This tutorial will take you every step of the way through installing CyanogenMod 4.1.99 on your G1 phone – the first “legal” version of CyanogenMod (after Google sent cyanogen a cease and desist).
The steps outlined in this tutorial were gathered from the official announcement of 4.1.99 on the xda-developers forum. For more information on 4.1.99, see this thread.
Warning: though unlikely, it probably technically possible that following the steps outlined in this tutorial may result in your phone no longer working. Not following these steps in the right order, would increase those chances. With all of that said, it’s very unlikely that anything bad will happen.
See the link at the end of this tutorial, once you’ve completed it, to upgrade to CyanogenMod 4.1.999.
- Start out by making sure that you have Cyanogen Recovery 1.4 installed on your G1. If you do not, follow steps 6-20 in this tutorial.
- Download the file signed-dream_devphone_userdebug-ota-14721.zip (the Recovery image, not the Radio or System image) from the Android Developer Center. Then download the file update-cm-4.1.99-signed.zip (mirror). Copy both files to your Android’s SD card. Note: I copied them to my phone in OS X (as illustrated below) – you can use Windows or an Android FTP client – it doesn’t matter. As long as they’re copied to the root of your SD card, you’ll be fine.
- Now power off your phone. Hold down the Home button when powering it back on, so that you enter recovery mode. Select nandroid v2.2 backup and click your trackball.
- This will perform a backup, just in case it’s needed.
- Once the backup has completed, select apple any zip from sd and click the trackball.
- Select signed-dream_devphone_us… and again, click the trackball.
- You’ll be notified that you’re going to install a new image. Click the Home button on your device to confirm this action.
- The new image will now install.
- Once the installation process has completed, you’ll be taken back to the recovery screen. DO NOT reboot your device at this point. Instead, once again select apply any zip from sd.
- This time, select update-cm-4.1.99-signed and click the trackball.
- As with the previous image installation, click the Home button on your phone to confirm.
- This will install CyanogenMod 4.1.99 on your phone.
- Once that installation has finished, you’ll be presented with the recovery mode screen, again. This time, select go to console.
- Click the enter key on your keyboard
- You should now be presented with a command prompt. At the prompt, enter fix_permissions and click the enter key on your keyboard.
- A bunch of text will fly by. You might notice that some of the text says No such file or directory. This is normal, depending on how your phone was previously set up.
- Once you’re back at a prompt (the text has stopped scrolling) – type the word reboot and click the enter key on your keyboard. Your phone will now restart.
- Your providers ‘boot’ screen (in my case T-Mobile) might be displayed for slightly longer than normal. Don’t worry. Eventually the CyanogenMod Android logo will appear – and it too may be displayed for longer than normal. Again, don’t worry.
- Once your phone finishes starting up, select Settings from your Applications, and then About phone from the Settings list. In the Mod version section it should say CyanogenMod-4.1.99. That confirms that you’ve successfully installed CyanogenMod 4.1.99. Congratulations! You now have a completely legal modded G1.
- Launch some of the apps on your device. Confirm that the proprietary programs like Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps etc all work. If you experience any issues, try asking for help on this thread at the xda-developers forum. Be sure to include as much and as specific information as possible in order to receive a timely reply.
- Once you’ve finished upgrading to 4.1.99, you can upgrade to version 4.1.999 by following this tutorial. The process is much faster (fewer steps) – but again, you must have completed the steps in this tutorial first.
what if you dont have a mt3g and dont have a key board to enter permissions in the console.
rials6 –
I suspect you could do it via the Terminal app, but because I don’t have a MT3G, I can’t confirm that. This tutorial is specifically for the G1, because that’s the Android phone I have.
If I had to guess – and it would be just a guess – you can probably get away without running fix_permissions before you reboot, as long as you do it (via Terminal) RIGHT after you boot into 4.1.99 the first time. And reboot again after you run it.
You can use the keyboard in the MT3G console by long-pressing the Menu button.
just outta curiosity, why are some recommending a wipe and some not? Lot’s of issues on xda with some peeps. I do lots of reading before i do anything new on my phone & it’s hard to follow what to do sometimes because ask 5 different people & you’re likely to get 5 different answers!
