clarification on rooting

inferno1 · #1 (**permalink**) 02-21-2010, 11:20 PM

since i happen to be sick at the moment, along with my son and wife (actually im sick thanks to them

), im sitting on the couch not feeling tired and everyone else is in bed.... so i decided its a good time to start looking into rooting my Droid....
i read the sticky and have a good idea of what needs to be done and just want to make sure i got it right before i go ahead...
so heres how i read it.
my goal is to just root the phone, have a safety backup image, and finally load a custom ROM/Image, probably the one formerly known as Sholes to start tinkering with...

step 1. download the root for droid.zip and rename itupdate.zip and put it on my sd card in the top directory of the Sd card, then follow the magical dance of power off/on while pressing buttons

question 1: is that all thats needed to Root the phone?

step 2:blocking the OTA, (these steps are pretty self explanatory to me)
Question 2: is there any harm in not blocking it? If the OTA happens would it just load the new Image and my phone be rooted again?

step 3 (where i get a little lost) nandroid/recovery image
first, these two concepts are the same thing, correct?
and it is basically and image you keep on the SD incase the custom image you load causes the phone to behave badly and is inoperable, you can just due the magically power dance of buttons and boot the phone to the backup image... is that correct?
if so, where is the tutorial on booting to the nandroid backup?
and is a recovery image (talked about in post two) the same as a nandroid?

thanx for the help guys...
-danny

tvandyck7 · #2 (**permalink**) 02-21-2010, 11:27 PM

If you use the Droid Mod (dm updater), it will do it all for you. Root, download roms, nandroid backups, and flash roms. You can even choose to go back to stock and unroot if you want. There is another thread where you can get the link to download it. Just install it on your phone and follow directions. It so much easier to do it this way.

**banden** · #3 (**permalink**) 02-21-2010, 11:58 PM

Question 2: If you plan on using a custom ROM you DEFINITELY need to block OTA updates. If verizon sends out an OTA update (2.1) and you end up applying it to something other than the stock recovery or stock rom it could brick your phone.

tvandyck7 is right though. Just skip all the manual stuff and download the dmupdater. It will do everything for you, root, rename stock recovery, install recovery image (same as nandroid), perform a backup, and install the formerly know as sholes rom.

nerdherd · #4 (**permalink**) 02-22-2010, 12:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by inferno1

step 3 (where i get a little lost) nandroid/recovery image
first, these two concepts are the same thing, correct?
and it is basically and image you keep on the SD incase the custom image you load causes the phone to behave badly and is inoperable, you can just due the magically power dance of buttons and boot the phone to the backup image... is that correct?
if so, where is the tutorial on booting to the nandroid backup?
and is a recovery image (talked about in post two) the same as a nandroid

It was confusing for me at first, but think of your phone as having a recovery partition like a lot of newer computers come with. Your main operating system has a section of your hard drive that it runs on, and a backup of everything is stored in a recovery partition in case you want to reinstall or restore to factory default. It's roughly the same idea on your phone.

When you replace the recovery image, all you're doing is replacing the default recovery program with something that is much more powerful that will allow you to both backup and restore your phone as well as install custom ROMs. You boot into this new recovery program the same way as before. You can make a backup of everything onto your SD card, and then you can install custom ROMs without worry. If something doesn't work right, you just load back into recovery mode and tell it to restore the backup from your SD card. The backup section of the recovery mode is called "Nandroid" (although I don't think it actually says that anywhere in the actual recovery mode...but that's besides the point). So yes, nandroid and the recovery image are generally referred to as being the same thing.

Hopefully that's of some help.

**z0mbiexx** · #5 (**permalink**) 02-22-2010, 12:29 AM

droidmod just put their first real rom out too.

Bunsen Honeydew · #6 (**permalink**) 02-22-2010, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by z0mbiexx

droidmod just put their first real rom out too.

And it is pretty nice too. I didn't like the previous ones (Sholes) too much, but this one is snappy and the live wallpapers are working well too.

inferno1 · #7 (**permalink**) 02-22-2010, 01:13 AM

thanx for all the help, i guess i will try the DM updater then and go from there...
now if i could just get some sleep....

bigwally · #8 (**permalink**) 02-22-2010, 10:27 AM

I haven't rooted my droid yet but I have been looking into it. I found this thread on the droidmod forums and it seems very thorough. Hope this help!

http://forum.droidmod.org/index.php/topic,73.0.html

dbu · #9 (**permalink**) 02-22-2010, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by banden

Question 2: If you plan on using a custom ROM you DEFINITELY need to block OTA updates. If verizon sends out an OTA update (2.1) and you end up applying it to something other than the stock recovery or stock rom it could brick your phone.

tvandyck7 is right though. Just skip all the manual stuff and download the dmupdater. It will do everything for you, root, rename stock recovery, install recovery image (same as nandroid), perform a backup, and install the formerly know as sholes rom.

Not entirely true. Yes you can block OTA updates with adb/terminal commands, but ROMs will not block OTA. However, SPRecovery (the recovery partition that you will be working with once rooted) will block OTA. You have to allow SPRecovery to install an update.zip, so really you have nothing to worry about.

inferno1 · #10 (**permalink**) 02-22-2010, 02:34 PM

so i followed this tutorial
http://forum.droidmod.org/index.php/topic,73.0.html
which was really easy to do, and im now running Droidmod...

i was expecting more of a difference with it compared to stock (coming from WM the ROMs i flashed were extremely different from stock)

can someone explain how i get a different ROM to show up in the selection screen when i run the DMUpdater
such as the BB (http://www.alldroid.org/viewtopic.php?f=309&t=2415)
thanx
danny