HOWTO: Easy root for 1.7.XX or greater

[devo]

Update: With the new SDE, this also works on 1.9.x.x and 2.0.x.x.

This is a faster way to root than using ssh - based entirely upon rootnow's method (so don't thank me, thank him; I just put the installer together.)

This has been tested to work on both 1.7.33 and 1.7.71 with Windows and Linux

Standard disclaimer: I am not responsible for anything you choose to do to your device - that said, this is about as safe as it gets.



What you need:
SDE aos file (here)
1.7.XX aos file (here)
rootfs.img with installer script (here)

When you download the rootstock.tar.gz - just extract it *once*. Do not rezip it or anything else after that step. The rootfs.img is the file that has to go onto the device.

If you're using Windows you'll need ext2ifs with read only off

What to do:
1) Reboot your device and hold volume down to go into recovery mode
2) Update Firmware
3) Install SDE aos
4) Let it install
5) When it says the update finished, hold volume down and press power to have it restart and go back into recovery again.
6) Repair Disk
7) When it mounts on your PC, delete any and all of the existing rootfs.img, rootfs.img.gz, rootfs_oe.img - depending on how far into SDE you went, it can be named any of those so that there are none. Then proceed to copy the new rootfs.img (that you previously extracted) onto the device.
8) Unmount safely (let changes write to disk)
9) Restart - first boot the touchscreen usually won't work, so I just reboot again
10) Fill out some bogus details (test/test/test/test) to get into SDE
11) From the home screen: Other -> Root Shell
12) At the bottom left corner of the screen you'll see an icon with 'ABC' and a pencil - click the little arrow on the right of it to switch to the keyboard. Tap the keyboard to pull it up.
13) Typing time!
14)

Code: Select all

cd /devo
./install.sh

Wait for install.sh to finish - it will take at least 15 seconds to do its thing, so just let it go. When you see that it's done...

15) Tap the red arrow at the bottom left. Select log out, then turn off. Select yes when it prompts you.
16) Sit back and relax while it turns off.
17) Hold down volume down and boot it into recovery mode, install 1.7.XX again and you're done. Enjoy.

Thanks to rootnow for the hard work, and map002 for testing.

Now that everyone has access to root... what else does everybody want?

I've got scripts for cpufreq control and tweaking, swap, apps2sd, full backups, screenshots, paid apps? Sounds like a plan to me. 8) I'll see you in the scripts thread.

[map002]

This was a fair bit of work and is another huge contribution to the community. Looking forward to the scripts!

Thanks again, Devo!

Michael

By the way, here's a new warning.

Last night, I was testing some... stuff... and did a 'Delete device configuration and installed applications' as one does to get things all hunky-dory again.

I did this, tested, restored my apps and then went into Gscript to run the paid market script and... no joy. Just sat there looking at me all blue and innocent-like.

So I got curious, threw open a terminal window to look around a bit, did

Code: Select all

 data/bin/su

and... 'File not found'. What?!

Had to redo the root hack to get su back.

So just know that this can happen. A rehack'll fix it, so keep those files handy, you might need them again sometime.


Oh and to expand on Devo's disclaimer,in the days since this was released, some fairly technically-minded people have had issues doing this hack. Please read this whole thread and the whole scripts thread and see if this seems to be something you understand.

If you don't understand what this is or why you should do it, don't do it. Learn a bit about Linux first, then come back.

Remember, if you bork your device with the SDE installed, Archos will not fix your device and it will be hard for us to help you recover if you don't know enough about Linux to even describe the problem to us.

Devo did a great job of making it easy, but it's only easy if you have at least a reasonable understanding of Linux, IMO.

So read on and choose wisely!

[AllenPapapetrou]

Thanks you rootnow, devo, and Michael!

DLed the components and printed the instructions.

What a community our AF Support Forum is!

Allen

[WantToGloom]

will do it later on in work, that's absolutely fricking awesome, great work.

one thing, devo, it might be obvious, when it's installed, but how do you run apps as root? there's two in particular I wanna try, the startup blocker one and the bluetooth file transfer. both need root to run properly.

