[Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Guides, News, & Discussion] BigCountry907:
I have found using the factory binary service rom and the ime dialer you can pull up the EFS service menu.

This allows to backup and restore the EFS partition. Its usefulness to me is that I can clear the EFS partition and reset it to factory defaults. Pretty sure you will loose the imei number in the process. So it is very very important to have a good backup of the EFS.

I did clear my efs partition by dd if=/dev/zero and the did a dd flash of my backed up efs.img with no ill effects.

My hope was to zero the EFS partition and then flip the oem-unlock toggle option back on to better see exactly what is getting changed. Thats kinda where ive been stuck.

I loaded the factory binary that has the oem toggle present and rooted it. I flip the switch on and off pulling dumps in between. The problem is on my TAB i see about 3 or 4 changes. On the Note 8 I see a whole lot of changes. I believe the way the normal system image operates when you flip the switch and the way the factory service rom operates when you flip the switch seem to be different.

Its a long shot as it is to use the data swap from the tab on the note8. Adding to that the differences in the number of changes has me a little stumped as to where to go next.

I really wish there was a normal /system image with the oem unlock toggle that i could get to run on the note 8.

What your saying about the phone not booting if EFS is out of wack is what scares me.

I need to be able to at least boot int the safestrap recovery to restore the EFS if it dont like something.

EFS may be odin flashable I do see an entry in the .pit for the EFS.

But under any normal circumstance no update or firmware package would flas the EFS that i know of.

What i wish but im not sure of yet is that it could be possible to boot from a sdcard.

Basically mirroring the EMMC to a sd card and booting it off the sdcard.

That would allow for to make changes on the sd card to test with no risk of bricking.

Some devices that are qualcomm and HTC for sure will boot and read partitions from the sd card. It has to be a very fast V30 card though. This will most likly be my next approach toward working at this. In itself it is a lot of work. I have to build the GPT partition Table to flash to the SDCard and then play with partition combinations till something works. It all depends on weather the aboot or little kernel is configured to boot from the sd card.

The truly easiest way to unlock this sucker would be with a octupus box or other javacard. At the moment I dont even think the java cards can unlock the bootloader so there a no go too.

What we really need is someone with ARM code experience that can read the aboot to find the addresses being looked at to determine device lock status.

I know for sure that the note 8 can allow custom binary just like the Tab if you know where to set the data to allow it.

Far as fuses yes the Tab has them too. All the newer qualcomm devices have them. I do see that the RPM fuse is blown on the note 8. This is not reversible. My bet is the blown rpm fuse is being used to enforce the anti-roolback. Even though it cant be reversed by setting switches to bypass that check will work around it. Otherwise qualcomm or samsung would have no way around it.

At this moment I'm kinda disappointed. I was very hopeful of the EFS modifications. Until I can achieve consistent results Im making no ground.

Im going to see if I can find a android build for the Dragonboard and possibly get the system image from it booting on the note 8. I need a system image that has the unlock toggle. It is a real longshot that the system image from another device will boot on the note 8 but it is possible. Anything with the msm8998 and the same flavor of android has the possibility of booting. Thinking thats my next direction.