[Magisk] Murrfk:
Thanks for your guidance.

I was creating a patched Magisk image file using the original HTC stock boot.img. I was running ViperRom with a Magisk m16 patched bootloader. I can't recall how I installed Magisk originally, but it was likely with Magisk 14. I remember that I had a problem and it took a while to get it on, and that one of the problems I had installing it was that I had to find a stock image file. I am pretty sure that when I originally did this, it would not patch the boot.img that was on the phone, so I had to find a stock one, and eventually it worked.

Now, I can not update to v.18. I have tried I downloaded a stock carrier TWRP HTC backup for the carrier that was originally on the phone. I then found the HTC boot file Boot.EMMC.Win, which I understand is a HTC stock boot.img file. I tried to update it using Magisk Manager, Update it by patching several boot.img. Update it using only the zip. Nothing seems to work.

I have had situations when it would not boot and would bootloop. Where I would not get bootloops but had to re-install Viperrom. Tried Uninstaller and then v18. Where it seemed to have installed, and booted to the system, but Magisk was not actually present. I have not been able to find a combination that works. As a result, I am now trying to explain exactly what I have done, as I am not sure what I am missing.

One of the boot images that I have tried to patch with v18 is an older backup that was from a different Rom but should have been a stock boot.img

I have also tried to patch a original stock HTC image, and then flashed the viperrom system on top of that, and then flashed v.18. This also did not work.

I know you need logs to deal with these issues in any meaningful way.

So, what I have now tried is to update the system to Viperrom from an old backup from before when I had Magisk installed. This should give me a stock root.img that is tied to the current Viperrom system but does not have Magisk installed. Then I backed up that using TWRP. Then I tried flashing v.18. It gave me an error stating that "Please Restore Stock Boot image" (Updater Process ended with ERROR: 1)

I have tried to attach the recovery log showing the error that resulted when I tried to flash v18 to that image but the recovery log I saved this time was empty? (0 bytes). Not sure what happened there.

I will try again after running the Magisk uninstaller on that boot.img file, just to be sure that I had not tried to install Magisk on it in the past. I am pretty sure that I did not get Magisk running on that old backup, but perhaps I did try to patch that boot loader.

EDIT:

I went back to an original HTC file and repeated the whole process. Installed the original HTC firmware backup, upgraded the ViperRom, tried to flash Magisk v18 and got the same error message. My best guess is that ViperRom is flashing SU or something that is corrupting the original stock boot image so that Magisk cannot patch it as it was "pre-patched" by ViperRom.

I tried to save a log from these steps taken as outlined in the edit but won't know if I have one until my phone reboots in 20+ minutes.

I think my next attempt will be to try to flash Magisk V18 on the stock phone files PRIOR to flashing ViperRom.