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Friday, December 21, 2012

Unlock Xperia S bootloader from Ubuntu 12.04

Introduction


I tried to unlock bootloader from Windows 8 and in vain. Windows 8 installed some drivers for fastboot and never allowed an option

Now it became interesting, I came to my Ubuntu system and started exploring



After getting the unlock key from sonymobile, I tried in Windows 8. It did not work, then came to Ubuntu 12.04 and it worked happily.

To get the unlock key for your Xperia S (or some other xperia mobile) follow upto 7 steps

http://unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com/instructions

From 8th step, instructions for applying the unlock key to unlock your phone in Windows, but no explanation of how it is done in Ubuntu. So here I explain what I tried and what worked

Before going into what I am talking, see my earlier article on how to install Flashtool in Ubuntu 12.04

and come here. In brief, download flashtool, extract. Have ia32-libs installed and have udev rules 

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0fce", SYSFS{idProduct}=="*", MODE="0777"

Using Fastboot from Ubuntu to Unlock 


After extracting Flashtool, go into flashtool folder from file browser, it should look like



Double click x10flasher_lib which should take you inside x10flasher_lib folder. 

[[[Note if you don't have open in terminal, proceed after ending square brackets if you already have this or if you use Linux Mint

If you do not have Open in Terminal install it from command line using 

sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal

Logout and login again to enable nautilus open terminal. If you have Linux Mint, this is already installed and enabled and you do not need to do this!!]]]

Now from inside x10flasher_lib right click blank space and select Open in Terminal





You should be inside x10flasher_lib in command line. 

Become root (this is very important)

sudo su



Backup your phone data (contacts, sms, images, songs ...), switch off phone

Entering your phone into fastboot mode 


Step 1:

After switching off, Connect one end of your usb cable to phone and do not plug other end of usb cable to your PC/Laptop

Step 2: 

Press and hold Volume up button and plug other end of usb cable into your ubuntu system (Your phone led should glow in blue color)

Step 3: 

From inside x10flasher_lib directory as root, execute the following command to test the version

            ./fastboot.linux -i 0x0fce getvar version


You can see from the above screenshot, fastboot.linux displays version as 0.5. It means we are good to go and unlock the phone

Step 4:

To unlock your phone (fingers crossed), do this (paste the unlock key you got from email after 0x)

          ./fastboot.linux -i 0x0fce oem unlock 0x

It should unlock, now unplug usb cable and switch on your phone.

Step 5:

Happily install recovery and install custom ROM of your choice, 

for e.g, I tried this combination and it worked!

Install Advanced Stock Kernel and install XTXperience 7



For installing custom kernel, you can run Flashtool in fastboot mode




From here, it is fairly straightforward, flash the kernel using "Select Kernel to Flash" button

If you flash Advanced Stock Kernel, it will be prerooted and have recovery installed. Custom rom can be installed from recovery

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Paradigm shift

I have upgraded windows 8 release preview to Windows 8 Pro in one system

Till now I was not open to this sort of ideas, but it is mind-blowing

It is a paradigm shift, kudos Windows 8

It is not the speed which is different from other OS, it is the way we operate with apps which makes it look like a science fic movie, I am not joking, it is more true, the bigger your monitor is!

Say for e.g, I search something in search engine, 10 results are displayed in a screen and page numbers for moving to next page, and I scroll down to bottom click next or the page number

Now see how the same thing in Bing app in windows 8, it displays all results continuous, just a scroll of mouse moves result after result from right to right, the more you scroll the more results all flowing from left to right, shocking you with deluge of data, truly looks like a science fic movie.


Just a tap on images and lakhs of images just to be seen on your mouse scroll

There is no distraction, the more you a concentrated guy, the more you will get immersed in your task completely
 
 




Then another eye opener, panorama in Places app, wow

No amount of seeing the tiles screenshot can justify the beauty of Windows 8, it is to be experienced, period.


After using fullscreen apps and coming to desktop makes me think why are apps so small!

It is marketing guys who try to stop you from using and getting this science fic feel of UI, break your mind barrier and openly approach Windows 8 and you are there for a pleasant shock

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

After 2 months of slackware 14 use


This blog is in praise of Slackware 14

These are my views

Slackware 14 is one of the most powerful operating systems

After 2 months of use, I am finding slackware 14 to be still awesome. It still has lots of surprises

I have not seen a single crash all this long, how did they do it (After I wrote this blog post, Amarok crashed, oops ... updating blog)

Throw whatever load at it and it handles as if it is nothing. Even I moved harddisk to a new motherboard and there it ran without questions

It is super fast, I have not compiled kernel, but I can tell no kernel compilation can bring this much speed

The same system when I am running other distributions seems to take loads of time to even launch apps, this one blows the speed competition away

Slackware 14 is a beast and can handle very powerful systems/hardware with super ease!

So I am thinking of installing this linux in my main computer and push ubuntu into virtualbox, :)