I am comfortable with ADB and fastboot type commands but am uncomfortable installing 3rd party tools which have rootkit potential (like ClockworkMOD).
Is it possible to use ADB or fastbook to make a backup of the existing Stock ROM before making any changes?
Since ADB has shell access, there should be a way of accessing raw devices and creating a backup but I haven't seen any articles which address this.
Thanks.
Welcome to the AndroidForums, ccapon!
The answer to your question is: sort-of
.
The issue lies with the fact that you want a quiescent system when you are trying to make a backup of anything. That's what a custom recovery gives you--a very slimmed-down O/S that basically is just running the custom recovery process (/sbin/recovery), and adb daemon/server (/sbin/adb), and a few other minimal things.
The custom recovery gives you the basic tools for doing the backups that you want to do, but the stock recovery does not--especially since it doesn't provide you with a means to interact with a quiescent system like a custom recovery does.
If you've unlocked your bootloader, you can always soft-boot CWM (i.e., without installing it) and simply make your backups from there:
- put your phone is fastboot / bootloader mode
-
fastboot boot clockworkmod.img
(of course, you'd have to substitute the "
clockworkmod.img" file with the appropriate version of CWM that you'd want to run).
You could also view the CWM source (
https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_bootable_recovery), identify the base commands for doing the operations you desire, and invoke them directly from an adb shell that booting into custom recovery provides you--all without actually using the custom recovery that's launched. That's a pretty big endeavor, however
.
Cheers and I hope this helps
.
