We are proud to announce Ratchet, a quick fix for Asus Transformer Primes that are experiencing the “unknown serial” issue (reference thread). This tool will recreate the p5 configuration partition, by writing the UUID, and asking the user for the serial number to write out. The latter is found on the packaging box of the Transformer Prime, or on the stickers on either the tablet or the keyboard dock.
By registering this serial number in the configuration of the device, the tablet is from then on able to check for OTA updates from Asus.
About the “configuration partition” (mmcblk0p5)
This is a partition on Asus devices that should contain per-device data, such as the serial number, UUID, sensor calibration and Wireless / Bluetooth MAC addresses. Units that suffer from the “unknown serial” issue are simply missing this data (presumably an error in manufacturing / quality control). As stated above, this tool will recreate this partition to a state that will have correct UUID and serial number.
The other information on the partition (sensor calibration / MAC addresses) is not vital to normal system operation. To clarify, the MAC addresses just default to the vendor burned-in MAC addresses (Azurewave/Broadcom), so this is not an issue.
Howto
This tool requires your device to be rooted, and you need to have ADB access to your device.
You can, however, also get a temporary root shell by means of the recently discovered exploit ‘mempodroid’, which is also explained in detail on this thread.
The archive for Ratchet contains a binary for mempodroid, just in case.
If your device is not rooted beforehand.
* Unzip the archive.
* Make sure the USB drivers for the Transformer Prime are installed, as well as ADB (Android SDK).
* adb push mempodroid /data/local/
* adb push ratchet /data/local/
* adb shell (You’ll now see a shell@android:/ $ prompt)
* chmod 755 /data/local/mempodroid /data/local/ratchet
* /data/local/mempodroid 0xd9ec 0xaf47 /data/local/ratchet
This is where the magic happens. Make sure you enter your serial number correctly, all in caps!
* Reboot your device.
* Done!
If your device is already rooted (su/Superuser installed).
* Unzip the archive.
* Make sure the USB drivers for the Transformer Prime are installed, as well as ADB (Android SDK).
* adb push ratchet /data/local/
* adb shell (You’ll now see a shell@android:/ $ prompt)
* su (You should now see a shell@android:/ # prompt)
* chmod 755 /data/local/ratchet
* /data/local/ratchet
This is where the magic happens. Make sure you enter your serial number correctly, all in caps!
* Reboot your device.
* Done!
Afterwards, verify if ‘About tablet’ in Settings shows your Serial Number.
You can, alternatively, check by ‘getprop ro.serialno’ in an adb shell.
Downloads
Ratchet is released under the GNU GPL v2 license. Source code is available on AndroidRoot.mobi GitHub.
Credits
- IEF
- kmdm
- RaYmAn
- Bumble-Bee
- lilstevie
If you’d like to donate to our cause, you can do so here: