Very nice summary... Looks okay except for a few minor details:
A. Don't forget to donate per his request (this is important to jcase and should be to everyone)
B. I don't think the phone will reboot automatically in your step #3...I think it says that after rebooting, you will have Amon_RA's custom recovery installed. To boot into Amon_RA's custom recovery, power off your phone, then press and hold volume-UP while pressing the end/power button (keep pressing the volume-up until you see the custom recovery menu like you posted). There's also at least one other way to start custom recovery documented somewhere in this thread. BTW, apologies if I am wrong about the auto-reboot thing...I've been already rooted and have not used this method--but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express a few years ago
C. Please note that after your step #10 (really, #7), you are rooted and will be able to do root-only stuff like install root-only apps, delete bloatware, etc.. But you won't be able to overclock without flashing an overclock kernel patch.
D. You could also take another Nandroid backup after step #10 so you can have a pre-root Nand backup and a post-root Nand backup. A little silly since the only thing you did was to flash the rootme.zip file. Note: doing a Nand restore of your first (pre-root) backup will not take you back to stock since you would still have the custom recovery, but you would not have the su program and SuperUser app installed (so, you would "look" pretty-much unrooted).
E. Your second step #1 "Download custom ROM to SDCard"...just a minor point...you should download to the top-level (root directory) of your /sdcard. Just so folks don't think you can flash from your /sdcard/download directory.
F. Just to be clear, your second (sometimes optional) wipe would be to "Wipe Dalvik-cache". You can safely do this wipe each time, its just that you don't always have to if the dev says.
G. Always do the Nandroid backup BEFORE you flash anything or do anything scary / major like remove bloatware (system apps), etc.
Very nice job. Impressed that you went to this much effort (I won't say trouble 'cause it looks very helpful). Hopefully, if I missed something or stated it wrong, others will correct me and you can re-edit your post and we can refer others to this.
Step 2) Run one click program, read disclaimer, press button.
Step 3) Reboot into recovery mode. Do this by turning the phone off and then turning it back on by simultaneously holding the Vol Down and Power Button. This will boot you up into Amon's Android System recovery.
Step 4.) Using Amon's recovery and the trackball to navigate and select, pick the backup/restore option which will do a Nandroid backup of the current ROM on your phone.
Step 5.) Once the backup is complete, press the Vol Down button to return to the main menu.
Step. 6.) Once back at the main menu, pick "Flash Zip from SDCard" and then select rootme.zip that came with the one click program.
Step 7.) Press the Vol Down button to return to the main menu and select "Reboot System Now"
Step 8.) Once the phone is re-booted, go to settings>applications>development and turn usb debugging on.
Step 9.) Uninstall One Click program
Now you are rooted and will be able to do root-only stuff like install root-only apps, delete bloatware, etc.. But you won't be able to overclock without flashing an overclock kernel patch.
To install a custom ROM after all of this...
Make sure to do a nandroid backup before flashing a custom ROM or doing anything scary / major like remove bloatware (system apps), etc
Step 1.) Download custom ROM to SDCard. Download to the top-level (root directory) of your sdcard. Do not download into a folder it will not work.
Step 2.) Turn phone off
Step 3.) Reboot into Amons recovery mode. Hold Vol Down and Power Simultaneously.
Step 4.) If instructed by the developer, perform the necessary wipes. 2 wipes may be necessary. Wipe Data / Factory Reset and Wipe Dalvik-cache.
Step 5.) Press Vol Down to return to the main menu and select "Flash Zip from SDcard"
Step 6.) Select the *.zip file that you downloaded in Step 1.
Step. 7.) Press Vol Down to go back to the Main Menu then select "Reboot System Now"
Last edited by prj; September 9th, 2010 at 01:12 AM.
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Step. 7.) Once back at the main menu, pick "Flash Zip from SDCard" and then select rootme.zip that came with the one click program.
Step 8.) Press the Vol Down button to return to the main menu and select "Reboot System Now"
Step 9) Once the phone is re-booted, go to settings>applications>development and turn usb debugging on.
