My Tecno Spark 10 Pro (MediaTek Helio G88, Android 12) bootlooped after a banking app froze. Now it boots straight into stock recovery with the message that Android cannot be loaded and data may be corrupt. The bootloader is unlocked. I hooked it up to an Android tablet via OTG with Bugjaeger. The device uses A/B partitioning and was running on slot b. I switched it to slot a via fastboot, but slot a gives the exact same recovery loop, so the issue is clearly a corrupted userdata partition failing to mount during early init. All I need is my local KeePass database file from internal storage. I know modern Android uses File-Based Encryption with keys sealed in the TEE, but since my bootloader is unlocked, is there any known way via fastboot, MTK tools, or custom boot images to extract or decrypt that single file before I wipe the device? Or is it completely unrecoverable once the filesystem fails to mount?

My Tecno Spark 10 Pro (MediaTek Helio G88, Android 12) bootlooped after a banking app froze. Now it boots straight into stock recovery with the message that Android cannot be loaded and data may be corrupt. The bootloader is unlocked. I hooked it up to an Android tablet via OTG with Bugjaeger. The device uses A/B partitioning and was running on slot b. I switched it to slot a via fastboot, but slot a gives the exact same recovery loop, so the issue is clearly a corrupted userdata partition failing to mount during early init. All I need is my local KeePass database file from internal storage. I know modern Android uses File-Based Encryption with keys sealed in the TEE, but since my bootloader is unlocked, is there any known way via fastboot, MTK tools, or custom boot images to extract or decrypt that single file before I wipe the device? Or is it completely unrecoverable once the filesystem fails to mount?

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    try downloading this boot.img file, and booting it with fastboot boot tecno_ki7_boot.img. let me know if it tries to boot android (shows booting animation), fails, and goes to recovery just like now.

    it’s from this firmware file. (most firmwares for your phone on the net is android 13, this is 12)

    (if this works, my idea is to unpack the boot.img, change persist.sys.usb.config and ro.adb.secure on default.prop to gain adb during boot. then we can use logcat to fix the issue and make android boot)

      • hexagonwin@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        you mean it

        • tries to boot android, fails and goes to recovery?
        • or it doesn’t even show the boot animation and just hangs on fastboot? or reboots immediately?

        i’ll need details to help…

          • hexagonwin@lemmy.todayEnglish
            0·
            29 days ago

            ok. in that case you can unpack that boot image, edit default.prop in ramdisk like i mentioned above and try fetching logcat.

            i’m away from my workstation for a while so i can’t edit the boot image for you now. you can try it yourself, or if its fine please wait a few weeks

              • hexagonwin@lemmy.todayEnglish
                0·
                17 days ago

                sorry for keeping you wait for so long. please try downloading this boot.img file and booting it. i’ve modified the original boot.img’s default.prop to enable ADB.

                boot that using fastboot boot tecno-ki7_boot_adb.img, and right after that run sudo dmesg -w to see any new USB device appearing. Also open another terminal and try adb devices, adb shell etc and see if you can communicate with the device while it’s in the boot animation stage.

                if the new boot.img i provided doesn’t work please let me know, we might need to nullify vbmeta

                • lipen@reddthat.comOPEnglish
                  0·
                  5 days ago

                  Hey! I found a little bit of time to try it out! Thank you very much for trying to help me! When I trying to boot it up I getting:

                  fastboot boot tecno-ki7_boot_adb.img
Sending 'boot.img' (26862 KB)                      OKAY [  0.655s]
Booting                                            FAILED (Status read failed (No such device))
fastboot: error: Command failed

                  and logs from dmesg: https://0bin.ch/?51a49ed0a5778a18#DPxaTLsafGXC2jEokDCF5mZ2YiexKJHoYkz7GCthwMNa Also adb devices and adb shell does nothing.

                  • hexagonwin@lemmy.todayEnglish
                    0·
                    5 days ago

                    hmm that’s weird.

                    after the fastboot boot command fails, what does the device show on screen? is it stuck on fastboot? or reboots?

                    perhaps doing fastboot boot as sudo might help.

                    did you install fastboot from your linux distro’s repo? what version is it? (it might be very outdated and be the cause of issues)