yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
I've not done that since I first started experimenting with this tab but yes you can do that. Yes I would use dd to copy partitions to external sd card then it can be brought back to stock all the way down to locked bootloader if you flash every thing available to you. I believe vbmeta and system are the only two you would need to flash but not absolutely certain. When a new GSI is booting for first time it appears to bootloop when it is actually resetting things like it is supposed to. Will stock img do the same? I don't know, never thought to look at it. It seems like it should within the confines of being treble compatible device, but we're talking stock system.img not gsi so it may depend on how it was compiled. And if we knew all that we would probably have source code and factory firmware available and wouldn't care all so much. Possibilties are many, with another being to flash img's from your tablet obtained via dd and then from stock recovery install(sideload) update via adb. Using ota from your tablet should take you back to stock as stock can be. It stopped me once trying update from sd card telling me how many times /system had been mounted rw. Have to try and see if..... ah let you know in about an hour if able to revert to stock with fastboot and no spft.

Well, back to stock with locked bootloader using fastboot for all img's. Could not install update.zip because it said vbmeta mismatch. Don't know if that was a mix-up on my part or not. Probably was since I had to many to choose from really. But yes it went back to stock via fastboot with no spft. As far as I know everything is right. When it downloads an update I'll grab it and see what happens with a new one.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] extrem0:
Thanks a lot for your always in depth posts. Your contribution (including the high risks of bricking with the tests you do) to this device is highly appreciated!

Were you able to dd system.img to external microSD card? Mine resulted in a > 4gb filesize and this tablet with stock ROM can't recognize any microsd system format other than FAT32 (actually I only tried NTFS and exFAT, didn't test EXT4 -would it work?).
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] martyfender:
I know this was not directed to me, but mine recognizes FAT32 and one card that has the GUID partition scheme with: 1st partition, FAT32, 2nd partition a metadata partition used by Apps2SD and finally a 3rd partition EXT2 where apps can be moved by Apps2SD. Those 2nd and 3rd partitions do not show up in Android settings, storage, only the 1st, FAT32 partition does. I may be mistaken , but I don't believe Android reads NTFS natively, but then my Linux Mint does, with NTFS-FUSE, so I may be wrong. I have never had a microSD card formatted to NTFS to test that.

However, I believe I have seen mention of USB-OTG, NTFS drives attached to Android devices, but then that may be because of a driver or app installed to do that, I'm not sure.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] DB126:
Android does not natively understand NTFS which must be licensed from Microsoft. Third party add-ons can read NTFS formatted media; haven't seen any that offer write capability.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] NFSP G35:
^ I thought Paragon did?
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
Yeah, but couldn't remember it exactly so just done it again for what was supposed to be accuracy. Overlooked the little fact that I'm not on Onn firmware but Liquid Remix right now. With that, My system.img came in at 2.34GiB as seen in MiXPlorer. But stock still wont be a 4GiB+ .img. Are you trying to get a device.img rather than system.img. If so you have to split it up into volumes. Can't remember well enough to confidently tell you how to do it but there is a guide here on xda for splitting it into volumes. Can't look for it right now so will leave that hunt for you. I want to say Ext2 works because I think I partitioned a card on this tablet using parted binary for android and it uses ext2 with errors if you try ext4. I haven't looked to see what formats are compatible with sdcardfs which is what this tab is using if you want to look in that direction.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] extrem0:
You're right! I just dd system.img and it was 2.2gb size like you said, so I could back it up onto micro sdcard formatter fat32. Now I'm gonna try to flash vanilla aosp gsi. Thanks!

---update--

Just installed Phh Treble GSI vanilla. Seems faster than stock. Gonna test it for a few days. Thanks a lot!

Yes, it's very limited recognizing different partitions other than fat(32) and ext. I could backup system.img to fat32 this second try.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
You shouldn't even have to worry with the format of sdcard. The device should do it for you. If for some reason it doesn't or you just need to format it. You can use storage manager from a shell, be it terminal emu or adb shell from console. I used to use it for partitioning sdcard to give part of it up for adoption. To format you would use

"sm list-disks" you get example 'disk:179_64'

"sm list-volumes all" get something like 'public:179_65' mounted at abc123???; and other volumes

"sm unmount public:179_65"

"sm format public:179_65"

"sm mount public:179_65"

"sm --help" will print short list of commands available

Whatever format it needs to be will be determined by android and formatted as such, from my experience anyway.

If you start worrying with different fs.formats or anything else with your backups you are asking for trouble. A backup that gets screwed up doing anything not strictly native or natural and to device defaults could be worthless when in a bind. Will your device have complete functionality and accept everything as before ? Probably not if you're trying to recover it. I prefer to let the device handle all of it when it comes to backups.

Oh yeah, I forgot. That gsi has to be faster. I would have a hard time believing otherwise. Unless it is just sooo much smoother that it just feel faster, nah it's gotta be faster. You should try Liquid Remix and play around with friction settings in screen stabilization. You won't believe it's a 64 dollar tablet anymore.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
Can liquid remix be installed without using TWRP? What can I say, I am a sucker for fastboot... Also, could you please share a link to the LR rom you were able to get working on the onn? Thanks in advance. =D
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] extrem0:
I was just worried because the backup images using dd was bigger than 4gb. I think I did use internal partition and it was resulting in a redudant backup (doubling its size). Now it's fine since I did save all partitions except userdata.

Gonna try this Liquid Remix in a few days. Looks very promising. I'm just gonna test how phh's GSI ROM performs battery wise. Many thanks again!

It's probably this one:

https://xdaforums.com/project-treble/trebleenabled-device-development/9-0-liquidremix-t3889160/

You can flash it via fastboot (on bootloader).

Use this (I skipped the first command 'fastboot flash cache').

https://xdaforums.com/general/help/how-to-unlock-root-xposed-onn-8-walmart-t3945284/post80683129

I actually used stock recovery and format data and cache partitions.

Then I reboot to bootloader (USB doesn't work in recovery, so I used the recovery menu itself to boot to bootloader)

In bootloader you'll have to follow this (now using fastboot):

fastboot --disable-verification flash vbmeta vbmeta.img
fastboot erase system
fastboot flash system system.img

It'll only work if you already unlocked the bootloader (which is described howto in the very first post of this thread)

You can get vbmeta.img via adb. Follow this:

adb shell
dd if=/dev/block/by-name/vbmeta of=/sdcard/vbmeta.img
exit
adb pull /sdcard/vbmeta.img
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
Just seen this while looking around source.android.com -File system and image format. The GSI uses an ext4 file system with a sparse image format.

----OOPS THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TWO SEPARATE POSTS ----

Then a little more scrolling and got a little crossed-up in regards to disabling verify boot. The info given by source.android says you must have a way to disable verify boot available on the device. But then their guide has the --disable-verification option when flashing vbmeta and no reference to anything to do with disabling dm-verity before first boot. Fastboot options don't seem to be a method available on the device the way I read any of it. I'm not looking it up right now but there are a lot of places that say to do both. You say you flashed it while on stock recovery, did you leave dm-verity unmolested ? Or did you use an app to flash a disabler ? If you left it alone and running without vendor mismatch problems try to stick with it for a few days. Just really curious as to what the outcome will be with GSI's. I had a vbmeta mismatch that prevented an OTA when reverting to stock but without any obvious or immediate negative effects. I didn't leave it long enough to tell anything but I think a factory reset cleared it up.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
Thank you... I followed your procedure and looked at the other link you posted. I had a few failed attempts... Ultimately this procedure worked BEST for me:

Enable ADB in developer settings and unlock bootloader.
adb reboot bootloader
fastboot flashing unlock
"fastboot --disable-verification flash vbmeta vbmeta.img" (used stock from post #192)
"fastboot erase system"
"fastboot flash system system.img" ([URL="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aQrAN-SE4rx2tbdcg_RxYZRUIaYHl2lb"]THIS ONE[/URL])
"fastboot oem reboot-recovery" .
Then I did factory reset.