Step 10.) Uninstall One Click program
To install a custom ROM after all of this...
Step 1.) Download custom ROM to SDCard
Step 2.) Turn phone off
Step 3.) Reboot into Amons recovery mode. Hold Vol Down and Power Simultaneously.
Step 4.) If instructed by the developer, perform the necessary wipes.
Step 5.) Press Vol Down to return to the main menu and select "Flash Zip from SDcard"
Step 6.) Select the *.zip file that you downloaded in Step 1.
Step. 7.) Press Vol Down to go back to the Main Menu then select "Reboot System Now"
Do this and a nandroid backup everytime you install a custom ROM.
Excellent writeup! My only comment is that if you know that you are going to install a third party ROM, I think that the flash of the rootme.zip file is an unnecessary step. Just rearrange some of those steps:
- before rooting, download the custom ROM and put it in the root of your SD card
- also before rooting, turn on USB debugging (though I think that you can do this after flashing the custom ROM if you want to wait.)
- instead of step 7 above, go right to the step 4 under install a custom ROM - perform the wipes - then install the custom ROM
That should be it. After you reboot and set up the ROM with your apps and homescreens, it's probably a good time to power down the phone, start the phone in recovery, and do a nandroid, just to have one that you can come back to.
To summarize, the rootme.zip file is only required if you want to preserve your existing ROM and settings and not install a custom ROM.
Doogald, I agree and understand that. But reading through this thread it seemed a lot of people were confused by the rootme.zip vs. installing a custom ROM so I broke it up into 2 segments.
So people...if in the first set of steps you have already decided on a custom ROM, you can skip selecting the rootme.zip file and instead select the custom ROM instead and ignore steps 1 thru 7 for installing a custom ROM
Couple things...before I decide to move forward
1.) Can I make multiple nandroid backups on my SD card of all the different ROMS I have and install on my phone?...i.e. Kaos, Tazz, Nonsensikal etc.
2.)If the answer to question 1 is yes, can I re-flash any of the ROM's at anytime?
3.) If the answer to question 2 is yes does that then mean I re-flash back to the stock HTC sense ROM that I backed up onto an SDcard understanding that it will be rooted but nobody would really know unless I told them?
1.) Can I make multiple nandroid backups on my SD card of all the different ROMS I have and install on my phone?...i.e. Kaos, Tazz, Nonsensikal etc.
Absolutely...you are only limited by the amount of space on your /sdcard. Some users also carefully rename their Nandroid backup folders (not using spaces, by the way), to indicate what the backup contains.
2.)If the answer to question 1 is yes, can I re-flash any of the ROM's at anytime?
If you mean restore the Nandroid backups, yes, you can freely restore a Nandroid backup without having to do any wipes. You only have to do wipes when you flash a new ROM or "update.zip"-type file.
3.) If the answer to question 2 is yes does that then mean I re-flash back to the stock HTC sense ROM that I backed up onto an SDcard understanding that it will be rooted but nobody would really know unless I told them?
Except for the fact that you've still got Amon_RA's custom recovery partition installed (I mentioned this in my first reply to you last night ).
Davlik-cache is the pre-compiled (by the Dalvik virtual machine), optimized bytecode for your application. Having these in cache saves from having to do this dynamically each time you want to run the app. Wiping Davlik-cache forces Android to rebuild the cache before finishing your boot sequence. Sometimes this is necessary for different versions of Android (i.e., I think going from 2.1 to 2.2 would require rebuilding the cache entries).
My answers in blue above. Cheers!
The Following User Says Thank You to scary alien For This Useful Post:
First of all, thank you for this incredibly simple root method. I was very close to swapping my Eris for a Droid so I wouldn't have to use my NE2 yet... This is like having a new phone! (Tazz V5)
The only mistake I made was not properly backing up my SMS and Call History. I made a NAND backup of my stock image but...
Each time I try to restore the original NAND image I get a successful restore notification but then get boot-looped upon reboot.
