Retrieving device information

This page describes how to obtain memory information and the script.bin from an A10 based device. Each method specifies which files to send to the linux-sunxi mailing list.

FEL dump with no serial console access required (default) (bootinfo + script.bin)
This method uses the soft FEL mode to allow easy extraction of both needed DRAM configuration and script.bin. You'll need the sunxi-tools for that.

./fel version ./fel read 0x42400000 0x82d0 boot1.header ./fel read 0x43000000 0x20000 script.bin ./bootinfo boot1.header ./bin2fex script.bin script.fex Mail the output of "fel version, "bootinfo" and "script.fex" to linux-sunxi mailing list.
 * 1) Make sure you are using STOCK vendor firmware! To ensure you are using a stock memory settings and script.bin
 * 2) Power off the device.
 * 3) Hold down home button. Or vol+ / vol- button if you have no hard home button.
 * 4) Power on the device.
 * 5) While still holding down the home button press the power button at least three times.
 * 6) Release home button.
 * 7) Connect the device using USB OTG if not connected already.
 * 8) From sunxi-tools on your computer run:

Note: FEL mode achieved using reset/recovery method can not run above commands. This method goes FEL before even bootloader and script.bin have both been loaded into memory and is why it is possible to read them using fel command.

FEL dump with serial console access (bootinfo + script.bin)
This method uses the soft FEL mode to allow easy extraction of both needed DRAM configuration and script.bin. You'll need the sunxi-tools for that.

./fel read 0x42400000 0x82d0 boot1.header ./fel read 0x43000000 0x20000 script.bin ./bootinfo boot1.header ./bin2fex script.bin script.fex Mail the output of bootinfo and script.fex to linux-sunxi mailing list.
 * 1) Make sure you are using STOCK vendor firmware! To ensure you are using a stock memory settings and script.bin
 * 2) Power off the device.
 * 3) Connect UART console
 * 4) Hold down 2 on your keyboard
 * 5) Power on the device.
 * 6) Wait until boot1 says it enters FEL mode
 * 7) You no longer need to hold down 2 on your keyboard
 * 8) Connect the device using USB OTG.
 * 9) From sunxi-tools on your computer run:

bootinfo from tool
This method uses a10-meminfo-static tool to extract DRAM information from any Linux based OS running originally on the device. Requires you to have root access on the device.


 * 1) Make sure you are using STOCK vendor firmware! To ensure you are using a stock memory settings and script.bin
 * 2) Download a10-meminfo-static from: https://github.com/maxnet/a10-meminfo/raw/master/a10-meminfo-static
 * 3) Put it on a FAT formatted USB memory stick or microSD card.
 * 4) Start the A10 based device without an SD card, so that you boot the original stock firmware.
 * 5) Optionally: install a terminal from app store or use SSH.
 * 6) Start a terminal (or ssh in remotely if a SSH server is installed).
 * 7) "su -"
 * 8) Insert the SD card.
 * 9) Do "mount" to see where the SD card (or USB memory stick) got mounted and note which partitions are RW mounted (and which Read-Only).
 * 10) "cat /a10-meminfo-static > /data/cache/a10-meminfo-static" where  usually is something along the line of /mnt/sdcard and where /data is mounted rw. If /data/cache is not writeable, find a location that IS writeable (from the previous step). Sometimes / is rw mounted.
 * 11) "chmod 755 /data/cache/a10-meminfo-static"
 * 12) "/data/cache/a10-meminfo-static" OR "/data/cache/a10-meminfo-static > //a10-memdump.txt" Note that for the second option, it may be required to adjust the path to sdcard.
 * 13) Send E-Mail to linux-sunxi mailing list with output copy/paste or attach the txt file.

script.bin from nanda mount

 * 1) Make sure you are using STOCK vendor firmware! To ensure you are using a stock memory settings and script.bin
 * 2) Start the A10 based device without a SD card so that you boot the original Android stock firmware.
 * 3) Optionally: install a terminal from the app store or use SSH.
 * 4) Start a terminal (or ssh in remotely if an SSH server is installed)
 * 5) "su -"
 * 6) Insert SD card.
 * 7) Do "mount" to see where the SD card (or USB memory stick) got mounted and note where nanda is mounted.
 * 8) If not mounted do: "mkdir /mnt/nanda" and "mount -t vfat /dev/block/nanda /mnt/nanda"
 * 9) "cat /script.bin > /script.bin"
 * 10) If you manually mounted "umount "
 * 11) Put script.bin somewhere where you can hyperlink it and send a link to the mailing list.

script.bin using USB copy

 * 1) Make sure you are using STOCK vendor firmware! To ensure you are using a stock memory settings and script.bin
 * 2) You also need console access.
 * 3) When boot1 starts, send 1 on the serial console (or use magic key combo if supported).
 * 4) Connect USB OTG cable and copy script.bin (and .fex if available) from the virtual USB drive.

Note : Before sending it to mailing list, you can look for the matching fex files in https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-boards/tree/master/sys_config/a10 with your tablet/board's script.fex. If there is match, then you can use that boardtype for building.