How did I 'almost' brick my phone (and recovered from it)?

I use CM7 (nightly-74). When I heard that LG had released 0622 baseband version I couldn't resist to go back to stock ROM and try it out. :) And I did exactly that... However, somehow, during the update using the LG PCsuite, it said 'failed to communicate with phone' and asked me to remove battery, restart and plug in USB and start over again. When I tried that, after the LG boot-splash, I got this screen. :( And that's when I knew, I had screwed up my phone!

Then I went to modaco-forums to find that Paul had given a nice tutorial on how to flash your phone to the stock ROM (using nvflash). I successfully flashed the stock ROM. But little did I knew that worse was waiting when I would boot the phone. My baseband firmware was no more! Meaning my phone had become a wifi-tablet :(( Luckily, I found this thread in modaco-forums on how to flash baseband-firmware (using smartflash). Instructions were pretty simple and using this, at the end, I was able to get back my baseband to 0622 version :D (phewww!!)

Now, I just had to manually install CWM (ClockWorkrecovery Mod) version 4.0.0.5 and restore my CM7 (nightly-64) from the nandroid backups. Now I'm enjoying the nightly-74 on CM7 with the latest baseband firmware!

Manually installing clockworkmod (CWM) recovery on LG O2X

Strange as it seems, on my phone, 'ROM Manager' does not allow an upgrade to the CWM after 3.0.2.8. :( So, I wanted to install it manually. The steps I followed were from the one given by our very own Paul on modaco forums. However, I wanted to understand what exactly those 'install-clockworkmod-windows.bat' kind of scripts did. Here it is... (I used the windows batch file in order to install CWM)

# copy over the psneuter binary to your phone

> adb-windows push psneuter /data/local/psneuter

# give this binary on your phone, the executable permission> adb-windows shell chmod 4755 /data/local/psneuter

# run this exe, (psneuter exploit to gain root access)

# you wouldn't need it if your phone is already rooted(?)

> adb-windows shell /data/local/psneuter

# wait the device to come online (as the above exploit would have killed the adbd)

> adb-windows wait-for-device

# copy the CWM image over to your phone> adb-windows push clockworkmod.img /data/local/
 

# place this image over to the appropriate location?

> adb-windows shell dd if=/data/local/clockworkmod.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p7

Clockworkrecoverymod v3.0.2.8 bug! :(

Seems like this version does not properly restore the nandroid backups. I tried to restore using this version and the restore succeeded. However, during the bootup, (LG O2X) it used to hang on the second LG screen! The solution is to upgrade it to later version (latest verion 4.0.0.5) seems to work properly. I'll write a blog on how to manually upgrade CWM sooner...

Using LG Optimus 2X under USB debugging mode on Ubuntu

If you want to develop/debug applications or even connect ddms/adb to your LG-O2X, you need to setup udev rules, in order for it to be detected by the OS. I'm assuming here that you have already installed android SDK for this purpose, if not please do so (google it!) before proceeding.

In order to do this, at first you need to open a terminal Applications->Accessories->Terminal. Then type in the following commands into your terminal. As soon as you enter the command below, you might be prompted for your password. Enter it to proceed with privileged access.

    gksudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/90-android.rules

In the text editor which opens, enter the following line:

BUS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="1004", OWNER="<userName>", GROUP="<groupName>"

Where: 

1. <userName> is your user name on this machine. Yes! this means that this setting only works you alone! 

2. <groupName> is the name of the group you belong to on this machine. 

3. 1004 is the vendor ID of LG (Courtesy: theandroidphone) 

4. (Google on how to get your username and groupname if you don't know!)

Save and close this file. Then type the following command on your terminal:

    gksudo service udev restart

After this is done, plug-in the USB cable of your phone (if it's already plugged in, remove and re-plug) and in your phone enable USB debugging by: Settings->Applications->Development->USB debugging.

Then type the following command to make sure your phone is getting detected:

    adb devices
You should see something like below in the terminal:

List of devices attached
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX    device

PS: All this information is from my PC running Ubuntu-10.10 (the Maverick Meerkat).

Installing Cyanogenmod7 (Gingerbread build) on LG Optimus 2X

Even though the guidelines to do so are described nicely in the CyanogenMod wiki, there are small things this wiki forgets to mention, which caused me a lot of pain when I followed the steps mentioned in them. This blog is an attempt to make the process of installing cyanogenmod as smooth as possible. These were the steps I followed on my O2X (LG Optimus 2X) to successfully install Cyanogenmod ROM.

Step0. Terminology:
If you are new to the world of android-hacking or new to android, in general, make sure that you are familiar the terminologies mentioned in this wiki.

Step1. Pre-requisites:

Do make sure that you satisfy all these before proceeding!

