I ran the "temporary" Z4Root yesterday on my Ally as a test, and it took only a few minutes. It displayed "root successful" at the end. But I powered the Ally down and back up this morning, so it was supposed to have been undone.
This afternoon I decided to go with the permanent Z4Root. But apparently it is not working. Here is what has happened so far:
Attempt 1 - Run Z4Root - got phone call in the middle of the installation (should I be using airplane mode to install this?) - call went to voice mail. Phone went to desktop. Then it suddenly rebooted to the Android text screen (bypassing the Verizon splash screen) and booted up. No indication of success or failure. No Busybox. So I downloaded the BusyBox installer from the market. it says the phone is not rooted.
Attempt 2 - Run Z4Root - took about 10 minutes, always displaying the spinning circle) then suddenly displayed the app icon page. Never mentioned success or failure. No Busy Box icon (but the BB installer icon I downloaded is still there). Then went to lock screen. Ran Busybox Installer. It says "phone is not rooted". So failed a second time.
So I powered down the phone and then booted it.
Attempt 3 - Run Z4Root - start 16:43
about 1 minute into the spinning circle the Z4Root screen changed to mention it was going to restart the phone. It may have also said it was successful, but I was typing here and missed it if it did. This happened far more quickly than I expected after the above.
The phone re-booted. But I still do not have an icon for BusyBox, just the BB Installer. I thought BB was supposed to be installed as part of Z4Root?
OK, THIS time the BB installer said it was asking for SuperUser permission, so I allowed that. It then says "Your phone is rooted." Hurray! It also says BusyBox was not found, and is offering to install it, so I will. It says free space in /System is 26728Kb. I recall from before I had about 26MB free, so that makes sense.
Installing BusyBox. It then says "we found more than one copy of BusyBox. Currently installed BusyBox version is v.1.17.1
This looks to me like BB gets installed by Z4Root after all, but why was there no icon to access it on the program icon page?
Also, across the top of the screen in this BB installer there is a drop-down bar which, when tapped, shows a second listing as "BusyBox 1.18.0.git (unofficial)". What's that about, and should I consider using it instead?
So now I have a nifty SuperUser Icon.
But there still is no actual icon for BusyBox. Is BusyBox a utility that only gets called upon as needed, and thus is not run by the user?
Zoandroid.