[Galaxy S I9000 General] daenney:
Heimdall is an alternative, cross-platform tool to flash firmwares for the Galaxy S series of devices, including the Tab.

Heimdall

Some of you might not have heard but a brilliant guy one day woke up and thought 'damn it Odin' and started working on Heimdall. The guy reverse-engineered the protocol to flash our Galaxy's and turned up a piece of software called Heimdall that can do exactly the same as Odin.

This tool is open-source and runs on Qt for its GUI and libusb to communicate over USB making this tool completely cross-platform. This basically means flashing your Galaxy is not just limited to Windows anymore.

This guide will walk you through the steps to work with Heimdall. I'm a Mac user so the screenshots you'll see will be Mac-y. However, since the app and GUI are cross-platform the same apply for both Windows and Linux.

Disclaimer:

Flashing your device through anything but Kies can be a dangerous business and can brick your Galaxy S.

That said, Samsung seems to have engineered the Galaxy S series in a way that makes it relatively difficult to brick even if you **** up.

Proceed with caution and at your own discretion, both the developers of Heimdall and I can not be held accountable for the possible damage you do to your device by following this guide or using Heimdall.

Flashing with Heimdal

Flashing with Heimdall is a little bit different than with Odin. With Odin you usually select a PIT, if necessary, add the PDA.tar.md5, Modem.tar.md5 and CSC.tar.md5 to the locations, put the phone in download mode and hit go.

Heimdall takes a different approach. In the Heimdall GUI you need to select all components you want to flash. This means extracting the TAR-archives and pointing Heimdall to their respective files. This allow relative fine-grained control over what you flash and doesn't depend on files being named correctly.

In order to install Heimdall head over to the guy's website and download and install Heimdall.

Do yourself a favor, even if you're on Linux or Mac, just reboot after the install. On OS X the installation includes a kernel extension and though this can usually be reloaded by logging out and back in again the reboot is safer and can't hurt.

Now, time to get busy.

I'm going to assume that you have downloaded a firmware, for example from samfirmware, and have extracted the .RAR and the .TAR inside and now have a folder with at least the following:

factoryfs.rfs (PDA > FactoryFS)

param.lfs (PDA > Param.lfs)

zImage (PDA > Kernel (zImage))

Additionally you might have:

cache.rfs (CSC > Cache)

modem.bin (Other > Modem)

Be aware, there are other configurations possible. For example, when you're rooting by flashing a rooted kernel there will probably only be a zImage.

Start Heimdall or Heimdall-frontend, you should get a screen similar to this:

Now, unless explicitly stated that you need a .PIT to flash this firmware you can leave this field blank. If you load a PIT, be sure to see if you need to repartition. The general rule is that you won't, unless you flashed with a firmware that had a different PIT than what samfirmware is indicating you need.

After that, start hitting the browse button for the components you want to flash with Heimdall and add them. Your screen will probably look something like this:

Now, it's time to put your phone in download mode. Power off the phone and wait for it to completely have shut down and unplug it from USB / charger. Hold down the Home and Volume Down buttons and then press Power. Keep holding those three buttons until you get into download mode (you'll know when you see it).

If you can't get into download mode / nothing seems to happen, you probably have a Galaxy with the broken 3-button combo problem, see here for a fix:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=785201

Now, connect the phone over USB with your computer. If you're on on Mac and Linux you can proceed immediately. If you're on Windows you'll probably need to wait for Windows to install a driver or two.

Now hit the Start button and watch it go!

If all goes well you'll see the progress bar on both Heimdall and in your phone filling up (might take a while for one to appear on the Galaxy S). Once it's done it'll probably say everything went OK and the Galaxy will reboot into recovery. Let it do it's thing, it will reboot again and begin booting the new firmware.

After having installed a new firmware the first boot might take a while. You'll just seem to be stuck at the glowing S, just let it run it will boot eventually.

If however Heimdall says "Failed" your phone will (probably) reboot or when you try to reboot you'll get stuck at the "black screen of death":

This isn't a "my device is bricked" screen, just that you ****ed up the firmware. Just follow the instructions again, put it in download mode and try again.

If, after having seen the above screen, you can't get your phone into download mode, then you're toast.