[devo]

Within any app you can run /data/bin/su and it will be able to su/use root, I'll whip up a superuser.apk or try to find an open source one if people want to limit what can run su

[WantToGloom]

awesome

a few things about the process (I totally couldn't wait till later to do it!)...

first, the step "delete rootfs.img.gz/rootfs.img and drag & drop the new rootfs.img onto there". on mine, the .img file in rootfs.img.gz wasn't rootfs, it was something like rootfs_eo.img and I wasn't sure whether the step was to delete the entire rootfs.img.gz, or delete the rootfs.img from there and then put the new rootfs.img in that .gz file... so I just gzipped up your rootfs.img file and put that on the root of the device instead.

second issue, which is actually my fault... if you download the firmware from my page, it'll be named to it's corresponding version, rather than just firmware_archos5.aos, so when you drop that file back on, the Archos doesn't recognise it, so you have to rename it from 1.7.xx.aos to firmware_archos5.aos to get it to work. I'll change that later today, so the file you download is called firmware_archos5.aos.

great, great work, thank you all. if you don't mind, I'll host the rootstock.tar.gz file on my server as well, so you don't get restricted by mediafire. I'll host any files like that, really, so long as you guarantee that they're your files and not in any way illegal (and if any complaints come in about the files, I'm not even gonna start arguing back, I'll just straight delete 'em).

any luck with ssh'ing in?

[devo]

Go for it - and it's just the stock SDE with busybox added in.

I didn't have any luck with the ssh method from rootnow but everything else worked, so I just added busybox and the install script to the rootfs.img. You can mount the rootfs.img (ext3) and customize it however you please for install if you're so inclined.

[Lui-g]

My understanding of "getting root" means that we get full control of the device.

So, given enough time for the greater minds to tinker with the device, what sort of things could we expect as a result from this aside from presumably paid market apps ?

Just curious.

EDIT: Sorry - just re-read the first post all the way through this time. My question is answered there.

[WantToGloom]

link for the rootstock file, http://www.archosbugs.com/firmware/rootstock.tar.gz

I've thrown the SDE firmware up there as well, for no particular reasons, http://www.archosbugs.com/firmware/1.7- ... rchos5.aos

I've also fixed the thing that while they're up on my site, indexed, when you download any of the firmwares, they'll come down as 'firmware_archos5.aos'.

woof!

[Aikon]

So once you follow this guide and are done with it, will the Archos be in fully root mode after every restart or do i have to run something upon start up again to get root access, Thanks a lot!

[map002]

You don't have to do anything else after the hack.

Michael

[Aikon]

5) When it says the update finished, hold volume down and press power to have it restart and go back into recovery again.
6) Repair Disk

stuck on those step when i finish installing SDE firmware and go back to recovery menu and select "Repair Disk" nothing pops up in my desktop, so i can't replace the rootfs file, I went to 'my computer' and no drive attached either, when i click the "repair disk" the computer just makes the normal usb attachment sound, but no folder or anything. Is anybody else having the same problem, Please help.

By the way i tried this on both windows 7/vista machines no luck.

[nopantts]

_

I posted this in another thread, but I guess I ought to post it here:-

Thanks. I can't have done the root hack properly. It's not returning root.

So here's my version of Devo's instructions - expanded and annotated - for comment.

Preparation:

What you need:
SDE aos file (here) - ok
1.7.XX aos file (here) - ok
rootfs.img with installer script (here) - includes rootstock.tar.gz file - which contains rootfs.img (only)
Note: - extracted rootfs.img from rootstock.tar.gz, then gz'd it back to rootfs.img.gz (using 7-Zip), as described in WTG's posting.

If you're using Windows you'll need ext2ifs with read only off - ok (not sure if this is necessary?) - installed ok (I assume it's working?) - using Windows Vista.

What to do:
1) Reboot your device and hold volume down to go into recovery mode - ok
2) Update Firmware - ok
3) Install SDE aos - ok
4) Let it install - ok
5) When it says the update finished, hold volume down and press power to have it restart and go back into recovery again. - ok
6) Repair Disk - ok
7) When it mounts on your PC, delete rootfs.img.gz/rootfs.img and drag & drop the new rootfs.img onto there (that you extracted) - ?

