By Many were skeptical on the community’s ability to crack the Droid X’s locked down bootloader to make room for a custom recovery (which would allow you to load up custom ROMs and do other things), but developer Koush (famous for his developments with CyanogenMod and for his ROM Manager application in the Android market) simply won’t take crap when it comes to unlocking the devices he wants unlocked.
With that comes further development with his own-developed Clockwork Recovery and some workarounds to get it going on the Droid X. His method involves intercepting portions of the boot process while the system is initializing and having it kick you to the custom recovery. Nothing is perfect yet – and it’s very risky and you could potentially brick your device if you’re not careful – but Koush has wrapped everything you need up into a nice installable .apk file that you can get from his site (or for $2 from the Android market, if you’d like to donate).
He states that you still can’t replace the kernel or the boot image – even after installing a custom ROM – but he insists it’s definitely possible with full access to /system (but no word on if he’s spearheading this particular development). Read more details over at his blog (and you’ll want to read every single word carefully to ensure you know what you’re getting into).
[via AndroidPolice]
Custom ROM? Not really, not if you’re stuck on your old kernel.
Heavy modifications is a more appropriate term.
From his site:
—-
“So can we now install custom ROMs?
Yes, but you can’t replace the kernel or boot image. But really, once you have access to /system, anything is possible. It will just take a little hackery. ”
—-
Take it for what you will.
soooo, now that this is out, and X has been successfully rooted…
What does this mean for the OTA rollout of Froyo 2.2 in Sept by the big VZ?
Should I…
1) Wait for the Froyo rollout, and then root, & recover, and theme, and rom?
or
2) Root, Recover, Theme, ROM up….now?
a) And what does this mean if I do it now, and then the OTA rolls out? Do I accept the OTA, by unrooting, unrecovering, etc? Or just completely ignore the OTA?
Clockwork Recovery rocks! Give him time with the X and it will be nicely done I’m sure.
That guy is amazing!!
That’s pretty awesome, but to make a real CyanogenMod/Other ROM possible, the kernel has to be hacked.
Give it time.
Ok, so I bought the program, but am too skurd to use it, lol. I need to do some more reading. Not sure what a Bootstrap Recovery is or a Reboot Recovery. Figured I’d pitch in some cash to this guy for all his hard work. I’ll run the program once I get up to speed on all this stuff…..I guess my Blackberry expertise is useless now, lol.
Koush is amazing! This proves that given time and motivation anything can be hacked!
wow, the x has barely been out 30 days and its almost ready for Custom’s ROM’s… that’s pretty amazing.
i knew it would come eventually but not this fast. I’m excited to see what will happen to the X by end of Sept…
kudos to koush and birdman for pushing the envelope for all of us
If i was you id wait for froyo then root, backup, then theme. Tally ho. This is way easier then rooting. Hit the first button. Once it says successful hit then second it’ll boot into recovery then nandroid back up ur stuff. Questions? Google
I’ve been trying to keep up with all the hacking going on (mainly at AllDroid) and from what I have gathered, the hardest part is yet to come.
.
This is the way I understand it: Let’s say you want to put a 2.2 kernal on the phone and load up a custom boot image with it. To do that they’re going to need access to the boot loader. This will not happen unless a VERY high level Motorola engineer leaks the info necessary to get into the boot loader. I know, I know, you think we could brute-force hack it: well you’re incorrect and there are a few very good discussions at AllDroid about why brute-forcing isn’t even remotely possible.
.
This is where the guys got stuck on the Motorola Milestone: unless the hackers can figure out some ridiculously ingenious way to get around the boot loader, we won’t be getting access to 2.2 kernals until Motorola says we do. Like a previous poster said, if we don’t get the kernals, it goes from being a true custom ROM to being a heavily modded system stuck somewhere between 2.1 and 2.2.
.
I have a renewed faith in the hacking abilities of the guys going after the Droid X, but tbh it seems a lot of the progress so far is due to the work done previously by the Milestone hackers. Going back to my original statement, the hardest part is ahead of us: I wouldn’t hold my breath for the possibility that we’ll see 2.2 kernals on the DX before Moto says we can have them.
We saw this on milestone too, they wont get any further. You can have fun being stuck at whatever kernel Motorola gives you.
Ace job, Koush!
But screw those Motorola Android phones and their ultra-security! This is exactly why I’m sticking with HTC Android phones – hackability through flexibility!
Exactly what I was thinking Steve. What is the difference between this progress and that made on the Milestone?
so what exactly can we do now? sorry im an android newb
very nice! you get censored if you write a critical article about motorola’s bootloader-locking? weak phandroid!
@15 Absolutely nothing. This in essence accomplishes nothing. Dont understand why everyone is excited about this
And yes, all koush did was do what the Milestone hackers did and do it on the droid. not very impressive
You guys dont give someone as determined as him, it is coming soon as i here from A little bird :-)