I have an MTK device that I the firmware + scatter file for. For quite a bit now, I’ve been trying to mod the system and vendor partitions. I was working in Linux, and after a few failed attempts I realized it may not have been my fault, maybe it had nothing to do with what I was actually modding. So to test, I simply unpacked the image, and then repacked it. And whaddaya know, it didn’t work either.
(btw, reflashing the original system.img works just fine)
Here’s what happens: After the device turns on after flashing with SP Flash Tool, the logo appears, for about 5 seconds. Then, before the boot animation would play, it just turns off and back on again.
I’ve already tried it in different ways: First by using simg2img to make it raw, then mounting it in a folder, making my changes, unmounting, and finally using e2fsck to repackage it and convert back to sparse.
Then I tried using this tool, which once again bootlooped before playing the animation. And this is all without even touching the files.
So basically, the problem is how I am modifying the partition.
If anyone can give me some advice as to how to do it properly, it would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
I had similar with the qin f21 pro.
I wasn’t able to flash my modified ROM even repacking right away (well, I did flash, it just won’t boot..).
I had to either flash original backup, or use one ROM I downloaded from XDA. (And that one did work even after many times modifying it.)
(One difference, I wasn’t able to rebuild original because one file was named ‘copy’ in Chinese. I had to change the file name, and wherever it was called in the ROM, but then it didn’t boot. So I’m not sure we’re facing the same issue.)
Isn’t bootloop always some step in verified boot? I don’t know your setup but that’s what I always thought. I had that issue when I flashed (following sometimes instructions who said it worked for him even though it doesn’t make sense ) on a locked bootloader.
Turns out @ars18 and @flipphoneguy was right - AVB is enabled. But there isn’t a vbmeta img so I am currently trying to find out where its enabled so I can disable it. If anyone has any advice let me know. Thanks
Update: So I edited boot img, like @ars18 said and I was able to upload my own unsigned vendor.img however the system.img still doesnt seem to work! Same bootloop problem.
I noticed inside lk.img there was some sorta enforcing, but I dont know what I’m doing anymore lol.
If anyone can help, it would be much appreciated!
) on a locked bootloader.