I have successfully restored NAND backups of the Cyanogen ROM, but haven't had any success with the original backup file. Not a huge deal, but am I doing something weirds or missing a step? I did not flash the bootme.zip before I did the first backup.. Is that my issue? I am doing wipes of both factory and davlick. I've tried loading the NAND backup and then flashing the bootme.zip and visa versa. What else could I try?
BTW, full battery and plenty of space on SD.
Thanks again!
Last edited by porkbrains; September 9th, 2010 at 06:00 PM.
Ack! I just checked the info on my backup... 0kb on md5 AND data.img
I'm certain it said succesful backup... There is plenty of size on the system.img and boot.img
Does PDAnet still work with all of these custom roms floating around?
I also notice my instructions say power button and vol down and it should be vol up. I'll have to correct that.
vol down and power bring up some other recovery program. What is that?
prj,
Don't know about PDAnet...I would think it should work regardless of the ROM, but you'll have to search-around to see if anyone has reported issues with that.
You can get to recovery a couple of different ways...when you press volume-down and end/power (or send and end/power) this takes you to the "HBOOT" screen which should show you:
Code:
HBOOT<SEND> FastBoot Mode<VOL UP> Recovery
From here you can press volume-UP to initiate custom recovery.
Or you can press and hold volume-UP and end/power...keep pressing volume-UP until you see the custom recovery menu (this is essentially what you I just described above--I'm guessing that the boot program sees that you are still pressing the volume-UP button and doesn't see the need to display the stuff above (or its too fast to me to see, lol)).
You can also launch it via the adb program ("adb reboot recovery").
I finally went through with this and flashed nonsensikal. Except... it's stuck on a screen that says Cyanogen that has a little droid dude with an arrow that keeps circling around him....
I finally went through with this and flashed nonsensikal. Except... it's stuck on a screen that says Cyanogen that has a little droid dude with an arrow that keeps circling around him....
If its only been a few minutes...give it a few more...some ROMs take a while to initialize (and (re-)build Dalvik-cache), etc.
It's been running the past 1 hour + and hasn't moved off that screen...
Once flashed, am I supposed to use the reboot system option or power phone off option and then turn it on?
Yeah, its not supposed to take that long... ppbb had issues trying to flash one of the nonsensikal ROMs (see this thread: Need expert advice on flashing, boot loops etc). There's lots of head-scratching and ideas in that thread...
Ultimately, I think he ended-up having to revert to another ROM...(and I believe he subsequently had to return his phone, too ).
Try flashing something else, a little more vanilla (like PlainJaneT2, etc.). Make sure you've verified the MD5 sum of the ROMs you've downloaded on your phone.
Good luck!
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I finally went through with this and flashed nonsensikal. Except... it's stuck on a screen that says Cyanogen that has a little droid dude with an arrow that keeps circling around him....
PRJ,
Did you happen to wipe data before you flashed nonsensikal? If not, restart in recovery, wipe data and wipe dalvik cache, and the restart and see if it gets further.
The Following User Says Thank You to doogald For This Useful Post:
Ack! I just checked the info on my backup... 0kb on md5 AND data.img
I'm certain it said succesful backup... There is plenty of size on the system.img and boot.img
Wha happen? Is my SMS data gone then?
porkbrains (nice, btw ),
Apologies...I had a reply formatted for you and thought I had submitted it...
Unfortunately, I think you have lost your stuff... I don't really know the total ins and out of the Nandroid backup and restore, but I can't understand why it would have reported as successful and created those zero-byte files (I do/would believe that the last function of the backup would be to create the nandroid.md5 to calculate and the MD5 sums of the other files in it--very strange that it and the data.img would be zero bytes in size).
I'll try to dig around some this weekend and look at the backup scripts in more detail to see exactly what it is that they check and do at what points...didn't think we'd need a Nandroid backup checker/verifier, but maybe we do. I'm actually working on something along those lines anyway, so maybe I can whip-up an app that will do this...
Sorry that happened to you...
