This is just my record of how I migrated from a stock rooted installation of FRF85B on my Nexus One to CyanogenMod 6 Alpha 1 which was just released to the wild a couple of hours ago. CyanogenMod is an independent 3rd party effort by a group of volunteers to produce an enhanced Android ROM that mirrors the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) relatively faithfully.

NOTE: As the “alpha” tag indicates, this is not production quality stuff yet. I don’t even know how well my phone is working now after I installed CM6, so I’m hesitating to even use the work “upgrade” and instead I just say “migrate”. Read the release notes in CyanogenMod’s forums carefully and use your discretion.

What I started out with:

1. A Nexus One phone.
2. A working stock rooted Froyo installation.
3. A bunch of user level applications, both from Market and self-installed APKs.
4. Donate version of Titanium Backup.
5. ClockWorkMod Recovery Image (but I’m pretty sure AmonRa would work just as well)
6. ADW Launcher installed from Market.
7. SMS Backup & Restore installed from Market.

My steps:

1. Downloaded the CM6 binary and Google Apps zip distro from the CyanogenMod release page.
2. Made use of the opportunity to remove some unused apps to reduce complexity and risk.
3. Moved all apps installed on SD card back to the phone. I just didn’t want to risk having problems recovering those applications after the migration. To do this, just go to Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications -> On SD Card and go into each application listed there and move them back to the phone.
4. Went into ADWSettings and backup launcher configurations to SD card. After that, I uninstalled ADW Launcher. This is because CM6 comes with its own mix of ADW Launcher and I did not want Froyo’s automatic restoration of apps to clash with ADW Launcher.
5. Ran Titanium Backup and backed up all user apps and data.
6. Backed up all SMS using SMS Backup & Restore.
7. Selectively backed up certain system apps, namely “Android Keyboard” for me, for my custom dictionary. You really have to use your discretion here. You can try to backup all system apps, but I don’t know how well that’ll work.
8. Rebooted into ClockWorkMod Recovery Image.
9. Did a full nandroid backup.
10. Installed CM6 and Google Apps zip distro.
11. Did a full wipe.
12. Rebooted the phone.
13. Did Google account sign-in.
14. Waited for all apps that I previously downloaded from Market to be restored automatically. There will be a notification at the end of this process.
15. Fired up Titanium Backup and restored all user data (not app) for applications that are downloaded from Market.
16. Restored app and data for applications not downloaded from Market (self installed APKs).
17. Went to Settings -> ADWLauncher and restored ADWLauncher settings from SD card. This didn’t work for widgets; I had to re-add widgets after this but my app icons on the home screen and other settings were generally restored properly.
18. Restored all SMS using SMS Backup & Restore.

Done. As of right now, my Nexus One seems to be in working condition. Not sure what bugs will turn up but digging up bugs is the main purpose of this exercise, isn’t it?

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