Mohit

Everyday atleast one member in this forum is asking about how to make his own CFW, how to add mods, how to add apps, themes and many more questions about modding and making a CFW. So I decided to compile a tutorial which will contain almost everything about firmware modding. This tutorial will help the newbies as well as the CFW makers( ). Newbies, just cover this whole thread and soon you will come up with your own cfw. And CFW makers, just go through this thread before finalizing your CFW, you could have missed something out. Or I may have missed something so u can tell me the missing parts to be added.

Credits:
Before making the ultimate tutorial I just want to say that I may have combined many threads by many members of this forum to this thread. So credits to Die2mrw007, Nikship, Prayaas Aggarwal, shaswat, Xtreme.Infinity, Aryacooldude, RAZR, debsin, Shivam94, Pavan061994,Nihar, LRajesh555 and many more present in this forum.
And also credits goes to them who are totally responsible for the symbian modding. Without them symbian modding couldn't have reached to this stage. Some of the great modders are:
Il.socio: For rompatcher+, Navifirm, Nokia Cooker and many more firmware modding tools and mods.
CODeRUS: Father of symbian modding. Without him symbian modding scene could never be realized. 10202be9 file description. Installserver/S^3 rompatcher/and many more important mods which we use. He is still helping with Symbian^3 modding.
Doctorly: For the Core Editor. Without him we couldn't have created a CFW.
PNHT (Szakalit, Adonix & Steven25): Contributed hugely to the s60 modding scene. Ported C6 firmware to 5800 & other devices. Developed NFE to edit the rofs files and many more things.
newcooler: For the nokia firmware cleaner.
binh24: For the repartitioned C6/N97 Firmware files and many more mods.

And many other great modders like Die2mrw007, upakul, 008rohit, sklchan, liliatungary, Chrish marsh, Draculaboy, lamerfall, devilyazdan and many members from this forum, DM, PNHT etc.
Sorry if i forgot to mention some modders' names. I can't remind all of them this instant. I'll continue adding their names when come to my mind.

and finally to LRajesh555 (me) for writing this tutorial without losing patience.


Ok now we will need to know some terminologies.
FW: Firmware
OFW: Original Firmware
CFW: Customized/Cooked Firmware
MCU: Its the core part of the fw. Most of the stuffs are included in it if the fw files are not repartitioned. But most of the CFWs r repartitioned. Repartitioning gives us more free space to put our stuffs in the section we can modify more easily.
PPM: The rofs files. These can be modified without causing much damage to the phone.
APE: The UDA file of the fw. It is the C: drive (phone memory) of our phone. So it will be better to leave it untouched if u want to get more free space in your C: drive.
Cooking: Customizing.
Mods: Modifications. Any readymade file in the fw which is modified to bear much impact in the phone. For example a speed mod will increase the speed of the phone. Actually modders have already modified some files and provided them to us which are known as mods. We only need to add them to our rofs. Mods will replace the unmodified files & will tweak the performance in phone in a better way.


Firmware Tools :
Before going to create your CFW you need to have all these tools.
1. Navifirm: Needed to download the OFW
2. Nokia Cooker: To edit the fw files like core, rofs2, rofs3 etc.
3. Nokia Firmware Editor: Used to edit or customize rofs2.
4. Nokia FW Cleaner: Used to delete the built in apps in rofs2.
5. Sis Contents: To extract sis files.
6. RSCEditor: To edit resource (.rsc) files.
7. SISXplorer: SISXplorer allows you to Inspect and Extract all the files contained inside the 3rd Edition installation packages. Using SISXplorer you can extract all the images from 3rd Edition Themes, deeply Inspect the content of each file using the Integrated Hexadecimal Viewer. And Much More.
8. Petran GUI: Used to edit and compress .dll and .exe files so that we can get more free space in the rofs2 to put more stuffs.
9. MBM Converter
10. SVGB to SVG Converter
11. SVG to SVGT Converter
12. MIF maker: Amobile application used to convert .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif images to .mif
13. Mediabar Editor: Used to edit the mediabar.
14. Nokia qwerty keyboard editor
15. Hex Editor: used to edit binaries
16. Theme Icon Switcher: Used to switch the icons between two themes.
17. SIS Ware
18. ResEdit: Used to edit the resource (.rsc) files.
19. SymbianRSC: Used to edit the strings present in .rsc files.
20. JAF: The most important tool. This is needed to flash your phone. U may need to flash your phone minimum 100 times to test your CFW in every step.

You can also get all these tools from HERE. Thanks to rushi1607 for posting all the tools in one place


Some Basics You May Need To Keep In Your Mind:
You need to know some basics before going to make your CFW.
I have just quoted the post of Prayaas Aggarwal from HERE to save my time. Becoz many things are yet to write. 

So better to take the repartitioned fw files as ur base fw for creating ur CFW.
U can get the repartitioned C6/N97 base ports from binh24's blog

Symbian S60v5 Directory Structure:

Data: Contains all applications data related files such as maps for GPS applications.

Images: When u edit any picture or take any picture using camera, the pictures will be saved to this directory and the sub-directories like backgrounds, camera, pictures, presence etc present in this directory. Files under the Camera sub-directory will be sorted in sub-directories acording to the date and time the pictures were taken.

Music: Just like the Image directory, this directory contains all the music related files.

Others: This directory contains mostly private data like contacts.

Private: This directory is the one for which we all came in for. This actually contains all the configuration files in XML and TXT formats (Although as INI formats) to control and change any preferance u'll ever need or think of.

Resource: This directory contains all the graphics related stuffs. Means it contain all the images/icons/rsc files that the phone theme consists of.If u ever want to add any theme or to change any graphics related issue, this is the place to look for.

Sys: This directory is also the most important one. This directory contains all the OS binaries. That means all executive (exe) & dll files are located under this directory. The sub-directories under the Sys directory are bin (which actually contains the binary OS files) and the Install ,Uninstall directories. The Install/Uninstall directories are like registry mechanism. The install and uninstall informations are in these directories respectively.

System: This directory contains the sub-directories like Apps, data, dmgr, temp. The Apps directory holds applications related data. The data directory contain OS related data such as BlueTooth/headset/speakers parameters. The dmgr stands for data manager which handle downloads. And the Temp sub-directory holds temporary OS files.

Videos: Contains user made camera videos.