New android systems have the ext4 format. This tutorial will help you to create a flashable ZIP from FTF firmware. Basically, this is for my Sony Android devices.

Step 1

Download the Stock Firmware you want (FTF-File, aka Firmware.ftf).

Step 2

Rename the Firmware.ftf to Firmware.zip.

$ mv Firmware.ftf Firmware.zip

Step 3

Extract the system.zip to SomeFolder.

unzip system.zip -d SomeFolder

Step 4

Open Flashtool go to “Tools” -> “Sin Editor” -> Choose the extracted system.sin and push “extract” Data and get a system.ext4 file.

Step 5

Mount system.ext4 (With Fuse-Ext2, TUTORIAL) and put the files inside into a folder named system.

Step 6

Download the META-INF File and extract it to META-INF folder.

unzip META-INF.zip

Now we can even use a GUI tool, named Aroma, to do some multi-selections and radio-buttons.

Step 7

Now we have your two folders: system and META-INF. Just ZIP them!

$ zip -roZ store Firmware.zip system META-INF
  • -r or --recurse-paths Travel the directory structure recursively
  • -o or --latest-time Set the “last modified” time of the zip archive to the latest (oldest) “last modified” time found among the entries in the zip archive.
  • --compression-method cm or -Z cm Set the default compression method. Currently the main methods supported by zip are store and deflate. Important: In some cases, you have to set the compression to “Store” to be supported by some recoveries.

Step 8

Push the zip File to SD-Card and flash it with recovery.

adb push Firmware.zip /sdcard/Firmware.zip