[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sschrupp:
Those are all very good questions.

I agree with you that so far there is not a good central repository of information to explain all this that I know of.

I recently flashed to Cognition 9.1 after reading bajillions of threads to try and piece together the proper procedure. You see people making suggestions left and right, but half the time they conflict with each other, and the other half are stated in terms that only someone that already knows how to do it would understand.

There are two wikis and a couple guides out there with good information, but they tend to be grander in scale. "How to make your Captivate take over the world" articles are great and useful. But it's very difficult to find information on the small specific bits contained in those guides.

To understand all those little bits requires lots of googling and taking notes. I can't tell you how many e-mails I've sent myself from work containing little snippets of "do this", "try this", "how to..." that I've slowly come across after scouring these forums for hours on end.

That's not to say I don't appreciate all the info given from the users here. I'm just saying it'll be nice when all that knowledge gets pooled into one central location like one of the wikis rather than scattered sentence by sentence amid thousands of pages of posts.

And the next response to me from some snarky person will undoubtedly be "Well if you want the wiki to have that info then do it yourself!". My response then would be, "I don't know that information which is why I'm saying it would be nice if..."

The next snarky response to expect would be "If you want to know stuff then search the forums you newb. That's how *I* did it!" And my response to that would be, "And wouldn't you have been incredibly overjoyed to have NOT spent hours of your free time trying to piece together knowledge out there? And why the heck didn't you then post a straight-forward guide of simple steps on how to do it. And why the heck aren't you being a good person and helping me out now rather than being snarky and telling me to figure it out myself??"

So here's my answers to your questions which won't be very good but maybe if enough of us clueless people discuss this kind of stuff we can start to hash out more specifics.

1. Clockwork Recovery? I really don't know. I've read so many cryptic discussions about Clockwork that I can't tell you what it does. I know it can be used in flashing ROMs, but in following the Cognition line it's easier to use the Odin One Click method.

The name of it however makes it seem like its purpose is to recover from something to something. I'd assume that means you can recover our phone to stock if we have problems, but I bet that assumption is wrong.

2. Flash internal SD when updating ROM? Funny story that... I found this thread because I was doing a search on that very thing. I have seen mentioned in a couple places people saying you should do it. However in most "How to flash a ROM" discussions I've read they don't have formatting the internal SD as part of the scenario. And nowhere (yet..) can I find instruction on how to do it properly. I'm assuming I shouldn't just hook it up in USB mode to my computer and having my computer run a format on it. So I won't.

I know that the Odin tool does a "Master Clear" which I assumed would wipe the internal SD. But when I look at my internal SD it still has all sorts of stuff on it from before still. So evidently to "Master Clear", which is suggested in many "How to flash a ROM" guides, doesn't format the internal SD but "clears" some other mystical information.

3. App2SD. Well when I look up App2SD at Appbrain the description says, "helps you to move apps to either external or internal storage thru' the system Settings." Ok... great... So if I have apps installed (which default to internal SD) then I should be able to run this to move those apps to my external SD.

What happens when I flash a new ROM though like you said? The apps are on my external SD, but can I instantly use the apps on the fresh ROM or do I have to use App2SD again to move them to internal SD or what?

4. Nandroid! It does sound cool doesn't it? In most "How to flash ROM" guides and just about every other guide people say "Make sure to make a Nandroid backup before proceeding". Ok, doing a search on Nandroid I find this in the G1 forums:

"* What is Nandroid Backup v2.0?

Nandroid Backup is a set of tools and a script that will enable anyone who has root on their G1 and has the engineering/dev spl bootloader [1] (or has a dev phone) + a recovery image with busybox and adbd running as root [2] to make full system backups. These can then be restored using the fastboot [3] commandline tool and your phone in SPL/bootloader mode (hold camera + power)."

Uh.. say what? Ok I get what its end result is. It backs up my system. But what's this engineering/dev spl bootloader? I remember from WinMo that a bootloader booted the phone into a state where you could load a ROM onto it. Doesn't seem to fit exactly in this context.

