Using recovery to access the root and home file system
asked 2019-03-30 02:02:05 +0200
This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >75 is welcome to improve it.
I write this in the hope that it will help someone (most probably a hacker spirit) and save some time and headache.
I have Sailfish Xperia X. After upgrading, I did some changes to couple of files. Unfortunately I mistyped something in one of the files (of course I did a backup like <filename>.bkp) but after reboot the gui was gone - only light grey screen and no interaction. Factory reset being the last option, I found following articles very useful</filename>
https://jolla.com/sailfishx-linux-instructions/
https://jolla.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204709607#3
So in sum what needs to be done is following:
Force your Xperia to fastboot mode:
- hold Volume Up key down and connect USB cable
- ensure that the LED at the top of the display area is lit in BLUE colour (if not disconnect cable, release the key and try again)
From the Sailfish directory execute the command:
sudo fastboot boot hybris-recovery.img
This brings up the RNDIS interface on your PC, so one could connect to the phone from a terminal
38: enp0s29u1u6: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether b2:0a:6b:09:bd:9d brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 10.42.66.67/29 brd 10.42.66.71 scope global dynamic enp0s29u1u6
When in recovery mode select shell or ssh and if ssh login from other terminal
$ telnet 10.42.66.66
-----------------------------
Jolla Recovery v2.0
-----------------------------
Welcome to the recovery tool!
The available options are:
1) Reset device to factory state
2) Reboot device
3) Shell
4) Perform file system check
5) Run sshd
6) Exit
Type the number of the desired action and press [Enter]:
3
If logical volume is not present, you need to run lvm lvchange -ay to enable the logical volume holding the root and home file systems
After mounting the root
mount /dev/mapper/sailfish-root /mnt
I was then able to solve my problem and reboot.
Special thanks to all the people making this possible.
Really appreciated!