To install any custom recovery, you first must unlock the bootloader. There is an app for that at XDA which, other than the oem unlock
method from fastboot, will allow you to unlock/relock several times.
Once unlocked, remaining steps are pretty easy:
installing CWM
The following works at least for "Open Euro" variants (I cannot tell for others):
- Download the image from the CWM page (they have the LG Optimus 4X HD listed there)
- give it a short name, for example
recovery.img
, and copy it to the root of your sdcard
open a terminal app (or run adb shell
from your computer), and then
su
cat /mnt/sdcard/recovery.img >/dev/block/mmcblk0p1
sync
power off the device and reboot into recovery to check if you succeeded.
Source: XDA
installing TWRP
TWRP images for the P880 you can e.g. find here. For original links and description, please refer to the TWRP page for the P880. According to the descriptions there:
- download the image file
- boot your device into fastboot/bootloader mode
- run
fastboot flash recovery twrp.img
to install the recovery image
- run
fastboot reboot
- while the device reboots, hold power and vol- to boot once into recovery (TWRP will then run a patch to prevent your device from reverting to its stock recovery, which according to the details there some P880 do).
Also worth knowing
acejavelin correctly pointed out in a comment on the question:
If you have a flashable ZIP of CWM, TWRP, PhilZ, or even stock recovery, you can flash that recovery from any working custom recovery. Recovery runs completely in RAM, so you write a new one from recovery. Verified through personal use on several Nexus, Moto, and HTC devices.
I can confirm that with one exception: On most devices you cannot flash a custom recovery using the stock recovery, as the latter usually checks the signature. Exceptions exist, however.
adb shell dd if=RECOVERY_IMAGE of=/dev/block/RECOVERY_DEVICE_FILE
?adb shell su -c 'ls -l /dev/block/platform/*/by-name'
to know the block device corresponding to recovery.