{ This is where I followed what WTG said, and replaced the existing rootfs.img.gz with my downloaded, extracted, and rezipped file of the same name. Devo's instruction doesn't say anything about zipping it up again, but he didn't argue with WTG when he suggested this. } Should I have literally deleted the existing rootfs.img.gz file, and replaced it with the unzipped file rootfs.img? Why did devo describe the file as "rootfs.img.gz/rootfs.img"? It's confusing.

{ EDIT: I tried it again deleting rootfs.img.gz AND rootfs.img, and copying over rootfs.img (not zipped this time). }

8 ) Unmount safely (let changes write to disk) - ok (I guess).
9) Restart - first boot the touchscreen usually won't work, so I just reboot again - ok (just one boot required)
10) Fill out some bogus details (test/test/test/test) to get into SDE - ok
11) From the home screen: Other -> Root Shell - ok
12) At the bottom left corner of the screen you'll see an icon with 'ABC' and a pencil - click the little arrow on the right of it to switch to the keyboard. Tap the keyboard to pull it up. - ok (magnifying glass required)
13) Typing time!
14)

Code:
cd /devo
./install.sh

Wait for install.sh to finish - it will take at least 15 seconds to do its thing, so just let it go. When you see that it's done...

{ EDIT: The second time I did it I got the message "cannot create directory 'data/bin' : File Exists" }

15) Tap the red arrow at the bottom left. Select log out, then turn off. Select yes when it prompts you. - ok
16) Sit back and relax while it turns off. - ok
17) Hold down volume down and boot it into recovery mode, install 1.7.XX again and you're done. Enjoy. - ok

I've said ok where everything went as described - no error messages.

{ EDIT: Second time failed too }

Help.

_

[WantToGloom]

I'm not sure about which problems you're having, nor exactly what devo meant with the rootfs.img replacing step, but to clarify, I didn't "zip" it, I "gzipped" it. if you're on Windows, I dunno if you can gzip with Winzip, or Winrar, or anything like them, but with the free 7zip, you can. if you right-click devo's unzipped rootfs.img file, then 'Add to archive', under 7Zip's sub-menu, then choose GZip in the 'Archive Format', it'll the gzip it to rootfs.img.gz. I'm not 100% sure if this is where your problem is, but I just wanna clarify what I did, in case it is.

[TheRain]

Hey Devo- a little off topic but-

I've been playing with openembedded and building an EXT3 angstrom image, but I was wondering, how did you get your image to be 433 MB? Mine are coming out as 99MB with no extra room.

[devo]

Let me clarify here a bit (and in the instructions)

When you download the rootstock.tar.gz - just extract it *once*. Do not rezip it or anything else after that step. The rootfs.img is the file that has to go onto the device.

Then on the device, delete any and all of the existing rootfs.img, rootfs.img.gz, rootfs_oe.img - depending on how far into SDE you went, it can be named any of those so that there are none. Then proceed to copy the new rootfs.img (that you previously extracted) onto the device.

[TheRain]

On a more on topic note- if I've done this correctly, should I be able to install the app Android Terminal Emulator from Android Market, and type su and be able to switch to root? Because that's not working for me...

cheers!

Collin

[devo]

For those that are looking to work on this on their own, here's a quickie for how you do it:

Mount the rootfs.img

Code: Select all

mkdir rootfs
mount -o loop -t ext3 rootfs.img rootfs

Make your modifications

Then sync and unmount (flush changes to file)

Code: Select all

sync
umount rootfs

[devo]

Almost, unfortunately /data/bin isn't in the PATH, so you'll have to either...

Code: Select all

export PATH=$PATH:/data/bin

to use plain 'ol su, or simply use

Code: Select all

/data/bin/su

[TheRain]

Almost, unfortunately /data/bin isn't in the PATH, so you'll have to either...

Code: Select all

export PATH=$PATH:/data/bin

to use plain 'ol su, or simply use

Code: Select all

/data/bin/su

ah nice! it *is* working. I thought I had done something wrong because when I cd'd to /data/bin and did ls it said it could not ls for that folder. But if I just cd'd there and ran su it worked just great.

Thanks! Nice work on this!