The Following User Says Thank You to scary alien For This Useful Post:
Did you happen to wipe data before you flashed nonsensikal? If not, restart in recovery, wipe data and wipe dalvik cache, and the restart and see if it gets further.
Quote:
Originally Posted by prj
Yup... I figured it out. I had to wipe data and delvik cache and then the install went perfect.
Thanks everyone. Nonsensikal is now installed. Let the fun begin.
lol, doogald's always there with the right answer! I didn't ask prj 'cause after all of the instructions he just wrote, I assumed he would have done the wipes. Kudos to doogald!
Glad its working for you, prj.
The Following User Says Thank You to scary alien For This Useful Post:
It really is my fault for not using an SMS backup... Not really an issue. Completing the initial NAND backup was the only point in the process that I got really excited and hasty. Bad news. Take your time and triple check everything you care about folks.
If anyone is concerned, it is always easy to go into the Nandroid folder on your SD to at least check that there is data in the restore files. I was on the fence like so many other mid-level tech enthusiasts and now I have to proselytize a bit:
Don't wait another minute if you hate your stock Eris. This is sofa king easy and the speed and agility that this formerly laggy, unpredictable and frankly obnoxious phone now operates at (and Swype!!!) will tide me over until the next gen of phones comes out in a year or so. There is really no way to thank EU1, JCase, Scary Alien, and the rest of the smart and helpful peoples on this board enough for the time and energy they've put into this.. These methods pretty much bought me a new phone as far as I'm concerned.
My deepest genuine gratitude is directed towards all of you on this board, not to mention the designers of our beloved ROMS.
There will be some well fed homeless kids in my neighborhood this weekend.
The Following User Says Thank You to porkbrains For This Useful Post:
lol, doogald's always there with the right answer! I didn't ask prj 'cause after all of the instructions he just wrote, I assumed he would have done the wipes. Kudos to doogald!
Glad its working for you, prj.
Apparently I can't read my own instructions. Must have been all the excitement....
First, from home, go to settings->Applications and click the check mark "Unknown sources".
Then, after you install and that start Astro, it will show you all of the files and folders in the root directory of your SD card. Go to the "Download" folder, where you should find that file after you download it, and click it; that should ask you if you want to install the app.
Ok, all that said, probably the easiest thing to do is to go to the market and search for "HTC Eris 1 Click Root App". It should show you this app:
ok tried this, the phone pulls up the hboot white screen i dont see the screen images above, it just asks if i want to start update?? any help, thanks guys
This 1Click is fantastic. I was a little nervous, but I was so frustrated with the phone's performance lately, I was willing to take the leap. I did the 1click, and then flashed xtrSense. Now I'm getting very good speed from the phone, the dialer, etc, and my battery life is much better. Plus I have more internal memory free with xtrSense as opposed to the stock Sense UI. Thanks a lot.
Hey This is a great tool for beginner rooter. But i do have one question is there a one unroot process or do i have to do it manually. i say this because I am thinking about taking the phone to verizon in hope of a different phone replacement. LOL
Hey This is a great tool for beginner rooter. But i do have one question is there a one unroot process or do i have to do it manually. i say this because I am thinking about taking the phone to verizon in hope of a different phone replacement. LOL
Yes, you can un-root (typically done by using the RUU or flashing the v3 leak). Just search on "unroot" or "un-root" in the eris-all-things-root forum when (if) you need to and you'll see lots of (too many ) threads regarding this.
To anyone that is concerned about doing this or thinks it might be too hard, don't be.
This method is SO easy, that I actually rooted a friends phone this weekend while we were driving down the highway. I then downloaded a ROM and installed it for him. All of this took about 30 minutes start to finish. He then proceeded to ignore everyone at the restaurant while he played with his phone.
@Jcase & Eclips3, you boys did a hell of a nice job on this. As per your request, he will be donating money to a shelter in our area this week.
This worked for me! This was only the second phone I've rooted. Had a ton of problems on my boyfriend's Hero and learned a lot doing that. This really helped to speed up the process on my Eris
Thanks jcase (and other people that have clarified). I rooted my wife's Eris in minutes and it was super easy (easier than my Incredible). Now I hope xtrSENSE will help her phone run better...
