh if I could only go back in time to slap myself (first of many well-deserved slappings).

So I plugged the card into the phone (T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S4) and everything seemed to work just great. Then, being the incredibly intelligent person that I am, I moved (slap) all of my photos & music to the card. My gut was telling me to 'copy' them, but I was too smart to listen (slap), because I was being smart: I was backing up my valuable pictures to a solid-state memory card - and those things never fail, right? (SLAP) (no mention of dropbox or google drive please, I have already slapped myself once each for those) Again, everything seemed to work just great - for the first couple of days. Then suddenly, quick as a hotflash, the card was just not readable. Tried it in another phone, tried it in a card reader (apparenly even the generic adapters suck - I had to go and use one of my SanDisk-branded adapters) and the computer didn't even know it was there.

So I did some reading and thought to myself, "Self, those pictures should still be there unless the space was overwritten by something else, right?" Right? Then started the research on things that could dig up these things and after trying a couple (don't remember the names and can't check because the phone is now hosed, but I digress), none found anything.

Being the long-time lurker that I am, I searched this forum and found mention of a program called Diskdigger, however it required Root access (Dun Dun DUUUUUUUUN!) Yeah, I was always a bit squidgy about that. . . .but I REALLY wanted (and still want) to try and recover the pictures. 6-months worth of my heart-wrenchingly adorable kids.

. . .so lurker-me did more reading and found all sorts of threads here (and warnings) about how to root. So I downloaded Odin and installed Kies, and grabbed CWM and the rooting .zip file. Everything seemed to go just swimmingly until the final battery pull and subsequent reboot.

Then came the neverending Samsung Galaxy logo with the microprint message of death: Kernel is not seandroid enforcing

Wha-wha-WHAT? I didn't even know there was such a word, (I am referring to the whole 'seandroid' thing) and didn't know it needed to be enforced.

Back to lurker-based research. I found a couple of threads that talked about this issue and something about a Knox counter came up. Aaaah yes. Samsung Knox. So we finally meet even though I didn't set you up because I didn't like the sound of some of the things you wanted. I don't even remember what they were at this point. Anyway, apparently this protects some of the sensitive areas of the phone sort of like a baseball cup (if a phone had testicles). It also seems to have replaced the binary counter that everyone loves to reset with things like Triangleaway, and is causing this whole tangled mess (over and above my initial stupidity that is [slap])

ANYWAY, I found a thread here and started to participate, however it turned into something that started to look like a thread hijacking, so I figured I would move it into a posting of its own so that everyone can help me bask in the glory of my peny-wise and pound-foolishness.

Onto the current recovery efforts...

Based on the thread I almost hijacked (and others), apparently this issue could be solved by flashing back to the stock rom (although the binary/knox counter would still be tripped)

First I grabbed what I thought was a stock rom-tar-thingy (slap) and waited for it to download in all of its 1.5GB glory - but it wasn't a .tar file. It was a .7z file and Odin's PDA would have none of it. So I tried again with a different file. Again, it took forever (as things do with large files), and again it came up as one of those .7z files. So me being as incredibly intelligent as I am (double-slap), I figured I would game the system and just change the extension and make it a .tar file. (begin histerical laughter and a firm round of slapping)

I am sure you can guess what a rousing success that was.

Back to lurking. Lo & behold, I found more 1+GB files to download! I had no idea if I was v4.2.2 or 4.4.2, so I just grabbed 'em both. About a century later when they were done, I was ready to try again, although it occurred to me (yet another moment of brilliance) that reflashing back to stock would most likely kill the very pictures I had hoped to try and recover in the first place. *cue the sypathetic "aaaaawwww" from the audience* (come on, work with me here)

In any case, I took the first file (I figured I would start with the 4.2.2 file - mostly because the 4.4.2 file had not finished downloading at the time) and plugged it into Odin's PDA line, although I had no idea Odin was into Public Displays of Affection. So the first scary thing was when I set the PDA in Odin (v3.07) to the .md5 file, it apparently had to do a check of its own:

<OSM> Enter CS for MD5..

<OSM> Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable..

<OSM> Please wait..

<OSM> M919UVUAMDL_M919TMBAMDL_M919UVUAMDL_HOME.tar.md5 is valid.

<OSM> Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully..

<OSM> Leave CS..​

...I say "scary" because it took a while and I was not prepared for it (I thought the program had locked-up). Then again I guess anything takes a while with a 2+GB file. :silly:

So I got the phone into download mode and clicked Start, then saw the following:

<ID:0/010> Added!!

<ID:0/010> Odin v.3 engine (ID:10)..

<ID:0/010> File analysis..

<ID:0/010> SetupConnection..

<ID:0/010> Initialzation..

<ID:0/010> Get PIT for mapping..

<ID:0/010> Firmware update start..

<ID:0/010> sbl2.mbn

<ID:0/010> NAND Write Start!!

<ID:0/010> sbl3.mbn

<ID:0/010> rpm.mbn

<ID:0/010> aboot.mbn

<ID:0/010> FAIL! (Auth)

<OSM> All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 1)​

Based on that (and the big red "FAIL!" in the top left corner), I had the sneaking suspicion that the program was not quite as successful as I had hoped, so I unplugged the phone (the process had not been gong on for very long).

As soon as I unplugged the phone, I got that error saying there was some sort of problem with the firmware download and that I should use Kies to restore my phone. I thought "YAY! Let's let Samsung clean up my mess!!" But oh no... Kies wouldn't have anything to do with my (now) modified phone and said it was (now) not compatible.

So I tried the Odin thing again (still in process) and noticed what I thought was a graphical error of some sort under the "Do not turn off target !!!" message. I do believe that this is actually the initial tippy tip of a progress meter that is just moving at about the speed of congealed phlegm (again, as everything takes a long time with a 2+gb file).

So that is where I am for now. I figure I'll give this thing 30-40 min and see if this tippy-tip would-be progress meter becomes something a bit more profound. The problems that I have (above the obvious) at this point are:

Odin has marked this as a "FAIL!"

Odin's message box lists this as "All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 1)

Odin appears to not be doing anything at the moment and is waiting for my next move

The progress meter (wannabe) is not progressing

There is some microprint in the top left corner of my phone screen that reads:

(red text)ODIN MODE

(white text) PRODUCT NAME: SGH-919

CURRENT BINARY: Custom

SYSTEM STATUS: Official

KNOX KERNEL LOCK: 0X0

KNOX WARRANTY VOID: 0X1

CS8-CONFIG-LS8: 0X30 (not sure about the 8s - it is very hard-to-read)

(grey text)WRITE PROTECTION: Enable

eMMC BURST MODE: enable (not sure about the "eMMC", again hard-to-read; also interesting to see the lower-case e's here)

(red text)START [224 1440]

SW REV. CHECK FAIL : fused : 5 , Binary : 1
​

My hopes are not high, but I will keep the faith for now to see if that progress meter grows up and makes something of itself in this world of ours. I am not sure if it is just my innately blind sense of optimism, however it seems that the tippy-tip has become a little larger in the time that it has taken to type this posting.

Then again, my marker may have just shifted. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

It is just barely 8am now and I think I need a beer already.