1. Make sure that you have atleast 50% (to be on safer side, 75% :D) of battery charge remaining. This is highly important! If a low battery shuts down the installation process, then there's a very high chance that you are going to brick your phone!
2.  The Recovery Mode somehow doesn't mount the internal sd-card of your phone. So, you have to make sure that you have another external sd-card plugged-in of atleast 2GB in size (on a safer side).
3. If you have data like contacts, sms, call-log and such other stuffs, now's the time to get a backup of them (onto sd-card). Titanium Backup is a nice app for this purpose. Basically, all of the data on phone will be wiped-clean during this process. So, backup all those things on your phone, which you feel is important to you.
4. You need to download/install all of these tools/files on your PC, before proceeding further: (This tutorial assumes that you are working on a PC with Windows-OS running on it)
1. Install ADB. There's a very nice tutorial on how to install this tool. I recommend you to go through this link for more details. (Please do NOT perform the step4 mentioned the above tutorial link).
2. Download busybox: Download this zip and extract its contents.
3. Download psneuter: Download this zip and extract its contents.
4. Download Superuser apk: Download this apk file onto your PC.
5. LG USB drivers (v3.2.1): Download this exe and install it to your PC.
6. It will be handy if you can extract the contents of all the zip files above into a single directory.
5. Install ROM Manager on your phone: This is a very useful tool in booting to recovery mode and then installing ROM's of your choice.
6. CyanogenMod ROM: Go to this link and download the latest nightly OR if you want to play safe, you can download the nightly numbered 53, because that's the one I downloaded and it works fine for me :). Download it to your pc and then transfer to over to your phone's sdcard. DO remember to store this zip file in the root of your external-sdcard and name it as update.zip!
7. Google Apps: Default cyanogenmod ROMs do not have any google apps installed on them, so you would have to install them by yourself. You can download the zip file from here and then transfer it to the root of your external-sdcard and let's say that you name it as google.zip.

One small thing before you proceed, as soon as you boot into recovery mode, your phone goes into an eternal vibration mode. Don't panic. It's a bug in recovery mode and it will not affect the installation process.

Step2. Rooting:

You need to root the phone prior to installing cyanogenmod. Here are the steps you need to follow for this: (In step4, the commands appearing the first indentation level are the ones you will be typing on the command prompt and the ones in the second indentation level are the ones you will type inside the shell opened by 'adb'.)

1. In your phone, enable 'USB Debugging': Settings->Applications->Development->USB Debugging.
2. Connect your phone to this PC via USB cable.
3. On your PC, open command prompt and 'cd' into the directory where you had extracted all the files from the zip files downloaded.
4. In the command prompt type the the following commands:
1. adb push busybox /data/local/
2. adb push psneuter /data/local/
3. adb push su /data/local/
4. adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/busybox
5. adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/psneuter
6. adb shell
1. /data/local/psneuter
7. adb shell
1. mount -o remount,rw -t ext3 /dev/block/mmcblk0p25 /system
2. mkdir /system/xbin
3. /data/local/busybox cp /data/local/su /system/xbin/su
4. chown 0:0 /system/xbin/su
5. chmod 6755 /system/xbin/su
6. ln -s /system/xbin/su /system/bin/su
7. exit
8. adb push Superuser.apk /system/app/Superuser.apk
5. Reboot.
6. Your phone has been rooted.

Step3. Installing Cyanogenmod:

Note that when you are in recovery mode, you should use the volume up/down buttons to navigate the options on the screen. In order to select an option, press the power button.

1. Open the 'ROM Manager' application on your phone.
2. Tap on 'Flash ClockworkMod Recovery'.
3. Select LG Optimus 2X in the menu that pops up.
4. You will get a 'Superuser Request' prompt. Select 'Remember' and then 'Allow'.
5. As soon as the flash is complete, you'll see a 'Successfully flashed ClockworkMod Recovery!' dialog box. Tap OK.
6. ClockworkMod Recovery should be installed on your phone.
7. Tap on 'Backup Current ROM' in order to backup your current ROM (which is, in most cases, the manufacturer supplied, stock ROM).
8. 'Reboot into Recovery'.
9. Select the option 'Wipe data/factory reset'.
10. Select the option 'Wipe cache partition'.
11. Select the option 'install zip from sdcard' and then select 'apply /sdcard/update.zip'.
12. Select the option 'reboot system now'. 
13. Now, your phone should boot into the Cyanogenmod ROM!

After this, if, you need to install the google-apps using google.zip:

1. Open the 'ROM Manager' and select 'Reboot into Recovery'.
2. Select the option 'install zip from sdcard' and then select 'choose zip from sdcard'.
3. Select the 'google.zip'.
4. Now, after your phone boots up, you'll be taken through series of asking you to confirm what are all the apps you want to be installed. Select the ones you need and you're done!

Lemme know how the info in this blog worked for you! Feedback on whether this content was useful to you would also help. : )

Happy modding!