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hersche
Topic Author
Posts: 34
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2017 8:38 pm

Linux&Win SP-Flashtools/SN-Writer connection issue-workaround

Thu Nov 15, 2018 11:25 pm

This should be a little workaround-hint. I was now almost 24h withouth a working phone and got the workaround by random. May it helps someone out there.

EDIT: This bug is also on at least another computer with windows and SN-Writer existing.

Symptoms: SP-Flashtools does the flashing very randomly - sometimes, it fails on start, sometimes it comes to the yellow progress-bar and flash some percent, but also fails then. For example, the system-partition never flashed more than 2%. Speed was ~70M/s.

I found stuff like "set sp-flash-tools to Full Speed instead of High Speed - did not work for me.

Solution: For me, this is weird, but as i copied about 3Gb of anything-files to a usual usb-storage (just for the traffic), i retried flashing - and it worked. Speed at ~30M/s. I retried it 3 times, while it was still copy anyhing to the usb-stick, and flashing on the other site seems to get stable - everything is working again.

History behind this: I tried it with two laptops and specialy installed another debian for test. As it did not work, i opened the phone because of the battery, tried with usb-cables etc. In the end, i decided to try Manjaro as another system, with slightly other lib's etc. While copy the image, i had out of random and out of "just another try" (the 1001's), i got it back now.

I really guessed my EMMC-storage is dead, maybe it prevent others also to trash it out of such ideas..

Opinion: Not directly Blackview's fault, but Mediatek one's. Maybe there's a bug-report possible by anyone or i don't know - i have to setup my phone again now :)
 
hersche
Topic Author
Posts: 34
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2017 8:38 pm

Re: Linux&Win SP-Flashtools/SN-Writer connection issue-workaround

Wed Dec 12, 2018 2:05 am

Like mentioned edited above: This bug is also on at least another computer with windows and SN-Writer existing.

Whole story if anyone's interessted in: https://thepirate.party/posts/317614

Hope it helps someone out there.
 
hersche
Topic Author
Posts: 34
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2017 8:38 pm

Re: Linux&Win SP-Flashtools/SN-Writer connection issue-workaround

Tue Apr 16, 2019 5:02 am

Tonight, i wanted to upgrade my phone to the march-2019-update.

As before, it stucked in progress but move file arounds was not helping.

First, it seemed to help to: Turn off the phone -> Press download in SPFT -> Plugin in WHILE PRESS volume up.

However, this was only possible for the small files. System.img was still stucking as it was too big (?). My hack was the following, to get it work anyway:

1. Install TWRP (from needrom) as recovery and start it
2. Move system.img to your phone, put it on root (of your internal storage/internal "sdcard")
3. Go to mounting, mount System (only check it is enough)
4. Go to Advanced -> Terminal
5. Enter "mount" to see, on what /dev/block/mmcblk0p?? (?? is a number, for me, it was 26) is "/system" mounted on
6. Go back to mounting, uncheck system to unmount it
7. Go again to Advanced -> Terminal
8. Enter "dd if=/sdcard/system.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p26" to start copy
9. Wait about 5-10 minutes until a new line appears
10. Reboot the phone to system to recheck if it works. DO NOT CHECK FOR OTA-UPDATES NOW!
11. If it worked, take SP-Flashtools again and reflash the original recovery. If you don't do this, the update-system reconize the phone as rooted and deny updates.

This worked for me. Also, i've seen some posts about dead phones; i really recommend to open the phone quickly and unplugg the battery for a second..

Technical background is still weird here: In SPFT, i see that my phone does not respond correctly (@serial bus). However, i can easily transfer the same system.img-file via usual filetransfer/MTP, while this does not work with flashing (via SPFT). Means to me: The hardware seems to work, but is it maybe it's a bug in the preloader? Or maybe it's a separate programmer/flash-chip which has only problems there...

Anyway, hope it helps someone out there, i'm happy to be able to use it longer as it works still pretty well (except the above stuff) ;)

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