Root Moto E (1st gen) failed root.

[Andy McG]

Device:
Moto E (1st Gen) XT1021

Computer:
iMac (late 2013) OS X 10.11

Problem: :
The phone gets stuck on "Warning Bootloader Unlocked" screen then goes to Android bot laying on it's back with red exclamation mark over it and the words "No command".

Steps taken:

• I've successfully unlocked the bootloader via Motorola's official pages.

• I have Android SDK studio loaded in the right place on my mac /Users/username/Library/Android/sdk/

• Latest version of SuperSU-v2.46 downloaded and copied onto root of phone and SD Card (for good measure).

• I've copied TWRP-2.8.6.0-condor.img in the correct SDK platform tools folder

• Command line fastboot flash recovery recovery-twrp.img done and received the following message
  target reported max download size of 299892736 bytes
  sending 'recovery' (8652 KB)...
  OKAY [ 0.299s]
  writing 'recovery'...
  OKAY [ 1.047s]
  finished. total time: 1.346s

When I go to the fast load menu holding Power button & Vol Down Button and click on Recovery it goes to a white screen saying Warning Bootloader Unlocked. After a few moments it then goes to Android bot laying on it's back with red exclamation mark over it and the words "No command".
If I leave it for 5 mins it then reboots back to normal stock mode.

My question is what the hell am I doing wrong? I thought I'd researched this properly but obviously not.
How can I get the option to boot from the SuperSU file?

Any help welcome I'm at the end of my tether at this point and out of ideas.

 

[scary alien]

Welcome to our AndroidForums, @Andy McG!

I'm going to move your thread over to the Moto E root area for you here in a moment, but I thought I'd make a quick observation from what you posted above.

Did you rename TWRP-2.8.6.0-condor.img to recovery-twrp.img before you flashed it with the above "fastboot flash recovery recovery-twrp.img" command?

The reason I ask this is because the version of TWRP-2.8.7-condor.img that I downloaded from http://forum.xda-developers.com/mot...recovery-twrp-2-8-6-0-touch-recovery-t3100879 appears to be 9.25 MB (9,707,520 bytes) in size and your fastboot session shows/says "8652 KB".

Could you have had a different file present that you flashed instead of the condor one?

 

[Andy McG]

Welcome to our AndroidForums, @Andy McG!

I'm going to move your thread over to the Moto E root area for you here in a moment, but I thought I'd make a quick observation from what you posted above.

Did you rename TWRP-2.8.6.0-condor.img to recovery-twrp.img before you flashed it with the above "fastboot flash recovery recovery-twrp.img" command?

The reason I ask this is because the version of TWRP-2.8.7-condor.img that I downloaded from http://forum.xda-developers.com/mot...recovery-twrp-2-8-6-0-touch-recovery-t3100879 appears to be 9.25 MB (9,707,520 bytes) in size and your fastboot session shows/says "8652 KB".

Could you have had a different file present that you flashed instead of the condor one?

Yes, sorry I forgot to add that step. I renamed the file recovery-twrp.img before I flashed.

 

[scary alien]

Yes, sorry I forgot to add that step. I renamed the file recovery-twrp.img before I flashed.

Ah, no worries...just ruling-out one possible (remote ) issue...

Can you confirm the size of your condor custom recovery is the same as the size I posted (did you get it from the same source)?

The only other thing I can think of is that you have a partial download perhaps (check the MD5 sum of the file vs. what the published source says it is). The checksum for the file I downloaded is:

018f3a0afdefdf85bfbc91a2d4d9c131 *TWRP-2.8.7-condor.img
​

size was:

9,707,520 TWRP-2.8.7-condor.img​

 

[James L]

Try ./fastboot-mac boot recovery then drag the recovery into terminal, saves time on typing .

So basically ./fastboot-mac boot recovery recovery.img
After you flash the recovery.

Modify the ./fastboot-mac for however you have it setup on your Mac.

 

[Andy McG]

Ah, no worries...just ruling-out one possible (remote ) issue...

Can you confirm the size of your condor custom recovery is the same as the size I posted (did you get it from the same source)?

