Understanding the Spica

[barrybul]

I was wondering which partitions and what parts of odin can brick the phone.
I guess if I can get into download mode I can always recover the phone.
So my question, what parts are needed to boot into download mode.
boot(SBL) and PBL seem to be needed, but also modem and efs?
Kernel, boot image and boot parameters don't seem to be necessary.
So in odin it should be safe to flash 'pda' and 'csc', but 'phone' and 'modem' can irrevocably brick the phone.
Can somebody confirm this?

At the moment I guess I have stock boot, sbl, modem and efs. Are there significant advantages to flash these components to newer versions which are spread across the net? With boot/sbl I would think, never flash if it isn't broken but what about the modem/efs for gsm fixes?

[darth_llamah]

I guess if I can get into download mode I can always recover the phone.

Yes, you can.

So my question, what parts are needed to boot into download mode.

Bootloader (PBL and SBL) and apparently data stored on bml3 partition after bootlogo (starting at offset 0x30000 of bml3)

boot(SBL) and PBL seem to be needed, but also modem and efs?

PBL and SBL are our bootloaders.
Modem (aka Phone) is baseband firmware. It is not needed for download mode, cpu loads it from internal flash to baseband cpu during each boot-up process.
Efs stores IMEI and (AFAIR) Wifi MAC plus some other stuff. Don't touch this at any circumstance.

Kernel, boot image and boot parameters don't seem to be necessary.

We don't have bootimage- this is needed for qualcomm based hardware.

So in odin it should be safe to flash 'pda' and 'csc', but 'phone' and 'modem' can irrevocably brick the phone.

No, it won't.

but what about the modem/efs for gsm fixes?

Phone.bin can be flashed, some firmwares contain it.
You will never get a copy of Efs (except for backups from your phone)

[barrybul]

Thanx darth_llamah

No, it won't.

Can I conclude that only flashing 'boot' in odin can irrevocably brick your phone?

You will never get a copy of Efs (except for backups from your phone)

Already made a tar.gz and dd backup of efs so should be safe here.

[darth_llamah]

Can I conclude that only flashing 'boot' in odin can irrevocably brick your phone?

If something goes wrong- yes. But Odin will not flash bootloaders with standard parameters (start Odin, check Debug ONLY and look which options become aviable)

[goofy]

For example in the Kitchen you do replace the Kernel and the rest of the system, yet there already needs to be LK2.02 on it, why?
Doesn't the recovery mode use a different kernel than the running system?

It's interesting for me too. Can someone explain me it in few words please?

[pavel103]

It is written by LeshaK here that it is necessary to flash the bootloader files during an update from Android 1.5 to Android 2.1. I updated Android on my Spica to 2.1 using the JH1 version. I have noticed recently it doesn't contain the bootloader files (it has 5 files instead of 8 and the 3 missing files are the bootloader ones: logo.png, Sbl.bin and boot.bin). But my phone booted and worked properly. I don't understand why it is necessary to flash them during an update from 1.5 to 2.1.

[sysrq11]

How can I determine the mapping from /dev files to partitions?

I activated USB-debugging and logged in with adb shell. and ls into /dev and found all eleven bml* files from bml0 to bml10. I executed a mount, but it only lists /dev/bml8 mounted on /xbin. But what about the other partitions, how can I determine where they are mounted?

To clarify again: I am interested in the how, not in the what. I don't want to know what partitions exist and how they are mounted, but I want to know how I can determine which partitions are present and how they are mounted.