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This is an amazing discovery & update! Thank you for the detailed write-up jonathancl.
Very interested to see if you could provide an update after you get the backup image transferred over to a SSD.
If attempting this in the future, I would definitely go with the clone method that peasodos suggested as it will be way quicker. I guess having a backup is great if anything goes wrong along the way though.
Next step----someone change the OS to allow full screen nav on pre 2016's. If an iPhone OS can be jailbroken, so can this. I don't think it would be that tough, it will just take someone with the right skills and time.
Next step----someone change the OS to allow full screen nav on pre 2016's. If an iPhone OS can be jailbroken, so can this. I don't think it would be that tough, it will just take someone with the right skills and time.
Depends on how spaghetti the code is. Wonder if they properly documented in the code.
Right now over on macrumors.com a lot of the specs on the iPhone 8 are showing up in the code in the upcoming home pod OS. Someone has the skills to search through code and find yet to be released info hidden in the OS about the next iPhone. 7s 7s+ 8 pics.....
If someone can search through iOS code, someone can search through Lexus nav OS code. If I had the skills I would... https://forums.macrumors.com/threads...#post-24883054
If he was able to mount the drive with a Windows PC, I would think Windows.
In my experience, I tried to mount a Windows formatted USB with a Mac (I know, stupid, but forgot)...the Mac immediately began formatting the drive so that the Mac would recognize it.
If he was able to mount the drive with a Windows PC, I would think Windows.
Partitions are all FAT32, which is the most most common file system.
It's probably a very light *nix derivative, but I can't tell by looking at the binaries.
I don't see a classic *nix file structure anywhere (/etc, /var, etc.), which means it's stored somewhere else, or the whole platform is some other OS.
My preliminary assessment is that modifying or updating these images is infeasible.
It may be possible to boot later builds on earlier hardware, but troubleshooting incompatibilities is likely to be hard.
This is possible on iOS because there are a ton of bored hackers playing with it. That is not the case here.
Nav data uses the KIWI format.
Based on error messages present in one of the binaries, it looks like the radio uses an ARM processor just like our phones.
The UI is developed by UIEvolution Inc (now Xevo), and the app menu markups use ujbc files, which appear to be proprietary.
Thanks to jonathancl discovery, I bought an SSD again to re-attempt cloning the factory hard drive to an ssd. I'll update this thread next week once I get everything together.
If successful I'll make a video of the startup before/after to compare how much faster the system loads and a review of the results.
Good News:
Was Successful in doing a bit by bit clone of the Factory Nav Drive to an SSD.
Was Successful in creating a backup of the factory Nav drive.
Bad News:
The car will not load the data from the SSD as if it doesn't recognize it at all. I think car authenticates the drive via the ATA lock the factory nav drive has. The ssd on the other hand is not ATA locked.
Thanks for reporting that peasodos. I was really bumped to hear about the Nav unit not recognizing the SSD despite you having a cloned copy of the original HD.
I wish Lexus made this vehicle easier to tinker with - there is only so much we can do for "improvements."
not sure if you tried to plug in the factory hard drive then hot swap again with the ssd once its booted up to see the speed difference?
So the same method you used to get passed the password lock but this time to use the ssd once its booted up and ready.
i know its not really practical to have that as a permanent setup but just wanted to know since you were able to get a fully working clone of the hdd on the ssd.
not sure if you tried to plug in the factory hard drive then hot swap again with the ssd once its booted up to see the speed difference?
So the same method you used to get passed the password lock but this time to use the ssd once its booted up and ready.
i know its not really practical to have that as a permanent setup but just wanted to know since you were able to get a fully working clone of the hdd on the ssd.
thanks for all of your work and sharing with us!
I tried that, doesn't work. When you go to the menu images are missing and when you try to route a destination it doesn't work. The car for whatever reason cannot read/load the cloned hard drive. If anyone has any other ideas for cloning the drive or suggestions, let me know, I'm willing to try.
Wow, nice breakthrough, never thought of powering up the drive in the car and then connecting it to a computer while it's powered to read it.
Looking forward to your update.
Instead of backing up the drive why not use software to clone it in the unlocked state?
I'm hoping the car will accept the new drive that not locked.
I am just thinking if you managed to get into it like this you would be able to manually update the nav files this way if you had them? and just overwrite the current ones?
08-16-17, 09:36 AM