FINALLY! SUCCESS! I am running Liquid remix... NOW I have a new hurdle to overcome... I get verification failed on DM_verity and GAPPS when trying to install them in the stock recovery. I am assuming dm_verity is not needed because I can boot the OS but I need gapps... There has to be a way to get that resilient zip file to install <facepalm>. I am searching for answers online but if anyone knows how to bypass that issue without having to install a custom recovery, I will be most grateful... Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Since this procedure worked with LR, I will duplicate these steps with Phusson's system-arm64-ab-gapps-su.img.xz and see what happens.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] extrem0:
Great. I'm actually using Phusson's vanilla (without gapps). Please report back if you can do this without dealing with dm-verity.

Actually I only used stock recovery to erase cache and system partition (which might be the same as fastboot erase 'partition'). Then I rebooted to flashboot and flashed v119/system-arm64-ab-vanilla-nosu.img (I only flashed this file). I didn't mess with dm-verity at all, not that I remember.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
Phhousson's is a no-go for me and I am having no success with porting TWRP... the instructions are so vague... After several failed attempts and not understanding how to build it based on the supplied information, I must throw in the towel. I love how Liquid Remix looks but it is completely useless to me without a means to flash the gapps.zip file which demands a custom recovery. I looked into the root OpenGapps-installer.apk floating around online and that would not work...

Time to spend some money on a solution... I will TRY THIS.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
Why do you have to have the gapps zip? Is something you need or just have to have? I haven't installed gapps in probably 18 months and like the idea of not having so much activity in the background. It takes a little will and a lot of want to in the beginning to go googless. But after you figure out what to use from f-droid, yalp, aroura and apk mirror along with a couple more tongue-in-cheek places it turns into a cool deal. Biggest thing being not feeding google everything about what you do +some. They already know more about you than you do yourself. You forget things as life goes on, but they have it all written down. They don't forget therefore they know more. Phuck that.

There a a few apps that say they will not run without google services which are not supported by your device, please contact device manufacturer for support. When that pops up just skip the ok button and hit back button. Warning toast goes away and the app that "will not function" starts and runs perfectly fine. There are a few exceptions but not many.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Vortell:
There is a magisk gapps module you could try that. There was one other solution I read about for it that was in article about huawei work around but I forget. You could also look at the Amazon Kindle/TV forum for how they do it to those tablets/tv device. There is also microg.

How's drm on gsi? Is it working? You know for Netflix other video ECT. I think you need Google for that stuff too.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
Thanks for commenting. Being an administrator of a Linux community, I certainly understand your point of view; however, such action is not suitable for me considering I have a library of premiums I just cannot live without. Gapps is needed to legally install the software I paid for. While I encourage the use of FOSS, it does not always give options which suit my needs. Therefore, I will support software developers who create programs I will regularly use and enjoy... Free or Non-Free.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
EXACTLY, that's part of what I'm talking about when I said a little will and a lot of want to. Between what I mentioned and the ones you added one would be ready to go. Just gotta want-to.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
[MENTION=1795879]Vortell[/MENTION] have you checked out black menu for google in firefox add-ons? Works like a charm.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
Unfortunately magisk gapps still requires a custom recovery. Looking into microg now.... thanks for that tip.

Update: To properly install microg, you need TWRP...

PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF! I found a great ROM which will run on the ONN 8' no TWRP NEEDED... + has Gapps!

