So you heard that the MyTouch 4G has been rooted and even has a custom recovery image ready for flashing and you want to give it a go, eh? Thankfully, we’re here to help you through the process.
Much thanks to the guys who’ve been working on this for quite a while now, namely scotty2. We’re going to give you the run down from going from stock to rooted with a custom recovery all in one go.
This shouldn’t be done by people who don’t know what they’re doing. If you’ve never rooted an Android phone before, this probably isn’t the one to start on. There are parts of this guide that can completely fudge up your phone. We take no responsibility, so proceed at your own risk. If you’re still eager to get your root on, carry on.
Again, this isn’t for the noobs and you do risk bricking your phone. Seriously, if you have a typo, your fancy new phone can become a door stop that probably can’t be returned. You’ve been warned.
Obvious note: When using the Terminal or ADB do not use the quotations, just what is inside of them.
This will go in two parts: one for root, and one for the recovery.
Part 1 : Root
What you’ll need:
ADB set up correctly. Some knowledge on how to use it would be helpful. We won’t detail how to set ADB up, as there are plenty of guides to tell you how to do so.
These files :
VISIONary app – VISIONary has been pulled from the Android Market, so download it here.
Terminal Emulator application (in Android Market)
1. Run VISIONary and gain Temp root
2. push the two files to /data/local using ADB
adb push wpx.ko /data/local
adb push hboot_dhd.nb0 /data/local
3. Open up the terminal emulator app and type in “su” to gain root access
4. Once the “#” appears, type in “insmod /data/local/wpx.ko” and hit Enter. You should get a “function not implemented error,” which is what we want.
5. The next terminal command will F your phone in the A if you mess it up. If you do mess it up, don’t blame us, as we’ve colorfully explained that you may mess your shiny new phone up with parts of this how-to.
dd if=/data/local/hboot_dhd.nb0 of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p18 and hit Enter.
6. Close the terminal emulator, (by pressing back) and open up Visionary again. Run temp root again. Many people get the “device already rooted” notification, and from my experience, it didn’t really matter. Running this again will lock in root.
7. Go back and open up your terminal emulator once more time and request root by typing “su”
8. Once you get the #, type “sync” wait about three minutes and reboot.
9. You should have permanent root with the security off (S-off), to check : With the phone off, hold down volume down and power to open Hboot. The top line of the screen should have “S-off” at the end.
*note: While I’m not sure if you’ll experience the same issue I did, I had to perform this twice with my G2 (slightly different, but mostly the same commands). The first time I got the S-Off, but did not have root access anymore. A quick fix may be to uninstall VISIONary, shutdown, pull battery, and restart.
If that doesn’t solve the issue, repeat the steps above.
You’re almost done!
Part 2: Installing the custom Clockwork recovery.
This is the easy part, but it can prove to be a pain.
By far the easiest way to flash this recovery is to use ROM Manager from the Android Market. Once rooted, open up the application, and tell it to flash the recovery image. To see if it worked, select Reboot into Recovery. If you get a screen with green text, you’re good to go.
For those that only get a black screen with a triangle, something went wrong and you’re still on the original recovery. I’ve seen the most success with flashing the recovery manually through fastboot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available for manual flashing at the moment, but once it does, we will update this post on how to do just that!
For now, if you are unable to successfully flash the recovery, just try to use ROM Manager again, and you may have better luck.
[Via: XDA-Developers]