How to safely testing a modifed recovery?

[haveaniceday]

Hello together,

I would like to test changes to the recovery, found here: https://github.com/ubports/android_bootable_recovery/
Specifically I want to change some of the contained bash scripts.

How can I safely do this?
What do I need do pay attention to in order to avoid bricking my device?

With kind regards

[advocatux]

@haveaniceday fyi I've moved your question from OS (Discussions on development of Ubuntu Touch) to Support (Discuss and solve problems with other users).

[UniSuperBox]

Nah, this is pretty developer-y... but I'll let it slide this time

The only way you can logically brick your device is by corrupting the bootloader... as long as it starts, you are fine. If nothing else, you can run the UBports Installer without checking the Wipe option to completely reinstall.

Note that ubports/android_bootable_recovery is only used for the Oneplus One, Fairphone 2, and Nexus 5. You can learn more about building these images here: https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/porting/ubp-5.1.html

[haveaniceday]

Well, I got the support needed - so it fits

[haveaniceday]

@UniSuperBox said in How to safely testing a modifed recovery?:

Note that ubports/android_bootable_recovery is only used for the Oneplus One, Fairphone 2, and Nexus 5. Y

What is the Aquaris M10 FHD (frieza) using as recovery? "TWRP"?

[UniSuperBox]

The other devices use the recovery that was built by Canonical. We modified it to make ADB available all the time (which is not secure by any means)

[haveaniceday]

I want to modify the recovery such that it mounts /data when it is encrypted.
Now, in the docs of Halium it reads:

You will also need to ensure the /data partition is formatted with ext4 and does not have any encryption on it.

https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/porting/installing-16-04.html

This explicitly states that encryption must not be present. Why is that? Does the recovery lack the capabilities to use LUKS? Can I add this feature by building my own recovery?

[haveaniceday]

While searching for the right recovery to modify, I found the Canonicle documentation stating it is not on Launchpad [1]:

The upgrader will be run from the recovery partition. [...] Here is the source code for the recovery partition upgrader (it is not on Launchpad).

The link leads to [2]. This website does not exist anymore. Ubports does not have a frieza branch in the GIT repo [3]. So apparently the frieza recovery might have become unavailable. Am I wrong?

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ImageBasedUpgrades/Upgrader
[2] https://code-review.phablet.ubuntu.com/gitweb?p=CyanogenMod%2Fandroid_bootable_recovery.git;a=shortlog;h=refs%2Fheads%2Fphablet-4.4.2_r1
[3] https://github.com/ubports/android_bootable_recovery

[UniSuperBox]

Unfortunately, Canonical shut down that service last year. Luckily, I kept a backup of all of the repositories in BackBlaze (but I didn't clone them somewhere public, many were too large to be accepted by GitHub). I'll try to restore the backup of android_bootable_recovery

[UniSuperBox]

All done! Restic is the best thing ever. https://github.com/ubports-android/CyanogenMod_android_bootable_recovery

[haveaniceday]

@UniSuperBox Very nice, thank you!