Root the A855 without RSD Lite + make it ROM Ready

[teddyearp]

Here's a guide to root the Droid 1 (A855) phone without using RSD Lite. This information/file/method in various forms has been posted all over the internet since < Sept 8, 2010 at least. I first saw a similar one at droidforums here, then I saw another one over at andriodforums here, and then I found that the source of the actual file that does the rooting to be Sebastian Krahmer at c-skills. Said file will, for now, work on any Android device, but I only will cover the A855 Droid 1, as that is what I use and this section of my tiny site is titled anyways. All I have done is gone 'old school' on permissions for su and busybox and added the manual install of SPRecovery.


Before we get started, I realize that for the most part, my guides are not geared towards total newbies, but more for the novice. All the info is here, but you just have to read it carefully and skimming/skipping any step will result in failure. The print button is there for a reason. I am going to guide you through this process by using adb (Android Debug Bridge). I have found using adb is much superior to using a Terminal app on your phone, however you can certainly do this guide that way. It would take some modifications and additional steps, but for now I am leaving those steps out. However, I am going to add the steps (and files) to flash a custom recovery on your phone making you ready as soon as you're done to flash a custon ROM to your phone via Sir PsychoS Recovery (SPRecovery) if you wish. So without further ado, here's three pre-requisites:

1. A couple of things you need to do to your phone and computer.
2. My article that gives you the drivers and Android SDK (adb).
3. The rest of the files.

So, you've set your phone for usb debugging and your computer to show file extensions from step one above, got the drivers and the Android SDK from step two above, and then downloaded the file in step three (named "teddysA855Rooter.zip"). Go ahead and extract that .zip file and you should have six files that should look like this:

• busybox
• flash_image
• rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin
• recovery-0.99.3b.img
• su
• Superuser.apk

At this point if ANYTHING looks wrong and/or you're not following this and/or don't get it up to this point, STOP NOW! Why? Because I'm going to finish this guide off with a bunch of commands that need to be entered verbatim (i.e. exactly as typed with all the caps, spaces, etc.) [does anyone know what syntax means?] and if you haven't got it right up to this point, NOTHING else in this guide is going to work for you. I also want to point out that there can be a sticking point when you issue the "./rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin" command in step six below. From what I've read, you need to be very patient on letting it complete and wait until it drops you back to the command prompt on your computer. This can sometimes take several minutes.


So that said, take the six files above and copy them to your "android/tools" folder (or wherever on your windows machine "adb.exe" resides). Then plug your phone into your computer. Then on a Windows box, open a command prompt, on a Linux box, open Terminal. Now for the commands:

1. adb devices (if you get a number here, you're good to go, otherwise, something isn't right and you may as well just stop NOW)
2. adb push rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin /data/local/tmp
3. adb shell
4. cd /data/local/tmp
5. chmod 0755 rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin
6. ./rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin (this is the critical one-wait-it's attacking through adb until your phone gets overloaded and drops you back to your command prompt)
7. adb devices (to make sure your computer still sees your phone)
8. adb shell (if you DO NOT have a '#' for a prompt and still have a '$', STOP and go back to step 6 (or 5-6)
9. mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system
10. mkdir /system/xbin
11. exit
12. adb push Superuser.apk /system/app
13. abd push su /system/bin
14. adb push busybox /system/xbin
15. adb push flash_image /system/xbin
16. adb push recovery-0.99.3b.img /sdcard/recovery.img
17. adb shell
18. chmod 6755 /system/bin/su
19. cd /system/xbin
20. chmod 755 busybox
21. chmod 755 flash_image
22. busybox --install .
23. sync
24. mv /system/recovery-from-boot.p /system/recovery-from-boot.p.old (you will probably get an error message here, don't worry it worked)
25. mount -o remount,ro -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system
26. flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img
27. rm /data/local/tmp/rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin
28. reboot recovery

Go ahead and unplug your phone while it reboots. If I did this right, your phone should reboot into SPRecovery, the one with blue writing over the black background. That is the intent of step 28, for you to see a difference in your phone and if you have Sir PychoS Recovery. So while you're there, may as well make a simple nandroid backup. Navigating through the menu system is done by using the volume up/down rocker, camera button to select, and power button to go back up a level. I now realize that this guide is really not for noobs, but it is what it is. As far a any custom roms, well go to the custom roms section of droidforums.net and start reading. Every developer has instructions on how to install via SPRecovery.
good luck