I just rooted using this 1 click method. pretty easy so far, but still nervous. I did not flash the rootme.zip file. I did data wipe & dalvick wipe & went straight to xtrSENSE. It's rebooting for the first time right now.
Okay, this was asked before, but I can't find a response to it. Where do I find usb debugging under settings? I did not do that step yet. Do I need to still do that since I flashed xtrSense, or was that just if you flashed the rootme.zip?
Okay, I am sorry for being such a noob. I ran into problems. after xtrsense booted up, I started setting up accounts, google, pop3 email. all no problem. called my dad, no problem. then I decided to download the wordfeud app, cause my brother & I play all the time. while setting up the account on wordfeud, the app got stuck, & I couldn't do anything. I was expecting it to force close, but I got impatient & pulled the battery. when I booted up the phone after that, I had no phone service. couldn't call out, couldn't recieve. I thought I would turn on airplane mode & then turn it back off. turned it on, then I couldn't turn it back off. I freaked out & did a nand restore & now I am back to my original stock rom & all is good. Any ideas what was going on? I will probably try flashing xtrsense again, but not tonight. I'm wore out.
Step 2) Run one click program, read disclaimer, press button.
Step 3) Turn the phone off and reboot phone into the normal operating system. This must be done for the rooting operation to take place.
Step 4) Turn the phone off and reboot into recovery mode. Do this by turning the phone off and then turning it back on by simultaneously holding the Volume UP and Power Button. This will boot you up into Amon's Android System recovery.
Step 5.) Using Amon's recovery and the trackball to navigate and select, pick the backup/restore option which will do a Nandroid backup of the current ROM on your phone. The backup is placed on your SD card under a folder called nandroid.
Step 6.) Once the backup is complete, press the Volume Down button to return to the main menu.
Note: Skip steps 7, 8 and 9 if you want to install a custom ROM right away.
Step. 7.) Once back at the main menu, pick "Flash Zip from SDCard" and then select rootme.zip that was downloaded with the one click program.
Step 8.) Press the Vol Down button to return to the main menu and select "Reboot System Now"
Step 9.) Once the phone is re-booted, go to settings>applications>development and turn usb debugging on.
Step 9.) Uninstall One Click program
Now you are rooted (still on HTC sense) and will be able to do root-only stuff like install root-only apps, delete bloatware, etc.. But you won't be able to overclock without flashing an overclock kernel patch which is included in most custom ROMS
To install a custom ROM...
Make sure to do a nandroid backup before flashing a custom ROM or doing anything scary / major like remove bloatware (system apps), etc
Step 1.) Download custom ROM to SDCard. Download to the top-level (root directory) of your sdcard. Do not download into a folder or it will not work.
Step 2.) Turn phone off
Step 3.) Reboot into Amons recovery mode. Hold Volume Up and Power Simultaneously.
Step 4.) If instructed by the developer, perform the necessary wipes. 2 wipes may be necessary. Wipe Data / Factory Reset and Wipe Dalvik-cache.
Step 5.) Press Volume Down to return to the main menu and select "Flash Zip from SDcard"
Step 6.) Select the custom ROM *.zip file that you downloaded in Step 1.
Step. 7.) Press Vol Down to go back to the Main Menu then select "Reboot System Now"
Enjoy your new rooted eris.
Last edited by prj; September 26th, 2010 at 08:49 AM.
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[ Edit ] prj updated his (prior) post with the appropriate correction 9/26/2010, so the following is no longer needed - thanks prj!
Well, I know you are going for brevity rather than an exhaustive explanation, but something continues to mystify me about what seems to be missing between your steps #2 and #3.
