Do we have a restore method available?

[cengiz-io]

Hello @rgerganov

I just saw your blog post and it certainly sparked some ideas on my mind.

However, since I use my car almost daily, I'd like to know if we have a restoration method available if one decides to flash the bootloader / littlekernel / partition.

I'm have embedded linux experience, particularly on ARM Cortex-A chips (and U-Boot of course) but I would like to learn more about the possible permanent damage we can do before moving further.

Thanks a lot!

[rgerganov]

Hi @cengiz-io
The method being described here is what they call "recovery" method. It is supposed to work as long as the lk.rom is not damaged. Even if you mess up the root filesystem in system.ext4, you can always recover the original one from the stock firmware using this method. So if you don't make any changes to lk.rom, the recovery method should be always available.

[St0nehead]

Can I use this toolkit to modify the Gen5w firmware? Or is it intended only for Gen5?
At the moment, I only need to change the firmware from Korean to European.
Thanks in advance

[rgerganov]

Can I use this toolkit to modify the Gen5w firmware? Or is it intended only for Gen5? At the moment, I only need to change the firmware from Korean to European. Thanks in advance

No, Gen5w is different from Gen5.

[adelie93]

I have the above head unit (Kia Niro 2019 EV). The one pictured is not mine, just a photo I found on the internet, mine is in the car of course.

Any suggestions how I can get into the bootloader menu? As you can see I do not have a "Map" button. I tried holding "Power" plus "Home" as suggested elsewhere while starting the car, but nothing happened. Am I doing it wrong or do I need to find some other buttons?

[adelie93]

I tried re-flashing it with a completely unmodified image, same result.

Also after re-flashing, all user data is gone. It gives a message about newly enrolling in UVO.
My guess is that maybe your partition.dat file is different from what it is supposed to be for my device. But I am not sure how to determine that for sure, or how to fix it...

[rgerganov]

Are you sure that you are using a firmware image from the original region (e.g. Middle East, EU, CA)? We have seen this happening when flashing an image from another region, for example Middle East over CA.

[adelie93]

Yes, it's the same region. It's the exact same firmware image, in fact.
I first used the firmware image that I downloaded to do a normal upgrade. This worked fine.
Then I tried the security_force upgrade as outlined here using the system.ext4 image extracted from the same firmware I'd just installed.

[adelie93]

Looking inside the update.zip, there is a file that looks like what is supposed to happen on a "normal" upgrade: META-INF/com/google/android/updater-script.

I won't copy the whole thing here, but here is the end:

ui_print("Write splash.img ...");
package_extract_file("splash.img", "/upgrade/splash.img");
write_raw_image("/upgrade/splash.img", "splash");
delete("/upgrade/splash.img");

ui_print("\nsystem partition formatting...");
format("ext4","EMMC","/dev/block/mmcblk0p2","452984832","system");

ui_print("\nSystem partition writing...");
package_extract_file("system.ext4", "/tmp/system.ext4");
write_raw_image("/tmp/system.ext4", "system");
delete("/tmp/system.ext4");

ui_print("Write snapshot.img ...");
write_sparse_image_no_zip("/upgrade/snapshot.sparse.img", "/dev/block/mmcblk0p10");

ui_print("\nD-Audio system update finished\n");

Looks to me like part of the update process is to write the snapshot.sparse.img file to the proper partition. Could this be causing the issue?
Is there a way to write this extra image from within the security_force framework?

[adelie93]

I wrote the snapshot.sparse.img to blk0p10 and it just boot looped. So that isn't a good idea. 😄
Re-doing the security_force install gets me back to where things were before. Basic functions work but many items still show Manage applications.