Andrés,
Thanks! rialsi6 – with the info that Andrés has provided, I would now change my suggestion to running fix_permissions before rebooting at all, using the long-press Menu to bring up the keyboard.
lb9819,
I can only guess at this one. Not running fix_permissions after installing 4.1.99 may cause problems that require a wipe. It also seems some people just prematurely wiped without even trying fix_permissions, or wiped simply because they didn’t care about having to reinstall apps. All I can say for certain is that the steps I outlined above are exactly what I did with my G1, and everything is running perfectly. Gmail, Calendar, YouTube, Market – everything. Nothing needed to be replaced, no apps were removed or needed to be re-installed.
lucky you! I need to do a wipe appearently. Nothing google is working for me. otherwise this seems faster that his last stuff. Can’t wait for a update!
ive been trying this for a while on my g1. i am coming from cm4.0.4 and everytime i try to run the recovery img i get an “installation abort” mesege. im thinking this is because i havent fixed my permissions. me being a noob must ask, how can i do that?
zhect,
Did you download the file: signed-dream_devphone_userdebug-ota-14721.zip – exactly that one? Not the radio image, not the system image – the recovery image for 1.6?
Thank you! 40 pages on xda and this tutorial worked perfectly the first time!
yea i believe i dl that one. ima try again just in case. but now i also lost the cyanogen recovery and have the htc with a diamond.
well turns out i had the wrong recovery image so i downloaded the cm recovery1.4 and flashed it using the terminal and then i just followed youre steps and i got it right. thanks for the help! really appreciate it.
Thank you for making this great tutorial! Cyanogen should’ve worked with you, and included this in his official thread at xda-developers — probably wouldn’t have had _half_ the problems that he’s been complaining about lately.
Not that I blame him, of course, but you have to admit that even for someone technically minded, the “instructions” on xda-developers can be a goddamed mess.
Ross & Andrés:
The soft keyboard on the myTouch / Magic is *not* available on the console in the system recovery loader. It’s only available once you’ve booted into Android, so owners of this device would be unable to run fix_permissions until *after* a reboot.
Has anyone tried it this way yet?
Whoa… no wiping is mentioned in the guide. Before everyone who follows this guide spams xda if they have strange problems , they should WIPE their device before they apply the CM 4.1.99 update. You’ll lose your data and installed apps!
I do have CM recovery 1.4 and I am getting the can’t open error when I try to flash the ADP image, I check and I am using recovery one.
Any issues with rogers G1? (already modded with 4.1.11)
Chris – correct. I don’t know why so many people immediately suggest wiping. I would use that only as a “something didn’t work” last resort. There’s no need to wipe, unless you run into problems. Some folks have mentioned that their Google Apps didn’t run until after they did the wipe. Mine do, perfectly fine, without the wipe. But, I don’t know if those folks followed the steps I did, or tried it another way.
Jeremy – G1?
Deek – you’d have to wait and see if a Rogers customer can comment (I don’t have Rogers) – but if you can mod to 4.1.11 I see no reason why not. But again, because I’m not a Rogers customer, I can’t say for 100% certain (tho I’m 99% certain).
Yes it is a G1.
Jeremy – just to confirm – it’s on the root of your SD card? And how did you get it there? My guess is that it’s a corrupt image file, so perhaps deleting it, re-downloading it, and using another method to put it on your SD card would be the first thing to try.
It is on the root, and I transfered to SD via usb cable. I have DL’ed it three times now and still no go
I can’t get the recovery flasher to work. I get the error “backup failed”. Is this because I already have donut?
Jeremy – at this point I’m honestly not sure what the problem might be. Are you coming from a previous version of CyanogenMod or an unmodded phone?
Confused – it shouldn’t matter that you already have Donut. Do you have the recovery flasher installed, and it won’t update the HTC image, or it flat out won’t install (the Recovery Flasher itself)?
The recovery flasher is installed and i have 400+ megs free on my sd card but when I press the Backup Recovery Image button I get the error “Backup FAILED”
Ian – yup, looks like. sadly it looks like the permissions to use the touch keyboard don’t work.. so you can’t load the keyboard to set the permissions.. don’t really know what to do at this point.. glad i ran a backup though.
Cyanogen – we need a fix for the MyTouch
I followed the instructions on this site and everything worked perfectly.
To fix the Touch Input issue, uninstall Touch input (from the manage applications menu) and then download and install the new version here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=567294
just a note that Cyanogen has updated his instructions to wipe after installing the HTC image.