I don't think I have a dev phone and I know I don't have any sort of recovery image. Busybox I recognize because Titanium Backup makes you install it. Don't know what it is though. And "adbd" has to do with running the Android developer kit or terminal or something which allows you to interact directly with Android on your phone I think. I couldn't get it to work on my computer so haven't been able to play with it.

So yeah, when everyone one says "Make a Nandroid backup" like it's the most simple thing in the world that every newborn baby is born with instant knowledge of doing... I must be missing something...

5. Backup between flashes. Well, from all the discussions I've read it sounds like you're supposed to use Clockwork Recovery or Nandroid or maybe both. Possibly you're also supposed to hunt down an ostrich and ride it to your local gas station to pick up a pack of bubble gum and donate it to your local charity of choice in order to get it to work.

Titanium Backup appears to backup your Apps so you can then install them again (I wonder if using App2SD affects that?). You can also back up system stuff, but everyone says not to do that. I assume that means it backs up various system files that would just mess up your new ROM if you restored them.

6. Kernel swapping. I know in general computing terms a Kernel is the very core of an operating system. Since there's swapping going on I assume there are different versions of the Android kernel out there and each one must have something different about them or there wouldn't be any swapping going on. As to what those differences are I couldn't tell you. Personally I'm going to stick with premade bundles like Cognition. That way I don't have to worry about kernel swapping and sacrificing chickens since some awesome genius (like DesignGears) has already done all that. Minus the chicken sacrifice possibly.

7. Flashing finesse. Like I said I've recently flashed from stock to Cognition 9.1 and everything seems to work (except my battery seems to be draining faster, even though I flashed from 100% charge, and did "Master Clear". So next step will be clearing the battery stat file which is another thing I need to research and doing another full charging cycle to see if that helps).

I scoured the forums before doing the flash looking for the proper steps and I finally came upon a post from someone that actually listed each step very clearly on how to do it properly. Huzzah!

Here's what KewlRobD posted:

"- I was running 2.1.7 so I disabled voodoo lagfix

- I powered off my phone and waited for it to reach 100% battery

- I removed my SIM card

- I then used ODIN to flash back to JF6

- I then used ODIN to Master Clear

- I then used ODIN to flash Beta9

- I then used ODIN to Master Clear again.

- I then put my SIM back into my phone and began customizing"

How many hours did I spend reading thread after thread to slowly piece parts of this together into some confused possible instruction list?? Well here you go, KewlRobD was very awesome and actually listed very clearly the steps to take.

The disabling lagfix part he mentions didn't apply since I was on stock and never applied a lagfix. However this is something else I'll have to research if I decide to flash to a new ROM because all "How to..." guides tell you to disable lagfix. Because again, all newborns pop out of the womb with instant knowledge on the disabling of the lagfixes.

Now the only thing he didn't mention was formatting the internal SD, nor did he mention anything about recalibrating the battery, clearing the battery stats file, bump charging etc. (besides saying to charge to 100% first)

So I'm still searching for the formatting of the internal SD information, and I remember reading somewhere about clearing the battery. I think I actually e-mailed it to myself. Yep, here's what Demented71 says about clearing the battery:

"As far as the battery, I would:

Charge your phone while it's on to 100%

Turn it off and charge to 100%

Turn it on and let it fully boot and turn it off again, charging to 100%

Then, when you unplug it, put it into recovery mode first, use CWR (the green recovery) to 'wipe battery stats' in it's advanced menu.

Then use your phone completely until it won't turn on, trying not to connect it via USB or wall charger.

When charging it up after that for the first time, try and leave it off and charge it to 100%, but let it sit for a few hours past 100%, and then use it normally. It's best to do this when your sleeping if you don't need your phone during that time. Another option is to buy the 2x battery+charger from eBay. Works great to always have a full battery."

Again, very helpful post with nice clear instructions instead of "Ur battery sux? Then reset it... duh!" However, there's one spot in there where he says to use CWR. I can only assume that means Clockwork Recovery. KHAAAAAAAAAN!! So in the end I need to do more research to figure out what exactly CWR is and how it works. *sigh*