The root exploit which this method uses requires a normal OS boot for the rooting operation to take place - the custom recovery boot partition can not be overwritten until this happens. Now, I never used the one-click app, and it may well be possible that "clicking the button" causes an immediate reboot to take place, in which case, from an operational point of view the user is not "doing" anything. On the other hand, if you want people to follow along your instructions, it is good to let them know what they should expect to see happening. In that case, an additional sentence such as
"The phone will automatically reboot after "pressing the button"; wait for the reboot to completely finish, and then power the phone off as you normally would before continuing to the next step."
eu1
Last edited by erisuser1; September 26th, 2010 at 03:54 PM.
I believe after you press the button in the one click app that it shuts the phone down. (I think) Which is why in step 3 it explains how to turn on the phone and boot into recovery mode and flash the rootme.zip file.
As I have said - something like 3 times now - the root exploit which is being performed requires a standard reboot into the OS in order to make the recovery partition writable, and therefore allow an unprivileged process to write the custom recovery in to that partition.
It is simply not possible for the rooting process to work without a reboot into the regular OS. That reboot must occur sometime after the rooting process has begun - and that is why I have been insisting that your instructions in that regard have never been correctly described near your (first) "step 3"
I ran into problems. after xtrsense booted up, I started setting up accounts, google, pop3 email. all no problem. called my dad, no problem. then I decided to download the wordfeud app, cause my brother & I play all the time. while setting up the account on wordfeud, the app got stuck, & I couldn't do anything. I was expecting it to force close, but I got impatient & pulled the battery. when I booted up the phone after that, I had no phone service. couldn't call out, couldn't recieve. I thought I would turn on airplane mode & then turn it back off. turned it on, then I couldn't turn it back off. I freaked out & did a nand restore & now I am back to my original stock rom & all is good. Any ideas what was going on?
I'm not sure - I've never seen that happen to me before. However, next time that you get stuck like that, before pulling the battery, try long-pressing on the power button, and shut down the phone from there, if the menu pops up. If it does not, of course, then think about the battery pull.
The Following User Says Thank You to doogald For This Useful Post:
First of all, thanks for this AMAZINGLY EASY method of rooting the Eris. My wife was getting frustrated with her Eris so I decided to try it and see if it might improve. I went ahead and downloaded the xtrSense ROM and installed that WITHOUT wiping the phone first (DID do the Nandroid backup ahead of that) and have, surprising, had NO PROBLEMS. All of her settings, apps, accounts....everything is there just as it was, but now running on xtrSense. So based on what I've read, this shouldn't even work - but so far, no crashes, no bugginess, everything seems to be working just fine. So why do a wipe if you don't need to? Am I going to run into any problems down the line? Thanks in advance.
I went ahead and downloaded the xtrSense ROM and installed that WITHOUT wiping the phone first (DID do the Nandroid backup ahead of that) and have, surprising, had NO PROBLEMS. All of her settings, apps, accounts....everything is there just as it was, but now running on xtrSense. So based on what I've read, this shouldn't even work - but so far, no crashes, no bugginess, everything seems to be working just fine. So why do a wipe if you don't need to? Am I going to run into any problems down the line? Thanks in advance.
itbedave,
The only thing I can think of as to why this works comes from zach.xtr dev thread over on XDA where he says:
Cache Location (Cache2cache): By default, the dalvik-cache has been relocated from the internal /data/dalvik-cache/ directory to the internal /cache/dalvik-cache directory. The Eris comes with an internal /cache/ file block of 130mb that is not used! After reviewing a number of xda member file system usage reports (thanks xtrROM and xtrSENSE users!) the MOST reported use of this space was 5%... So by moving the dalvik-cache to this free area you now have over 150mb on internal /data/ for apps and over 75mb in internal /cache/ for dalvik-cache. This means that you can probably install close to 100 apps WITHOUT having to partition and move anything to the SD Card ext!
Pretty cool, really. So, I'm wondering (guessing, really) if your Dalvik-cache was rebuilt anyway for you when you first booted (like it would have to be if you wiped your Dalvik-cache).
The HTC Droid Eris launched for Verizon Wireless on November 6th in part as the carrier's first Android Phone. However it was overshadowed by the other member of the inaugural Verizon Droid duo - the Motorola Droid. The Droid Eris might look fa... Read More
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