Author Topic: USB Mountr (Read 1941 times)

Streetwalrus · « **on:** January 07, 2017, 10:31:42 pm »

So I screwed up the bootloader on my PC. Again.

I was able to fix it but it's always a pain to borrow another computer to download an ISO of my favorite distro and prepare a USB stick to repair that every time.
There's a neat application called DriveDroid that lets you use your phone as a USB drive for this exact purpose, but on my phone it was setting the gadget driver to the wrong mode, causing it to emulate a CDROM drive instead of a more conventional thumb drive (which Arch doesn't like), plus it's not open source, so I made my own application which is much faster and does things properly.

Source code and downloads are on GitHub (APKs in the releases tab, root is mandatory).

I tested it on my (2012 model) Nexus 7 and my OnePlus 2, not with my Nexus 4 though since it's on the unrooted stock ROM and I need to charge it as well. I've heard of a Nexus 5 and a OnePlus X working fine with it, so I presume compatibility should be fairly good.

Have fun with it.

xlibman · « **Reply #1 on:** January 07, 2017, 10:36:53 pm »

Nice Streetwalrus. Also I'm glad your PC and phone are safe without precious data loss.

Streetwalrus · « **Reply #2 on:** January 07, 2017, 10:38:36 pm »

I've lost data on my phone too many times.

I never store anything important on it though so it's fine.

xlibman · « **Reply #3 on:** January 07, 2017, 10:40:26 pm »

Ah ok. At least you learned unlike certain people

(I remember someone who lost his Cemetech contest entry about 6 times to RAM clears, yet still made no backup at all)

Juju · « **Reply #4 on:** January 07, 2017, 10:55:57 pm »

Well, that's something that is pretty useful.

(also the ID lol)

gameblabla · « **Reply #5 on:** January 08, 2017, 03:23:59 am »

This is very useful, i wasn't aware this was possible on Android !
I do wonder if this can be used to mount other operating systems as well like FreeDOS for example...
If so then there's no need to use Easy2Boot or buy a Gotek

I kind of wish i had this earlier because i too screwed up my mbr with an update.

Thanks @Streetwalrus !

Streetwalrus · « **Reply #6 on:** January 08, 2017, 05:01:02 am »

CDROM mode would be useful for legacy type isos which expect booting from an actual CD unless you use something like unetbootin, but it's only available in newer kernels and I don't really want to overcomplicate this. It should work fine with anything you can dd straight to a USB stick though. Not sure about freedos.