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The Recovery Image is a powerful tool developed by Google to allow the restoration of the operating system when things go wrong. Since then, it has been modified by JesusFreke to become more user friendly to end users who have rooted their mobile phone. Taking it even further, Cyanogen modified JesusFreke’s Recovery Image to allow many additional and powerful tools. This guide is designed to help you install the Cyanogen & JF Recovery Image 1.4 and to give you a run down of what you can do with it.

First up, if you haven’t already rooted your mobile phone, then read the How To Root your G1/Dream Mobile Phone guide.

Required Files

• Rooted Android Mobile (G1/Dream/Hero/MyTouch
• Cyanogen & JF Recovery Image 1.4
• MiniUSB Cable or SD Card reader (to transfer the files)
• Terminal Emulator/Better Terminal or similar application from the Android Market

To Install the Cyanogen & JF Recovery Image

1. Download the Cyanogen & JF Recovery Image to your computer.
2. Transfer the cm-recovery-1.4.img file to the root of your SD Card
3. Load up your Terminal application of choice and type the following, pressing Enter at the end of each line:

su

mount -a

flash_image recovery /sdcard/cm-recovery-1.4.img

This will then install the new Recovery Image. To test that it works, turn off your mobile phone, hold the Home button down and press the Power button. This procedure if often referred to as “Boot into Recovery mode/system”.

TIP: You can also boot into Recovery mode by using your Terminal application of choice and typing this in, pressing Enter at the end.

reboot recovery

If all went well, you should see a screen like this:

The commands in square brackets “[]” are keyboard shortcuts that you can press to select that option. However this Recovery Image is also trackball friendly, so you just use the trackball to select the option you want and then press the trackball down to select it. Here’s what each of the options mean in laymen’s terms!

[Home+Back] reboot system now
Simply reboots your mobile phone out of the Recovery mode.

[Alt+S] apply sdcard:update.zip
If you have a file on the root of your SD Card called update.zip, then this option will load and flash that file to your mobile phone.

[Alt+A] apply any zip from sd
This will load up all of the .zip files located on the root of your SD Card as a list, so you can pick and choose which file you want to flash.

[Alt-W] wipe data/factory reset
Selecting this will wipe all of your settings and data so it goes back to Factory Defaults.

[Alt+B] nandroid 2.2 backup
Creates a Nandroid Backup image, which is like a copy of the mobile phone’s operating system as it is right now. Extremely useful to have as a backup and to restore when things go wrong. Worth creating one before applying any major tweaks or modifications.

Note: Will NOT backup your EXT2/3/4 Partition.

[Alt+R] restore latest backup
Will simply restore the latest Nandroid Backup that was created.

[Alt+F] repair ext filesystems
Will run a script that will repair any errors on your EXT 2/3/4 Partition

[Alt+X] go to console
This will drop you into the Console where you can manually type in commands to run. Mainly for advanced use or those who are versed in Linux Scripting, however Cyanogen has thrown in some useful scripts for us end-users too.

Console Scripts

Type in the command in bold and then press Enter to activate.

fix_permissions
This will fix the permissions for all installed applications which is sometimes required when flashing from different custom ROMs. Useful to fix general issues with applications.

upgrade_fs
This will upgrade your EXT2 partition to EXT3, without data loss.

Changelog

This is the changelog that Cyanogen wrote about the Recovery Image.

I did some work with JF’s recovery image, merged stuff from AOSP 1.5r3, patches from others, and added some of my own stuff.

This recovery image contains:

* Nandroid 2.2 with RESTORE!
* E2FSProgs with ext4 support
* GNU Parted (command line version)
* FSCK for ext filesystems from the menu
* Various scripts, upgrade_fs (convert to ext3), fix_permissions (set app and data permissions to what packages.xml expects)
* Kernel from CyanogenMod-3.9

Changes in 1.4:
* Flash ANY .zip from your SD – by krut0n
* New color scheme and images (background from a random wallpaper site, if it’s yours let me know)
* Fixes from Donut
* Updated nandroid-mobile.sh w/ network support from pensive
* Updated GNU Parted (ext4 support, etc)

Changes in 1.3.1:
* Fix unyaffs so it preserves setuid permissions

Changes in 1.3:
* Nandroid restore capability
* Prompt before all operations that erase data
* Updated e2fsprogs
* Updated BusyBox
* Included GNU Parted (command line version)
* Removed apps-to-sd from the menu, script is still available
* 2.6.29 kernel with ext4 support
* Enable/disable USB storage (ums_enable, ums_disable)

Changes in 1.2:
* Prompt before wiping data
* Rename fix_permissions.sh to fix_permissions

Changes in 1.1:
* Fixed the framebuffer console (ALT+X).

TODO items/ideas for a future release:
* Choose which backup image set to restore
* Enable/disable UMS from the menu
* “Super Wipe” option which wipes DATA: as well as ext SD partition

Troubleshooting

If you have problems with a “no space on device” error, try using fastboot and erasing first:

fastboot erase recovery

fastboot flash recovery cm-recovery-1.4.img

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