The only other thing I can think of is that you have a partial download perhaps (check the MD5 sum of the file vs. what the published source says it is). The checksum for the file I downloaded is:

018f3a0afdefdf85bfbc91a2d4d9c131 *TWRP-2.8.7-condor.img
​

size was:

9,707,520 TWRP-2.8.7-condor.img​

Well the MD5 check returned a value of
3d92f24a6ea8ae94f40fa9cd2b2d4053 and a size of 8.9MB
But I notice you have a more recent version than mine so I expect a mismatch in values.
This is probably a very silly question bit I couldn't find a download link for the TWRP version in your link.
Do I need to login first I wonder?

 

[Andy McG]

Try ./fastboot-mac boot recovery then drag the recovery into terminal, saves time on typing .

So basically ./fastboot-mac boot recovery recovery.img
After you flash the recovery.

Modify the ./fastboot-mac for however you have it setup on your Mac.

Thx James I will try this when I get home today and post feedback.

 

[James L]

No problem here is a link for the recovery.img that i believe @scary alien was talking about. I found it on XDA.

https://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=24052804347762854

 

[Andy McG]

So the MD5 checksum for my TWRP-2.8.7-condor.img was
3a0afdefdf85bfbc91a2d4d9c131 (9 707 520)
So the size is identical but the checksum differs.

 

[scary alien]

So the MD5 checksum for my TWRP-2.8.7-condor.img was
3a0afdefdf85bfbc91a2d4d9c131 (9 707 520)
So the size is identical but the checksum differs.

Sounds like a bad (incomplete) download...?

 

[Andy McG]

Same issue James I'm afraid.

 

[Andy McG]

I went back to the TWRP-2.8.6.0-condor.img version as people report this is universally stable for the 1st Gen 2014 device.
The flashing seems successful:

Andrews-iMaclatform-tools Andy$ fastboot flash recovery twrp-2.8.6.0-condor.img

target reported max download size of 299892736 bytes

sending 'recovery' (8652 KB)...

OKAY [ 0.290s]

writing 'recovery'...

OKAY [ 0.941s]

finished. total time: 1.231s

And the phone reboots on command but into the normal usual standard boot.

Andrews-iMaclatform-tools Andy$ fastboot reboot

rebooting...


finished. total time: 0.001s

It's frustrating that I can't even get to see if I could actually boot up from my flashed img file as the "Warning Bootloader Unlocked" screen comes up and it reboots into normal mode.

The whole point of trying this was to make my daughters piddly 4GB of RAM go further.
At this rate I'm just going to have to face up to buying a new phone with larger RAM.
I honestly didn't think it would be so "hit and miss".

 

[scary alien]

Not sure I understand the above rebooting, Andy...you're trying to reboot into your (hopefully newly flashed) custom recovery, correct?

How about instead of flashing it, you soft-boot it instead (there's no real need to actually flash (overwrite) your stock recovery if your bootloader allows you to do this (exactly as show)):

fastboot boot twrp-2.8.6.0-condor.img​

That should make your condor-specific TWRP to startup on your device...from there, you can flash (install) the UPDATE-SuperSU-v#.##.zip file.

Let us know what result comes from that...

 

[Andy McG]

Not sure I understand the above rebooting, Andy...you're trying to reboot into your (hopefully newly flashed) custom recovery, correct?

How about instead of flashing it, you soft-boot it instead (there's no real need to actually flash (overwrite) your stock recovery if your bootloader allows you to do this (exactly as show)):

fastboot boot twrp-2.8.6.0-condor.img​

That should make your condor-specific TWRP to startup on your device...from there, you can flash (install) the UPDATE-SuperSU-v#.##.zip file.

Let us know what result comes from that...

TBH I'm a bit confused with the rooting process. General theory is clear but the devil is in the detail as they say and it seems to be true for me at the moment.

I tried fastboot boot twrp-2.8.6.0-condor.img:

Andrews-iMaclatform-tools Andy$ fastboot boot twrp-2.8.6.0-condor.img

< waiting for device >

It appeared to have lost the device so I checked the device was communicating with the computer:

Andrews-iMaclatform-tools Andy$ adb devices

List of devices attached

ZX1B22WFQGdevice

Tried again but same < waiting for device >

In my mind the sticking point is that damn "Warning Bootloader Unlocked" screen that appears after I select and try and run any command from the Power + Vol Down key menu. It doesn't seem to want me to go any further.

 

[scary alien]

Ah, Andy, you have to be in fastboot / bootloader mode (i.e., do an adb reboot-bootloader first) for the fastboot commands to work/be relevant.

adb and fastboot are two very different utilities (adb will work in normal Android and when custom recovery has been booted-up; fastboot will only only work when your device is in bootloader mode).

