Hello! Few questions

[southkhaki19]

Hello! I am new to the thread. I am quite excited about my a2109 as it is very underestimated in the Android community as a higher end machine. I've been quite impressed with it for the last couple months and was equally excited it actually had software updates! I have been semi looking through the new forum and searching for some answers. I see that there is random information somewhat scattered and my hopes is to gather a couple stickies and see if someone can set up a nice organized forum for us users who aren't so advanced in their android modifications. I will look through more forums and see if I can find this information but here are a few things I was primarily concerned with, esp since "4.1 Jelly Bean" update did not fix it.

1) I see that there is a possible bug or conflict on this tablet. It is messing with my external SD card. It acts like the internal memory is also an SD card so I am not sure if there is some odd conflict. It keeps creating duplicate folders and messing with my stuff on the SD card (I run a 32gb Class 10 G.Skill SDHC card)

2) Is there a way once rooted to "Mount" the tablet when hooking it into the computer. I absolutely think the "media or Camera mount" drive is crap. Its Inefficient and just not want I want it to be doing.

3) How to root and Unroot if needed. (I also found something about preventing a recovery flash when reboot in the forum "What to do when you root" but I have absolutely no clue what that is. Does this mean it will detect a change in the directory and reflash along with deleting root and reinstalling those original aplications? I don't really want to flash any ROMs but I would like to have superuser access and remove all that junkware. I think there is a conflicting program that keeps messing with my external SD card.)

Thank you again for all the help and I hope to be of service for someone in need down the line on this forum as well!

 

[mcl630]

3) How to root and Unroot if needed. (I also found something about preventing a recovery flash when reboot in the forum "What to do when you root" but I have absolutely no clue what that is. Does this mean it will detect a change in the directory and reflash along with deleting root and reinstalling those original aplications? I don't really want to flash any ROMs but I would like to have superuser access and remove all that junkware. I think there is a conflicting program that keeps messing with my external SD card.)

Thank you again for all the help and I hope to be of service for someone in need down the line on this forum as well!

The stock firmware will reflash the stock recovery (overwriting Clockworkmod Recovery) if you don't rename or delete the recovery-from-boot.p file in the /system/etc folder. It does not take away root or in anyway remove any changes you've made to Android.

As for your 1st question, I haven't had the issue you describe. As for #2, I don't know how to do that... I think someone was trying to make a custom kernel to enable that, but wasn't having any luck getting it working.

Edit: recovery-from-boot.p is in the /system folder, not /system/etc

 

[anika200]

1) Since Android 4.x there is now standard partition on the internal nand that gets mounted as /sdcard. All other storage will then get mounted somewhere else, in our case that is /sdcard2.
2) mtp and ptp are what Android will use for the foreseeable future. Things work good under Windows but Linux support sucks at the moment. There will be better Linux tools in no time though.

 

[southkhaki19]

What would the step-by-step process of rooting entail? Also, if I wanted to remove it if there were further OTA updates. I don't mean to be needy in this case, as I just do not have the experience in root. I do understand computer speak but android rooting is fairly new to me. I will further my knowledge in rooting and what MTP/PTP is though. I am sure a short writeup/tutorial with the root process/unroot process would be helpful to not only me but many others looking to get rid of the crapware.

 

[mcl630]

I intend to write a cleaner rooting guide on this forum when I have the time. For now, my old guide on the Lenovo forums is at A2109 - Clockworkmod Recovery and Root - Lenovo Community. Be sure to use the newer ClockworkMod recovery, not the old one linked in that article.

If you're running Ice Cream Sandwich use A2109_CWMrecovery-6.0.1.9c.img from https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1jde5rC0oQGWmJsYi1tLWViUWc
If you're running Jelly Bean use A2109_CWMrecovery-6.0.1.9d.img from https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1jde5rC0oQGOVRfVzNrY19SZWc

You don't need to unroot to receive OTA updates... you just need to be running the stock ROM. When you install most OTA updates, CWM will ask if you want to "Fix root", if you choose yes you'll keep root, if you choose no you'll lose it. Some updates may not give you that option (like the update from ICS to JB), you'll lose root regardless, but you can always reinstall it from CWM.

If you need to unroot manually, I gave instructions to someone on the 4th page of the thread on the Lenovo forums.

 

[southkhaki19]

Thank you for all your help. I know all of us greatly appreciate it. I do believe I will wait for a bit of a more clear/concise writeup from start to finish if you ever get to it. Looking at some of the other links you provided i had to go to about 2-3links to get some info that was still a bit confusing. I did have one last question. It looks like you have to do some boot unlocking. Now it mentioned erasing the unit itself. Does this mean that even just doing a straight root to access the factory crapware will erase all the progress that I have done including my own installs and settings and etc?

 

[Ravak]

I tried both mtpfs and go-mtpfs on Linux - both sucks. At the moment I'm using adb directly (adb push and adb pull). Looked for a "front-end" (adb viewer/explorer/whatever), but all of them (that I've found) sucked. Might have to write my onw (or at least a set of aliases).

I also sometimes use: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sand.airdroid

 

[anika200]

Here is another mtp fuse solution that is in the works, I have not tried it yet. jmtpfs

 

[Ravak]

It's also based on libmtp... Guess I will have to wait for CM10, which has USB Mass Storage option restored

 

[FloRider]

It's also based on libmtp... Guess I will have to wait for CM10, which has USB Mass Storage option restored

I thought that mass storage could be enabled in the compiler using menuconfig.

 

[Ravak]

Yes, kernel has to support it (disabled in stock kernels). Mass storage conflicts with PTP/MTP (USB Gadgets in Kernel) so I guess both will have to be compiled as modules and loaded/unloaded when needed.

In the end you need an UI to toggle between those two... or could do this via command line.

But then again, it's all theory as I haven't started really working on that (and I'm a newbie)

 

[mcl630]

Thank you for all your help. I know all of us greatly appreciate it. I do believe I will wait for a bit of a more clear/concise writeup from start to finish if you ever get to it. Looking at some of the other links you provided i had to go to about 2-3links to get some info that was still a bit confusing. I did have one last question. It looks like you have to do some boot unlocking. Now it mentioned erasing the unit itself. Does this mean that even just doing a straight root to access the factory crapware will erase all the progress that I have done including my own installs and settings and etc?

Yes, in order to root, you need to unlock the bootloader, which will wipe your device. There's no way I know of to get around that. There is a way to do a backup of your apps and data using adb, which can then be restored after unlocking, but I haven't tried it personally. I'll try it out and mention it when I rewrite the unlocking instructions.

I'm hoping to have some time this weekend to do write the tutorials.