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Root How to NAND unlock desire?

F

fleaboobash

Newbie
Hello knowledgeable people!
I decide to root my HTC Desire last night using unrevoked and it went fine. I downloaded Titanium Backup and then font changer, which told me I needed busybox in order for font changer to work. I downloaded busybox which told me i wasn't Nand unlocked so couldn't be installed. My HBOOT thingy says S-ON so from reading around I'm assuming it is Nand locked despite rooting.
My problem is how do I Nand unlock my desire? All the threads I seem to find are for EVO and I'm not entirely sure these will work on my desire?
Can anyone advise me please?

Lisa :)
 
The tools are at alpharev.nl

There's a tutorial thread at xda here.

More information in the main XDA alpharev desire thread here.

There's also the root memory/storage FAQ, linked from the sticky thread in this forum (a link to that in my sig), which has a section on this as well (edit: though that's mostly on things you can do with S-Off - it contains a link to the same tutorial I linked above on how to achieve S-Off).

Edit: for info, it's only some CDMA devices (a US standard) that unrevoked will give S-Off to.
 
Hadron said:
The tools are at alpharev.nl

There's a tutorial thread at xda here.

More information in the main XDA alpharev desire thread here.
Click to expand...

I've also just discovered that despite UnRevoked Rooting and installing a Custom ROM I'm still S-ON (for some reason I hadn't checked before)

My problem is that I don't have current access to a Windows Computer since my Dad is away and I only have my MacBook with me.

Is there a way for me to gain S-OFF with Mac Snow Leopard? I don't really feel comfortable trying it with my VM Windows Vista since it's renowned for being unreliable.
 
S-off is a bootable CD so as long as your fisher-price "my first laptop" has a bootable CD drive, its fine.

What do you need S-Off for though Billington? Have you identified a need?
 
fleaboobash said:
Hello knowledgeable people!
I decide to root my HTC Desire last night using unrevoked and it went fine. I downloaded Titanium Backup and then font changer, which told me I needed busybox in order for font changer to work. I downloaded busybox which told me i wasn't Nand unlocked so couldn't be installed. My HBOOT thingy says S-ON so from reading around I'm assuming it is Nand locked despite rooting.
My problem is how do I Nand unlock my desire? All the threads I seem to find are for EVO and I'm not entirely sure these will work on my desire?
Can anyone advise me please?

Lisa :)
Click to expand...

S-off to get busybox is pretty overkill since you can do it without. You can either find a flashable zip somewhere or even just flash a custom rom that contains it, or even ADB although thats a bit harder.
 
I would like to delete the Voice Search System App from the phone, since it's using a lot of space and I've never used it for anything.

As far as I can tell gaining S-OFF is the only thing that allows you to do this.

Also I wouldn't mind being able to use other fonts on the phone.
 
The Vista VM wouldn't help anyway, because if you had a windows PC you'd boot it from an alpharev CD or USB, and it wouldn't be running Windows anyway. That's not going to work with a Vista VM ;)

I don't know whether you could boot a mac into the alpharev environment from a CD. To boot from CD you press C during startup, while for booting from USB, apple support says "connect the device, restart, and immediately press and hold the Option key to access Startup Manager". However, I've never tried either of these. What I did was make a VM from the alpharev iso and run that, i.e. the VirtualBox method from the XDA tutorial (though I'm sure that VMware or Parallels would also work). For that method I did have to remount the device on the VM after every reboot (which is also mentioned in the tutorial), but otherwise it was painless enough - just meant I couldn't leave the room and pace for a few minutes, then come back and find it all done.
 
SUroot said:
S-off to get busybox is pretty overkill since you can do it without. You can either find a flashable zip somewhere or even just flash a custom rom that contains it, or even ADB although thats a bit harder.
Click to expand...
But I think they wanted it for Font Changer, and while S-Off isn't needed for busybox itself I think that Font Changer does need it.
 
Fonts is nothing to do with S-off. You just need to be rooted and have the ability to flash things.

You can delete system apps using adb, but it wont give you any more space. All S-off does really is allow you to make system changes whilst android is running rather than having to be in recovery using ADB.

You can of course once s-off re-arrange your partition sizes
 
thebillington said:
I would like to delete the Voice Search System App from the phone, since it's using a lot of space and I've never used it for anything.

As far as I can tell gaining S-OFF is the only thing that allows you to do this.
Click to expand...
You could remove the apk from the ROM zip and then reflash the ROM.
 
Hadron said:
You could remove the apk from the ROM zip and then reflash the ROM.
Click to expand...

Would I just have to open the zip-file and the archive it? Sounds easy enough, I thought I would have to cook a custom ROM in order to remove .apk files.

Does that mean I could download .apk files and insert them into the zip file to create new system files?
 
You want to edit the zip, not unzip it and rezip it. Personally I usually use Astro to do it (i.e. I do it on the phone).

I have inserted apks on occasion, but usually don't bother - since my /system partition has been resized (the biggest advantage of being S-Off) there's no real advantage to me in doing that.
 
Thanks for the advice, I'll give it a go :)

And if I were to insert an .apk do i just put it in the right place and it's as simple as that? Or do I need to write something to get it to install?
 
From when I've looked at the install scripts they've contained a lot of code for setting up busybox etc (most ROMs come with this), but not explicit code for each apk in /system/app. So just inserting it in the right place should work (and I've just told you where the right place is :)).
 
fleaboobash said:
So would I be right in thinking that I don't have to Nand unlock my phone to load ROMs onto it?
Click to expand...
Correct.

S-Off is needed if you want to be able to write to protected partitions while the android OS is running (e.g. uninstall system apps using Titanium Backup), or if you want to change the way your internal memory is partitioned (the main reason many of us do it). But it's not necessary for flashing ROMs, kernels, themes or even radios - at least not on the Desire it isn't.

A lot of people rush through this stuff very quickly, but if your interest is just in flashing ROMs, I'd suggest learning about that first, and if you find at some later point that there is something you do need S-Off for then come back to it then.
 
Hadron said:
Correct.

S-Off is needed if you want to be able to write to protected partitions while the android OS is running (e.g. uninstall system apps using Titanium Backup), or if you want to change the way your internal memory is partitioned (the main reason many of us do it). But it's not necessary for flashing ROMs, kernels, themes or even radios - at least not on the Desire it isn't.

A lot of people rush through this stuff very quickly, but if your interest is just in flashing ROMs, I'd suggest learning about that first, and if you find at some later point that there is something you do need S-Off for then come back to it then.
Click to expand...

I see, i'm learning as I go :D
Can't understand how to 'flash' a ROM onto my phone, can you kindly give me a link for idiots on how to do this? I'm not an idiot really but being a student midwife my forte is more obstetrics rather than kernels and other crazy stuff! ;)
 
There's a step by step in the rooting faq. You can get to it by following the red link in my Sig or go to the "all about rooting" sticky thread in the top of this forum.


It's worth reading the lot, no matter how daunting it looks ;)
 
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