[Droid Eris Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bftb0:
OK, so here's the deal about that symlink error.

It can result from two different conditions - one of which is innocuous, and one of which is "near-death".

In the "near-death" case, flashing a PB00IMG.ZIP file or running an RUU sometimes results in a hard brick, so, for the moment you should avoid that.

So, if it is the "innocuous case", what happens is that you simply flashed a ROM file which was truncated or corrupted. The installer script performs a lot of "symlink" installations after files have been unpacked from the "system" area in the ROM file; if that fails so that the target of the symlink is not found, you get an error similar to what you see in your .jpg file.

(BTW, this is the exact reason that newbs are advised to stay away from Clockwork - it does not perform signing verification of ROM files to check that they are complete and uncorrupted. Amon_RA does this, so that it is impossible to flash a corrupted ROM using Amon_RA - but ClockworkMod does not provide you that protection).

The second cause is much more sinister - we have observed cases where something in Clockwork ends up causing the MTD driver in the kernel to mark a massive number of pages in flash memory as if they had fatal flaws - they can not be reclaimed by the standard erasure methods that the custom recoveries normally use. The net effect is that when you try and load a new ROM onto the phone (assuming that the ROM file is correct, complete, and uncorrupted), the installer runs out of space and the installation fails.

[SIZE=+2]We will need to be able to discriminate between those two cases to determine how to proceed next.[/SIZE]

The most direct way to detect this more critical problem is to boot into ClockworkMod recovery, create a shell on the phone using "adb", and then attempt to "mount" the /system mount point. It is possible that this will fail; but if it succeeds, you then erase everything in /system, and do a "df" command to look at available space on the phone, as in:

C:\WindozeSucks> [COLOR=green]adb shell[/COLOR]
# [COLOR=green]mount /system[/COLOR]
[COLOR=grey](If the above command fails, proceed no further)[/COLOR]

# [COLOR=green]cd /system[/COLOR]
# [COLOR=green]df -k /system[/COLOR]
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/mtdblock3 174080 112128 61952 64% /system
# [COLOR=green]rm -rf /system/*[/COLOR]
# [COLOR=green]df -k /system[/COLOR]
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/mtdblock3 174080 112128 61952 64% /system
# [COLOR=green]cd /[/COLOR]
# [COLOR=green]umount /system[/COLOR]

The example output of the "df -k" command above is from my phone where I did not erase the /system folder. Note that its total size is about 174,000 kB (roughly 170 MB). If you have a bunch of bad pages, your total size will be quite a bit smaller than this. Note also that it reports the "Use%". If you are showing 100% use when you first run the "df" command, this likely also indicates a problem of this nature.

When you actually erase all the files in the /system folder, the 2nd time you run the "df -k /system" command, you should see a very low total "Use%" - about 1%. Note that his erasure does not correct the problem - we are only trying to find out what state your phone is in at the moment.

2) If you are not familiar with using adb, there is an indirect route you can take, which is to determine if the ROM file on your SD card is corrupt or not.

Ahhh, ****, I forgot that ClockworkMod doesn't have a MS-USB mode

Again, boot into Amon_RA, connect to the PC, and then toggle "MS-USB toggle" from the Amon_RA menu. Then use a file explorer on the PC to find out the exact size of the ROM file on the SD card (down to the very last byte). If it is exactly the correct size, it is somewhat unlikely that this is a simple problem of a corrupted ROM file. If you know how to do it, compute the "MD5" signature of this ROM, and report both the exact total file size (in bytes) and the MD5 signature.

I'll provide more instructions after you respond.

bfb0

PS You didn't mention WHICH PB00IMG.ZIP file you were trying to flash, nor the exact version of GSB you used - I presume you mean the ROOT version/GSB v1.6, but you ought to clear that up to avoid any ambiguities.