TRY BLISS! You have options with and without Gapps... I chose THIS ONE. And this is the procedure I used to install it:

SF Flash to STOCK (Post 192)
Enable ADB in developer settings and unlock bootloader.
adb reboot bootloader
fastboot flashing unlock
fastboot --disable-verification flash vbmeta vbmeta.img
Use vbmeta.img from stock (same post 194)
fastboot erase system
fastboot flash system Bliss-2019-04-04-arm64-ab-gapps.img
fastboot flash boot magisk_patched.img
(From procedure on OP) (Optional)
fastboot reboot
Wait a while for the rom to load...

I did NOT reboot into recovery to wipe caches nor do a factory reset... for some reason I have better results when doing it this way.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Vortell:
No but I do use Firefox, so in will check it out. Is that yours? Looks pretty cool actually. ROFL I have gone as far as to use userland to launch Linux on my phone to get Firefox with built-in drm on a unlocked phone. You used to be able to use Yandex for full drm with Netflix but it doesn't work anymore. There might be a browser out there that still supports it. Need one based on Linux chrome/Firefox since drm is built in then. I have not checked in a while.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] twfs:
How's performance with Bliss and gapps? Have you found any bugs?
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
Looking great so far... It seems to be on par with stock, adding some features, the only caveat is that when you are running a custom rom you SHOULD NOT relock the bootloader to get rid of the 5 second nag screen. It would be nice if there were a way to get rid of that message while keeping the bootloader unlocked, my research thus far says no...

After trying a few roms, the free space savings is negligible... In experimenting, I have a feeling that I would have probably been better off sticking with the stock rom and then just installing a few magisk modules to gain the extra benefits those roms provide, some of which I will not use anyway LOL.

My next move is using Magisk Fbind to move the ANDROID (data and obb) directory to my sd sard so I do not fill up that puny 11gb of space in internal memory... the nice thing I like about that is that you do not need to format the sdcard with multiple partitions like many of those "app to sd" programs do, the standard fat32 format works and it mounts those bindings at startup... it is a clever piece of software.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
Care to elaborate on the should not relock bootloader statement ? You wouldn't be facing anything like this shot would you?

Just for clarification this was screenshot from Galaxy Grand Prime I was using it for fastboot with otg adapter connected to Onn 8 tablet to avoid an ill acting widows console. You will not see output like this on tablet while in fastboot.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] NFSP G35:
^ did you relock the bootloader!?
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
I have not seen any screens like you have displayed in the screenshot but encountered other issues. If you root the stock pie with the magisk patch, YOU CAN relock the bootloader. If you use Phhuson's, Liquid Remix, Bliss or any other flashable system.img and try to lock the bootloader you will end up in a fastboot loop or other form of soft brick. These roms are meant to run with the bootloader unlocked. The 5 second NAG screen (at boot time) is Walmart's way of reminding you that you are a naughty customer for hacking out their bloatware and not shopping at Sam's! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

All kidding aside... when I buy hardware and I have a receipt in my hand, that means it is MINE and I will install whatever I want on it... Good old Sam Walton must be turning in his grave!
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] CaffeinePizza:
To be fair, Walmart knows nothing about this tablet other than paying someone in China to make it and load custom firmware. They are produced by Chunghsin Technology Group. I found developer names in the commits of the git.log file on the /system partition; however, I have failed to contact them.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
No, had a mysterious shutdown while booting and ended up with only recovery that could not find path for "/" . Then a long list of undesirable options and outcomes. Not the first time I've bricked this tablet and still spent about 13 hours non-stop working at getting it back. Was able to install update from sdcard when it was all said and done. Couldn't do that before. Once I was back in tablet with ota and factory reset it allowed me to unlock again, don't know what the trigger was yet.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
CaffeinePizza's post has saved my neck several times since I started modding the ONN and I would like to make a friendly suggestion that it be referenced in the OP. Using the images, I have been able to restore BOTH of my tablets when I bricked them and admittedly, I do that quite often as part of the learning process... The SP Flash tool and those stock images would restore the tablets to a NEW state in MINUTES on my Linux box. I would go nuts if it were to take several hours to restore these devices to usable state. I do not know if the SP Flash restores partitions to stock though... I am guessing that is what the scatter file does?

