Tethered TWRP / Clean Root / Android exFAT+NTFS support for Hi12 Dual Boot

Tethered TWRP / Clean Root / Android exFAT+NTFS support for Hi12 Dual Boot

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  • #38767
    Nicolas Giraud
    Participant
    • Posts: 24

    Hi,

    A couple of days ago, I read this interesting thread  about the HiBook Toolbox, a set of script developped by kostyamat for the HiBook. I also had noticed a CWM flashable zip with exFAT/NTFS drivers for the Chuwi Vi10 Pro.

    Since the HiBook is extremely close the the Hi12 hadware wise, I thought it could be a nice solution to get a working custom recovery, proper root and possibly exFAT/NTFS support for the external SD all in one go. I’ve contacted kostyamat on the ChuWi forums and supplied him with a boot.img file, but no news so far.

    So yesterday I browsed through the Hibook Toolbox scripts’ code, found nothing that looked unusual and/or worrysome, so I took the plunge and ran it on my Hi12. The unlock bootlader script ran flawlessly, but needed a little maniplulation afterwards to reboot to Android properly. The disable verity script ran well too, and found out I had already disabled system partition write protection (which is correct since I already rooted my Hi12 with the previous procedure).

    Next I ran the boot temporary TWRP recovery script, and found out that it did not work with spaces in the current directory path. I uploaded the latest official flashable SuperSU zip, and the exFAT/NTFS drivers flashable zip to my Hi12’s SD card root, and manually ran the missing parts of the script, an TADA!, found that the HiBook TWRP image works on the Hi12! Some minor things are broken though: touch doesn’t work, so you’ll have to either connect a USB mouse, or plug your keyboard dock and use the trackpad. I flashed SuperSU, rebooted, and voila, proper root installed, fully functional.

    Next I had another go at TWRP, flashed the exFAT/NFTS drivers, and bam, after reboot I can now share my exFAT formatted external SD between Win10 and Android, which is a huge step forward for me!

    I’m currently trying to reach Kostyamat and the exFAT/NFTS drivers author to get their permission for repackaging their work in an easy to use package for Hi12 users.

    Meanwhile I’ll soon write a step-by-step guide of the procedure I followed for the impatient!

    Stay tuned!

    #38776
    Anonymous
    Inactive
    • Posts: 49

    Brilliant! Thx for sharing!!!

    #38777
    Nicolas Giraud
    Participant
    • Posts: 24

    So here are the detailed steps for the impatient.

    As usual, let’s start with the BIG HUGE DISCLAIMER section. These steps worked for me, I have a working experience of tweaking Android devices, flashing custom roms, rooting and other tweaks. You’ll have to be comfortable with using the command line to run console commands, and I will take absolutely no responsibility for any bricked tablets, deleted files and so on, USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

    Next, credits go to the original authors of these mods, kostyamat for the HiBook Toolbox and ImADev for the driver package, which itself is a hack of Lurker00‘s open source drivers. These guys did all the hard work, my contribution is limited to testing and fiddling with scripts 😉 i am myself a developer so I know they worked a lot more than I did. Many thanks to them!

    First, if you already rooted your Hi12 through the previously available method, I strongly recommend that you run the “Fully unroot” command from the SuperSU app settings menu.

    What you’ll need: your Hi12 Dual Boot version tablet PC, a USB/micro USB data cable and another PC, in my case I used my good ol’ Chuwi Vi10 Ultimate. The procedure should work on any Windows version from 7 to 10.

