[Pkg-n900-maint] Something usable for N9/N950?

[Pali Rohár]

Hi!

On Thursday 21 July 2016 22:55:02 Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I have both N9 and N950 here. Unfortunately, both are useless, as
> developer mode can not be enabled (because Nokia servers are down?).

There are backup of Nokia apt repositories, so if you have terminal 
installed, you should be able to use backup mirror. N9/N950 are still 
Debian based, so dpkg/apt-get is preinstalled. Beware that deb packages 
are signed and dpkg/apt heavy patches to track from which repository is 
package installed. System packages cannot be "upgraded" to package from 
non trusted Nokia repository...

> There's tutorial -- how to install Sailfish. I'd love that.
> Neccessary images for N9 are no longer available. N950 images are
> still there, but... tutorial needs developer mode, and that's no
> longer possible.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRncXK6dmMc&feature=youtu.be
> 
> Is there any way out of this for me?
> 
> Would it be possible to download image of working N9/N950 from some
> device, so that I could flash it?

Dumping image from one device and flash it another was never implemented 
for any Nokia Maemo device :-( And because N9/N950 uses omap security 
hardware to store and sign hash of hashes of system files I think it is 
impossible without braking whole HW security...

Anyway, I have backups of N950 firmware files (with also unreleased 
leaked PR1.3 image). Problem is that software-hardware security reject 
downgrade of firmware, so once you upgrade to "wrong" version, there is 
no way out -- fix it... Damaged CAL is permanent and bootloader lock 
write access to CAL and reject booting kernel... So I decided to stay 
with PR1.2 on my N950 device and it is used as non-hacking phone.

I decided to not play with these devices to prevent total malfunction. 
On N900 it is possible to flash anything to any version (except cellular 
firmware which prevent downgrades) and IIRC even with damaged CAL 
partition phone can boot kernel (via USB then load initfs+ssh and via 
nandwrite restore backup of working CAL). So N900 is more hacker 
friendly... in my opinion there is no software way to brick this device 
(in case you do not damage hardware). N950 can be bricked and locked by 
own (non replaceable software) security mechanisms lot of easier...

-- 
Pali Rohár
pali.rohar at gmail.com
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