For myTouch / Magic users: According to his latest tweet, Cyanogen has an update in the works and has suggested we wait for it:
http://twitter.com/cyanogen/status/4637034451
Hey, i was wondering if i could use these steps coming from CM 4.0.4?
no one seems to give me an answer anywhere i ask lol
Joseph: I believe the procedure is the same, so regardless of what you’ve got on there at the moment, you start from the Dream devphone recovery image, then slap Cyanogen Mod on top of that.
Alright thats what i thought =] thanks for clarifying, im going to do this now lol.
Followed instructions exactly on a G1 with 4.1.11.1, no wipe necessary. Thanks!
This isnt going to get rid of my Root is it? i dont see why it would, im just curious
Followed the steps. no wipe. no problems. Touch Input was my only problem.
question i have a unlocked g1 using rogers right now, if i do install the cyanogen will it lock my phone ? as i have read from searches i have past through, im not sure though i love cyanogen but if it locks my phone its ok
David: This process just affects the Android software itself, it has no effect on whether your phone is network-locked or not. If your phone is unlocked, it’ll stay that way.
“Your providers ‘boot’ screen (in my case T-Mobile) might be displayed for slightly longer than normal. ”
In my case its just “HTC DREAM”
That just displayed for like 15 minutes for me, so I had to boot in recovery and restore the latest backup. I don’t know what went wrong?….
I tried both this and the “wipe” method and after all is said and done, every time I select “Settings” I get an acore force close. Any suggestions?
i have this root but now i want my donut 1.6 firmware is there any way i can get it without unrooting my phone????? thanks for all your help
If you have a Magic/myTouch 3G it’s better to wait until Cyanogen makes his work.
If you try to install the 4.1.99 in a Magic, you’re wasting your time because you can not use the keyboard to fix the permissions in the terminal. Yesterday I tried a few times (even updating the touch input) and it doesn’t work.
So I recommend you to wait
brad – if you follow this process you will have Donut on your phone (G1) – but the cyanogenmod version of Donut.
Others who have Magic/MyTouch 3G – Axold is right. Wait for cyanogen to release his version/update for those models.
Doesn’t get any better than this. I completed the entire process. No problems or issues with Google apps. Cheers! Thanks for sharing!
I currently have 4.1.11.1 installed on my phone. A few questions,
1. If i update to the 4.1.99 will it erase any of my already current data?
2. Will the CM Updater app still detect updates?
3. What is new in 4.1.99 over 4.1.11.1 besides making it legal?
Thanks in advance…
I also have a T-Mobile G1, running Donut, and I am also getting the “Backup FAILED” message. I am following the “Steps 6-20″ of the other link and I am stuck at #15. I didn’t already have Flash Recovery 1.4, so I installed it.
I tap “Backup Recovery Image” and I see the “WORKING, DO NOT INTERRUPT” message flash very quickly – like a tenth-of-a-second long.
my phones laggy as hell booting, starting, it wont let me dial phone numbers…. and is very retarded unless i kill all apps that are running……
back to 4.1.11.1 with nandroid
i have a g1 with the danger spl …i have another partition on the sdcard (when i tried out hero)
kn anybody give me any useful tips to get this going?
You can apply the fix_permissions anytime, it is located in /system/bin/fix_permissions and I have applied it a couple of days later when I remembered to apply it. Just when you remember, apply it and then reboot and you should be all set.
If you are still running CM 4.0.4 do you need to update to a different build to get the market update and if so which rom do you have to update to??
JasonL – 1) probably not, but backup anyway. 2) I don’t know, I don’t use CM Updater. 3) check the changelog for all updates/changes on the xda developers forum.
glycolized – going from stock Donut to 4.1.99 should work (a friend has done it, but reported the same backup problems as you). I *think* the issue lies w/ Flash Recovery 1.4 not being entirely Donut compatible. But I can’t say that for certain. My friend just skipped the backup step, and rebooted into the CM Recovery 1.4. From there, the installation went fine. But again, this is something someone else did, not me, so I can’t say for sure what will happen.
Yoshi – 4.0.4 was the last build I used before going to 4.1.99. I don’t know if one of the unstable releases (eg. 4.1.11.1) included the updated Market. I know that 4.1.99 *does* include the new market.
But I thought the market was one of the propietary apps that arent allowed in the new mods
Yoshi – correct, it’s not allowed to be included in CyanogenMod. It’s a part of signed-dream_devphone_userdebug-ota-14721.zip.
I never did fix_permissions when installing 4.1.99 have a G1 , Everything seem fine, however it lags frequently tho. Should i still do the fix_permissions????? now running 4.1.999. Thanks