    1. Download all required files
      1. Download the HiBook Toolbox from this link (and here’s the original thread). The original file was posted on NeedRom and you need to open an account to download, so I mirrored it to Drive for convenience.
      2. (optional) Download the exFAT/NTFS drivers flashable zip form here. Once again I mirrored the original file to Drive for convenience, the original thread can be found here.
    2. Unpack the hiBook toolbox archive to your hard drive, and very important, be sure that there are no spaces in the directory path, otherwise some scripts will fail!
    3. Navigate to the directory where you extracted the archive
    4. Run IntelAndroidDrvSetup1.10.0.exe to install the Intel Android drivers, and reboot your PC
    5. Boot your Hi12 to Android
    6. Connect it to your PC with the USB data cable
    7. Open a file explorer, locate your Hi12 (it should be listed something like “Cw Hi12”)
      1. copy the SuperSU zip to the internal SD root (UPDATE-SuperSU.zip located in the extraction folder’s TWRP-recovery  subfolder)
      2. copy the exFAT/NTFS zip (chuwi-android-fs-1.0.4-install.zip) to the internal SD root
    8. Navigate back to the directory where you extracted the HiBook Toolbox archive
    9. Unlock the bootloader
      1. Run the first script, 1.Unlock_Bootloader.bat, which will unlock your bootloader. Take good note that this will factory reset your Android, which means all your apps and data on the Android partition will be lost (your Windows partitions and external SD will be left untouched, no worries). If you want to restore your stuff later, I recommend backing up your user apps with Titanium Backup and create a flashable zip, or any backup solution you like.
      2. Your tablet will first reboot, select Android boot, then it will enter fastboot mode, and you’ll see messages in the bottom left corner of the screen that factory reset is happening.
      3. Once the process is finished, you should see, on the right part of the screen, that the bootloader has been unlocked (line in red).
      4. Disconnect the data cable from the PC
      5. Reboot yout tablet by selecting “Normal Boot”, using Vol+ / Vol- keys and validating with the power button, you should boot to Android, note that this initial boot might take long (5-10 minutes possibly).
      6. In my case I believe I selected the “Reboot” instead of “Normal Boot”, which caused my tab to constantly reboot to recovery (screen with the green Andy wiggling its antennas while a glowing blue hypercube rotates out of its chest), which initially I feared to be a nasty bootloop. It wasn’t. If this happens to you, don’t panic. When rebooting, immediately after selecting the Android boot, hold down Vol- until you enter fastboot mode, then select “Normal Boot”, and you will boot normally. Now that we’ve done that, the hardest work is over. now that the bootloader is unlocked, we’ll be able to boot in an alternate recovery.
    10. Disable system partition write protection (Verity)
      1. Once booted into Android, reconnect the data cable to the PC
      2. Run the second script, 2.Unlock_Verity-boot.bat, that will remove write protection from the system partition, required for flashing mods from the custom recovery. Note that if, like myself, you already had rooted your tab, this step will simply tell you that verity is already disabled. In case you had not, I can’t guarantee this script will work, since I could not test this particular case. However since basically it uses the command adb disable-verity, just as the first root procedure did, I am pretty confident that it will work.
      3. Next, open Android settings, and check that you have a menu item “Developer Options” somewhere at the bottom. if not, go to “About tablet” and hit the “Build number” rapidly until a popup tells you “You are now a developer”.
      4. In “Developer Options” make sure that the item “OEM Factory unlock” is turned on.
    11. Root the tablet with official SuperSU package
      1. Run the third script, 3.Outside_boot-TWRP-recovery.bat, which shoudl reboot the tab in a temporary TWRP recovery. I had some trouble with this one, because the script does not handle directory paths with spaces. If the script fails, you will have to manually run the commands in the script, but for now as a workaround just double-check that you run the script from a directory without any spaces in its name, period. Depending on how I get permission from kostyamat to repackage his scripts, I will provide a fixed script later.
      2. From TWRP, flash UPDATE-SuperSU.zip then reboot to Android
      3. Open the SuperSU app to check that root succeeded, you can even try to install a root app like AdAway or Titanium Backup to test it out
    12. (Optional) Install exFAT/NTFS drivers for Android. This will allow you to use any media (microSD and USB media) with these formats and not be imited to poor old FAT32 (and its tiny weeny 4Gb file size limit) for sharing your microSD between Windows and Android.
      1. Rerun the third script, 3.Outside_boot-TWRP-recovery.bat, to boot once again to a temporary TWRP session
      2. From TWRP, flash chuwi-android-fs-1.0.4-install.zip then reboot to Android
      3. Insert an exFAT or NTFS formatted microSD or USB pen drive and use the file explorer of your choice to check that you can access it in both read and write  (I personnally use ES File Explorer pro)
    13. DONE! Now go enjoy a better Android on your Hi12.

     

    #38781
    Nicolas Giraud
    Participant
    • Posts: 24

    Last words of warning, just to be sure 😉

    As I said previously I wrote these steps for the impatient like me, who like to tweak and tinker and won’t mind a couple of bumps on their road, so use extreme caution. Unless you exactkly know what you’re doing, I’d strongly recommend to wait some time for a properly packaged version of this with ready-to-run scripts.

    I’ll keep you guys posted about that, so stay tuned 🙂

    #38789
    John
    Participant
    • Posts: 7

    Awesome news!!

    #38824
    Anonymous
    Inactive
    • Posts: 49

    Brilliant, waiting for Marshmallow ROM 🙂

    #38852
    Alimente
    Participant
    • Posts: 8

    i tried this but at point 11b i get into twrp but cannot choose anything! Solutions?

    And yes i put the files in a directory without spaces.

    #39063
    Nicolas Giraud
    Participant
    • Posts: 24

    @Alimente touch doesn’t work as this TWRP was built for the HiBook. You can use a USB mouse or the touchpad of the keyboard dock if you have it.

    I’m planning to build a TWRP image for the Hi12 if I can get the original author to share some source code.

    #39073
    Alimente
    Participant
    • Posts: 8

    @Nicolas Giraud I was trying your tethered twrp with both, keyboard & mouse . Both not working

    #39104
    Nicolas Giraud
    Participant
    • Posts: 24

    @Alimente It’s weird… I tested a USB mouse and it worked, as well as the touchpad on the dock. I’m afraid I can’t help more right now, alternatively I’ll test CWM from AndroidFRBL and let you know if it works.

    I tried to get in touch with kostyamat, the dev who ported TWRP and wrote the HiBook Toolbox scripts, so that he may share some code / directions with me to get a custom TWRP for the Hi12 (hence with touch support), but I haven’t got any PM back so far.

    #39327
    Dom
    Participant
    • Posts: 26

    I hope hell answear soon. I really appreciate all rhe work youre putting into this project?

    #39374
    Martin Masar
    Participant
    • Posts: 7

    omg, you are my hero! just got mine today, and it worked like a charm!! wasnt able to do that without you!! finally I can run adaway!!

    #39483
    Mickey Y
    Participant
    • Posts: 42

    Thank you so much. I have tried your Steps, and it works perfectly.

    However your step 9.a did not wipe out all my user data and app etc, All my users files are intact at step 9. I am now having a proper Root without update notification, as well as having a 128G exFat SD card that can share with my Windows 10 OS.

    Thanks again.

    #39489
    Anonymous
    Inactive
    • Posts: 49

    So does it flash TWRP or only temporary TWRP? And anybody tried to flash xposed?

    #39575
    Nicolas Giraud
    Participant
    • Posts: 24

    Hi,

    I’d recommend not to permanently flash TWRP, as

    1. this TWRP image is for the HiBook and has a few bugs on the Hi12
    2. you’d lose the capability to apply OTA updates

    I’d like to try flashing Xposed, but for now Xposed for Lollipop/Marshmallow is in alpha state, so I think I’ll wait a bit.

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