So, shutdown your device and put it into fastboot/bootloader mode (either via the above adb command or via the key sequence unique to the Moto E).

Then issue the fastboot devices command to make sure you have fastboot connectivity (like you did in the first post where you flashed the recovery image).

Then try the fastboot boot command that we've talked about.

 

[Andy McG]

So I tried a few code lines of wisdom in desperation (adb this and that) with varying degrees change but no real success. I put the device back in the reboot menu and went back to:

fastboot boot twrp-2.8.6.0-condor.img

This time the phone tried to boot and got stuck on the blue Motorola globe graphic. Just in case it's supposed to take awhile I'll leave it for 10 mins.

 

[scary alien]

I'm starting to suspect that this is not the correct custom recovery for your device...or the recovery is/was not built correctly.

The recovery should boot-up almost immediately, so if it's not starting-up fairly quickly, then it's not going to boot.

Check the other threads in this section and see/verify what custom recoveries the other folks are using (I'm not a Moto E guy and was hoping we'd see some feedback from others that have rooted their Moto E's before and installed/used custom recovery to help point you in the right direction).

 

[Andy McG]

Aha...just read your message alien thx. Yes that was the trick to get a response out of the code. I should've realised.
Well it seems to have made an effort to reboot but has stayed on the opening graphic. Is this normal 1st time around?

 

[scary alien]

Aha...just read your message alien thx. Yes that was the trick to get a response out of the code. I should've realised.
Well it seems to have made an effort to reboot but has stayed on the opening graphic. Is this normal 1st time around?

I edited my post above to say:

The recovery should boot-up almost immediately, so if it's not starting-up fairly quickly, then it's not going to boot.

So, no--it shouldn't take much time at all for the TWRP ("Teamwin" logo) screen to appear.

edit: the good news is that the fastboot boot command is non-destructive and will NOT alter your device.

 

[Andy McG]

Yes I suspect you're correct. I will go back and try the 2.6 version.
Thanks for all your help thus far.
I will post here if I have any success for others to follow if they want.
If you don't hear back the phone got sailed out the window and a trip to the shop followed.

 

[James L]

If it's like my Moto X than rebooting after flashing the recovery will in fact force the stock recovery to overwrite Twrp.
Try flashing the recovery in fastboot then, don't reboot. Instead choose recovery using the volume down key. Once that's done press volume up not power.

 

[scary alien]

On Nexus devices, at least (and maybe more?), it's the /system/recovery-from-boot.p file that controls the re-flashing of the stock recovery image.

Renaming that with a .bak extension will keep that from happening.

That process shouldn't come into play with the fastboot boot attempt, though, since you're loading the bootable image directly into memory and booting from it.

 

[Andy McG]

Thx James I'll try that. I managed to get the TWRP UI up.
So the phone is unlocked and rooted (checked with an app).
Now I just need to understand how to get a custom ROM up and running without it rebooting into the stock ROM.
If I manage to achieve this Holy Grail will it automatically remove the bloatware inherent in the stock ROM?

 

[scary alien]

Thx James I'll try that. I managed to get the TWRP UI up.

Nice!

What did you do or do differently?

So the phone is unlocked and rooted (checked with an app).
Now I just need to understand how to get a custom ROM up and running without it rebooting into the stock ROM.
If I manage to achieve this Holy Grail will it automatically remove the bloatware inherent in the stock ROM?

A custom ROM will have what the ROM dev put in it...hopefully sans bloaty-stuff .

 

[Andy McG]

James in all honesty I didn't keep track towards the end.
I started off scientifically by the book, with pages and pages of web tutorials open. And as each one failed to one degree or another and it was getting late I just mixed and matched bits of things.
I seem to remember trying 4 or 5 different TWRP versions until one worked (twrp-2.7.1.0-condor.img if I remember correctly).

Unfortunately, the next day my Android File Transfer software didn't see the phone (after working perfectly the night before).

I'm still unsure what the SuperSU program does exactly. I thought it just acted as an invisible middleman for any root permission requests from apps and stepped in before the Android blocked them?

And TWRP installed OK but I really don't know what function this performs now. I thought it was the custom ROM and would show a different ROM when I rebooted. Do I now have to boot into the TWRP UI and point it towards a specific boot ROM on the SD Card or phone?