Yet Another YAFFS Discussion

In previous posts, I've discussed rooting and imaging Android devices.  While the exploits change from one Android version to another, the principals are the same as I detailed in the past.  Most Android devices, small portable devices like smart phones in particular, use NAND flash memory with the yaffs file system for storage.

If you are new to building binaries from source code, then this tutorial is probably not for you.  However, I hope to explain it well enough that you can still follow along even if you have very little build experience.  For starters, make sure you have the appropriate build tools.  In Debian and Ubuntu, it's easiest to to install the "build-essential" package:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

Though the next step is not required, you'll likely want to install the "git" software versioning system so you can easily obtain and install the latest yaffs source code.  Otherwise, it is possible to download the source code as a tar archive from the source code repository.  I'll be demonstrating the git method here:

$ sudo apt-get install git

Finally, you'll likely want to install the module for easy access.

$ sudo apt-get install module-init-tools

Building the Module

In order to mount Android images, download the latest source code from the online repository.  You'll probably have to install git if you haven't done so in the past.  It is not standard in most Linux Distros.

$ git clone git://www.aleph1.co.uk/yaffs2 Cloning into yaffs2...
remote: Counting objects: 7027, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (4247/4247), done.
remote: Total 7027 (delta 5566), reused 3473 (delta 2700)
Receiving objects: 100% (7027/7027), 3.43 MiB | 304 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (5566/5566), done.

The source code is downloaded into a subdirectory called 'yaffs2' is used the example command above.  If you want to clone into a different directory, add the directory name as an argument following the web address.  If the directory doesn't already exist, it will be created.

Next, change into the source code directory and issue the "make" command to build the source according to the parameters already laid out in the Makefile.

$ cd yaffs2

$ make 
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.38-13-generic/build M=/home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2 modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.38-13-generic'
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_mtdif.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_mtdif2_multi.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_mtdif1_multi.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_packedtags1.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_ecc.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_vfs_multi.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_guts.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_packedtags2.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_tagscompat.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_checkptrw.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_nand.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_nameval.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_allocator.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_bitmap.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_attribs.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_yaffs1.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_yaffs2.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_verify.o
  CC [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs_summary.o
  LD [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs2multi.o
  Building modules, stage 2.
  MODPOST 1 modules
  CC      /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs2multi.mod.o
  LD [M]  /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs2multi.ko
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.38-13-generic'

Finally, install the module.

$ sudo make mi #or sudo make modules_install

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.38-13-generic/build M=/home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2 modules_install
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.38-13-generic'
  INSTALL /home/jlehr/projects/yaffs2/yaffs2multi.ko
  DEPMOD  2.6.38-13-generic
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.38-13-generic'

Mounting a yaffs image

I was planning to finish this discussion with mounting a yaffs image, but its a more complex topic than I can reasonably handle in a few lines.  Look for a discussion on the complexities of mounting a yaffs image, and maybe the methods for obtaining one, in a future post.