---------- Post added at 03:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:18 AM ----------

There is a thought provoking video floating around about Walmart which is a real eye-opener. If Walmart can own the sweatshops who make the clothing they sell, I imagine they can also control some electronics businesses in China. They needed something to steal away a chunk of Amazon's pie with their low cost KindleFire. I would not be surprised if the Chunghsin developers are under a non-disclosure agreement with Walmart.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] CaffeinePizza:
Only the partition images in the zip are flashed. The scatter file simply marks the beginning and length of a partition for SP Flash Tool to interpret. When I first dumped the NAND, it was actually a 16GiB dump, bit for bit. Then I had to generate a scatter file with Wwr, modify it, and then Wwr splits it. No different than using dd to split files. They are stock. The userdata and cache partitions are empty.

If they're under a NDA for source, Walmart is violating the GPL (and potentially other licenses) which is enforceable (and has been enforced) within the United States.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
Touche! On the software side, YES... but on the hardware side, NO. Previously I stated components of the onn (specifically mediatek chipsets) are closed source and I would not be surprised if there is closed sourced software being used in their implementation of Android. Who is going to take Walmart to court if they cannot get the source code for their $64 tablet? I am sure the court costs alone would bankrupt the average American citizen. Ok.. I am rambling... What do I know anyway? LOL
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] CaffeinePizza:
It wouldn't be an average joe suing, rather the FSF or equivalent entity. Yes, MTK blobs are used, but they can be extracted and used on other builds. Usually present in the vendor partition.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
Hey, [MENTION=9936108]CaffeinePizza[/MENTION] I put your link in the OP at the Friendly Suggestion of [MENTION=8728183]Spatry[/MENTION]. If not cool with you let me know.

[MENTION=8728183]Spatry[/MENTION] you would have hated the brick I had today. SPFTool wouldn't help it. It went thru the motions with green checks after format and flash. Flashing took 4 to 5 minutes all looked good till I booted it up and still had nothing but my old recovery on it. Still not able to read or find path for "/". i have no idea where it was flashing to but it wasn't where it should have been. All in all, it sucked really bad. Wouldnt actually wish that one on anybody.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
Did you try using the SPFlash while the battery was unplugged? I had one time where the device would not boot after a reflash... I just did it a second time and it would boot once again. You have a resized recovery partition, could that be causing the bottleneck?
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] CaffeinePizza:
The partition table layout should be changed when formatting and flashing with SP Flash Tool. However, if not, I do have the partition layout dumps that can be added to the scatter file. They aren't included by default, because you can screw something up with them if you're not careful.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
My first question is where are you seeing the size of recovery partition in that screenshot. This was way beyond unplugging a battery. I tried all the normal things for these tablets in the first couple of hours. With not finding path for root or in this case system_as_root it seems to point toward a fouled up file system on hard disc. Can't really tell you how it all came back together but it involved flashing only emmc partitions, some in groups some individually . And the same with ext4 and then all at once. Followed up with ota update before the bootloader could be unlocked again. That screenshot was after full stock rom thru spft and with stock recovery by the way. It was functioning tablet at that point. Just not unlockable.
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] Spatry:
Sorry, I know there is that hovatech TWRP image floating around which requires resizing of the recovery partition and I believe you made mention of using TWRP somewhere in the beginning of this thread? I may have my facts mixed up... it is way passed my bedtime... hope you get your issue sorted.

One of the first things I do when accessing dev options is to disable automatic updates... I am assuming that is where you turn off OTA?
[Walmart Onn Tablets General] tek3195:
Yeah that's one way. Depends on the device and carrier. Some are a little more tenacious about installing and can be difficult to stop and nearly impossible without root access. Then there are those that won't install if they detect the slightest alteration to the device. In my case today I needed it for it's healing properties I guess you could call them.