[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Reflashing initfs directly on the device

[From: Frantisek Dufka]

Hello,

just to let you know that is is possible to reflash initfs partition 
directly from the device. N770 initfs specific script and binaries of 
flash_eraseall, nandwrite and mkfs.jffs2 from mtd-utils-1.0 and  are 
here http://fanoush.webpark.cz/maemo/#initfs so you can recreate 
modified initfs directly from existing data on the device.

I reflashed it at least three times and it simply worked. Working steps are:
1. remount initfs read only just to be safe (to stop jffs2 garbage 
collecting kernel thread)
2. erase the flash (flash_eraseall /dev/mtd3)
3. flash jffs2 image (nandwrite -a -p /dev/mtd3 initfs.jffs2)
4. reboot (dsme daemon runs from mtd3 partition so it may crash if it 
tries to read something from mtd3 device - did not happen to me)

Happy bricking :)

Frantisek

P.S. You should still recover your device over USB with normal flasher 
if something goes wrong. Do not erase or write anything to mtd1 
partition and do not use -f -j nandwrite options and you should be safe 
(I hope :-)