restore rooted Note 2 after wipe?

[tatteredscroll]

Finally got the USB UART a full 60 seconds worth of output. Should be enough to track at least two boots. Not sure what I need to look for. When it was powered off (at least it appeared that way to me) and I briefly pressed the power button, I got this and it didn't do anything else--

Android Bootloader - UART_DM Initialized!!!
[60] disable otg power
[560] Going down for shutdown.

Afterwards, I pressed power for about 2-3 seconds and it started boot sequence.

//

Line 1486 I see this
[ 12.266075] init: [libfs_mgr]fs_mgr_mount_all(): /dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/userdata is wiped and /data ext4 is encryptable. Suggest recovery...

And further down, it looks like it's trying to reboot to recovery on its own, but my guess is it's not there?? so that could be causing the boot loop...

[tatteredscroll]

I used another terminal program and captured a couple of minutes. Probably all the same stuff.

[Renate]

I'll have to look some more at this.
init gets unhappy and tries to reboot to recovery
It's interesting to see that this device will work with an EDL cable (but we still don't have a driver).

[Renate]

Do you have the device RX and your USB UART TX connected?
Reboot and then in Putty hold the "Backspace" key down solid.
It should go directly to recovery without rebooting again.

[tatteredscroll]

Originally Posted by Renate

Do you have the device RX and your USB UART TX connected?
Reboot and then in Putty hold the "Backspace" key down solid.
It should go directly to recovery without rebooting again.

Thanks so much for taking the time to try and help me, much appreciated.

I did GND from UART to GND (square terminal on Note2), and TX from my UART to one of the remaining two terminals on the Note2 next to the square one.

I did this for each of the terminals and attempted a complete cycle. No change.

I would power off, connect GND and TX from UART, power button on, when I see blue light, I then press backspace. I would wait a while (15-20secs) holding backspace, the blue light just cycled and it rebooted. I did the same sequence with the other terminal on the Note2 as well.

I also tried to remap Backspace to Ctrl+h in Putty and tried that sequence as well.

The TX light on my UART goes solid when I press the backspace key (or the ctrl+h key combo) so it recognizes that I'm sending something I reckon.

For completeness, I went through all the above with Putty on a Windows laptop (my default is a Linux laptop). Same results.

[Renate]

You already know which terminal out of the device is TX because you can read the log off that.
So leave that connection alone, because it's not the one that you can send data down and also you can't see what's happening.
Just add the extra connection.

On my Poke3 I can see that the boot sequence pays attention to "rubout" (0x7f). Putty maps this to the "backspace" key.

In any case the device TX is your eyes and ears.
Try with backspace, arrow keys, space bar, delete key...

[tatteredscroll]

Originally Posted by Renate

You already know which terminal out of the device is TX because you can read the log off that.
So leave that connection alone, because it's not the one that you can send data down and also you can't see what's happening.
Just add the extra connection.

On my Poke3 I can see that the boot sequence pays attention to "rubout" (0x7f). Putty maps this to the "backspace" key.

In any case the device TX is your eyes and ears.
Try with backspace, arrow keys, space bar, delete key...

Do you think it has to be a cold (powered off) boot or would the key sequences (assuming I found the right one) work during it's boot-looping?

[Renate]

Since it's detected in the abl, as long as you see SBL1 start and end in the log that is good enough.

[tatteredscroll]

Originally Posted by Renate

Since it's detected in the abl, as long as you see SBL1 start and end in the log that is good enough.

What should a keypress sent to the Note2 look like in the output/log? I want to see if it sees or receives what I'm sending, but doesn't respond or gives a response that I could work with.

[Renate]

Your aboot/abl doesn't look like anything that I've ever seen.
This is the (very shortened) boot log of my Poke3:

B -   2104744 - SBL1, End

...

LoadBitmapImage name[logo1.bmp] size[88860] at Buffer[9AC3C018]
Render Splash  [ 4536]
lcd_display_bitmap(): Display bmp: 139 x 627  with 256 colors at pos(654 222)
bmp_bpix = 8, compression = 0, fb bpix = 16
xpos[654] ypos[222] xact[139] yact[627]

...

PON Reason is 0x415C3411 cold_boot[1] PON1[0] KPDPWR[0] USB[1] DC[0]. [5249 ms]
KeyPress:0, BootReason:0
Fastboot=0, Recovery:0

This is a very typical sort of thing on many devices.
There has always been this little showing of keypress or touch.
You could reboot and try any silly thing that you could think of to get some value to change.
Some things worked with screen touches, buttons or UART.

It could be that your device has a corrupted aboot/abl.
It could be that they all are like that now.

[tatteredscroll]

There's a section near the end of the boot cycle where it talks about having issues and then trying to reboot to recovery (I think I posted earlier in this thread) and based on the events that follow that, it seems to me that there is no recovery or the location of recovery is borked.

[Renate]

Yes, I saw that it wanted to go to recovery but it never got there.

Having an Firehose loader would make it trivial to force it to recovery.

Since you have a UART now and you're not blind, try pressing the power button 5 times after you see SBL1 End.
Especially look for it pausing or typing something interesting.

[tatteredscroll]

This was new...I forgot this had a front button (laying it down on the front with the back open, I didn't think much about it), but I pressed the front button (fingerprint scanner) just after a reboot and saw this:

[6420] dload mode key sequence detected

I no longer see the blue power light. And pressing power button no longer gives me this

Android Bootloader - UART_DM Initialized!!!
[60] disable otg power
[560] Going down for shutdown.

So there seems to be at least two states. When it bootloops, if I press and hold power down long enough, it "powers off", the light goes off and it no longer sends output to the console. However, pressing power button quickly in this mode or state yields the above "Android Bootloader - UART_DM initialized!!!" message.

But pressing the front button at the right time (after it reboots itself from bootloop) I get put into some kind of downlod mode:
[6420] dload mode key sequence detected

And it seems to be frozen, unresponsive. Connecting to USB on my laptop doesn't yield anything in the console, but I get a blinking red light. I've been here before with charging. Seems a long press on power pulls it out of this and it's back in bootloop.

I also noticed that with a long-press of the power button at random places in the boot cycle. Because everything is scrolling so fast, I'm not sure at what point this is being triggered or how long power needs to be pressed to trigger this message.

========> Power Key Down

[Renate]

"dload mode" is EDL mode, which would be great if we had a Firehose loader for it.

Did anybody ever search for a Firehose loader?
Can somebody (with a working Note 2) tell me what the processor is?

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

(Just quote the start, end and one of the chunks in the middle.)

Originally Posted by tatteredscroll

I'm not sure at what point this is being triggered or how long power needs to be pressed to trigger this message.

This is the tricky thing about all these stupid things. "Stand on your head and press these three buttons exactly 3.2 seconds."

On my Poke3 if you hit backspace over 100 times it will go to recovery, if you hit backspace only over 50 times it will go to EDL mode. Complicating this is the exact time that it will start counting as it ignores keystrokes before this. I do have a Windows utility for this, but if you hit backspace and never got anything in the log this will not help you.