Solved: Bootloop into recovery

[Eximius]

Hello,

I have managed to hit an exceptionally esoteric situation (I would say bug) by an unexpected amount of unlucky fumbling.

Device is Volla Plinius plus. The OS is ubuntu touch.

I fastboot flashed vendor_boot.img that contained a broken recovery ramdisk into the phone. I then proceeded into running `fastboot reboot recovery` to test the not-yet-known-broken recovery ramdisk.

However, apparently, this writes the next boot target somewhere in non-volatile memory, causing the bootloader to skip the choice menu (accessed by volume down) every time, since it sees it should boot to recovery. It never clears the recovery-boot flag.

This causes the device to bootloop to broken recovery with no ability to stop it. Removing battery doesnt clear the flag (from which I know it is in non-volatile memory). Plugging in usb in the turned off phone starts the phone / goes into the same bootloop.

Generally, I didn't expect the bootloader to always skip the menu due to a flag in non-volatile memory.

I glanced at viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1042 and it seems there is a potential super-super-screwed-situation tool for fixing the situation. However it seems to need a scatter file for the memory controller(?).

Any help appreciated.

[Eximius]

Managed to clear the recovery boot flag be zeroing the first string in the misc partition using mtkclient.

[Druaga]

I have the exact same issue as you, however I have issues finding what I need in order to fix it.

Mainly, I cannot get MTKClient to communicate with the device. It seems I need a Preloader/DA Loader file, however I have difficulties finding them.

Could you give us the file needed to do so? As well as a few instructions. Thank you!

[Eximius]

Would probably need to find a full firmware download for your model. That should have a download_agent folder with the DA binary. Are you using Quintus?

Once you have that, what I did was:

Code: Alles auswählen

uv run mtk.py --loader the/DA.bin r misc misc.img
cp misc.img misc-mod.img # Make a backup, just in case
# >> edit misc-mod.img with okteta. Look for "recovery" string. zero it
uv run mtk.py --loader the/DA.bin w misc misc-mod.img  

For the mtk client to work, the phone must be off (so unplug battery, replug, but _don't_ turn it on, the mtk client connects to the mediatek chip directly while phone is off)

[Druaga]

I am currently using a Volla Plinius Plus. Since I've just made this account, I didn't have the option for the proper device.

I will try this once I'm back home. I'll make sure to keep you updated once that's done.