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Root Able to disable camera?

4

4x4le

Well-Known Member
My eris is on the way to my house and I should get it in a few days. Im going to root it. I got this phone for work to replace my blackberry that sucks and dont have a camera. Worst case I will remove the camera or drill it out.

Before I would do that though I was wondering if I could actually remove a system app such as the camera and video camera. What would be best is if there was a way to disable the driver for the camera so it wouldnt even work with other apps like bar code scanner ect. The reason I want to do it this way is because it would be reversible in the future if I wanted to sale the phone, but wouldnt be something they would consider reversible at work.

Basically if I give the phone to safety/security and they cant get it to take a picture in 10 mins or so it will pass the test.




So,

does anyone have any insite on what would need done? Would it be like removing a system app? would the kernel or radio need altered? If I decided which rom I wanted to use could someone (or even the dev that made the rom) remove the camera?

I really dont want it to work for any apps like goggles or any of the aftermarket camera apps on the market because if security decided to download a camera app on the market and try it out I would be dened.

I really dont want to do anything that isnt correctable.
 
Code: 
adb shell mv /system/lib/libcamera.so /sdcard/camera-drivers
adb shell mv /system/lib/libcameraservice.so /sdcard/camera-drivers
adb shell mv /system/lib/liboemcamera.so /sdcard/camera-drivers

then download this txt file attatched to your sdk/tools directory and

Code: 
adb push fix-camera.txt /sdcard/camera-drivers

the txt file just tells you where to put the files back to if you want to fix your camera.
 

Attachments

I am going to be on the latest ota im assuming as this is supposed to be a stock eris. I am going to root it as soon as I get it. I will try a few different roms to see if there are any I like and If I dont i will stay with stock. I may try a 2.2 rom if it makes it faster and dont have any bugs. I really like sense (which is why I keep getting htc phones) so I doubt I will go plain jane.

My question now is, If I move the drivers, will these settings stay in effect if I switch roms around or would I need to do it each time?

If I do a nandroid backup with the camera working and I disable the camera will the nandroid backup re enable the camera, also the same question with a titanium backup?

Thanks in advance (SO MUCH) for helping me out with this!
 
4x4le said:
I am going to be on the latest ota im assuming as this is supposed to be a stock eris. I am going to root it as soon as I get it. I will try a few different roms to see if there are any I like and If I dont i will stay with stock. I may try a 2.2 rom if it makes it faster and dont have any bugs. I really like sense (which is why I keep getting htc phones) so I doubt I will go plain jane.

My question now is, If I move the drivers, will these settings stay in effect if I switch roms around or would I need to do it each time?

If I do a nandroid backup with the camera working and I disable the camera will the nandroid backup re enable the camera, also the same question with a titanium backup?

Thanks in advance (SO MUCH) for helping me out with this!
Click to expand...

you would need to do that each time you flash a different rom.
 
can anyone tell me where the instructions are to be able to enter these commands.
I also have an incredible, and I dont know will this interfere having 2 phones that I do stuff with on the laptop.
Im not sure if I need certain files on my computer or not. either that or could someone give me a price tag on what it would take for them to zip it up for me?



Thanks, and i know this made me appear such a lazy noob, but I would rather just not screw up my phone.
 
no need to pay us. its a SUPER simple process.

you need to setup ADB, theres instructions on that all over the place, the old root method has very good info on how to set it up. you will need the phone plugged in and in debugging mode(setttings->apps->development-.check the box)

make sure that your DINC isnt plugged in at the time.



also, you will need to do this any time you flash a new rom like CBF said, and if you take a NAND backup you can restore to that anytime and fix it.
 
im having the most trouble. I really just dont understand all of these commands and linix.

the sdk is instlled, the drivers are downloaded. Its in developement, my phone is showing up in the device manager, the driver is updated. I just cant get it. start/run/ cmd

then everything else gives me errors.

Does anyone know how to zip up the commands so I can just flash it?
 
I have all of the sdk installed, I have hooked the phone up to the computer and went into device manager and updated to the correct driver and now Im just stuck trying different things.

I go to start/run and then I have tried typing in cmd and command and it just tells e me when I try typing in other things that adb is not recognized at an internal or external command or something.

I have to be missing something, I just dont know what it is..... I have never been successfull at doing any of these commands, can someone tell me what important step Im not doing?
 
Ok, so I have figured out how to get into adb shell, however it is giving me errors.
I have tried it both ways, with the slashes like this / and like \ and it does give me different errors. If you need me to get you a screen shot of those errors I can.

cameraremovalerror.jpg


Please help me, Im getting closer and Im learning.

Thanks
 
You might contact the dev who made the rom you are using. They may whip up a quick zip that you can flash to remove the files. Most of them are pretty cool along those lines.
 
I was on the stock rom and did the q click market root. am i on the stock rom or is the root me a different rom? i thought it was just a zip that had su.apk
 
Sweet!!!! Im not trying to make this a blog lol, but I just keep posting in case someone has any help.

I have successfully disabled the camera! I used root explorer and toyed with the mount feature which allows me to move files even if they are read only. I saved the files to my sd card in the camera-driver folder I created.

NOW I want to get rid of the icons just for the hell of it. Does any one know where they are? Im going to be looking for them but Ill be near the computer just in case anyone wants to help out.....


edit: ok I got it
I figured it was under the app folder, but I only seen one apk called htc camera or something. Well, that was it for both the cam corder and camera.

I have successfully deleted the camera on a htc eris with your help!

Thanks guys, because of the code (that failed me) It at least got my thought process going and I really think I got a grasp of whats going on now and this stuff does not seem so forign to me anymore!
Thanks again!
 
and now this......lol.

The phone works fine with the camera and icons deleted as long as you leave the phone on. It wants to go into a boot loop once you try to turn it back on. Im having to do a nand restore right now to get the phone to boot back up. Im going to try again but now im thinking that it must do some system check, its looking for a camera and it isnt finding it. Does anyone have any suggestions now? I know Im stumpped on this one.
 
4x4le said:
and now this......lol.

The phone works fine with the camera and icons deleted as long as you leave the phone on. It wants to go into a boot loop once you try to turn it back on. Im having to do a nand restore right now to get the phone to boot back up. Im going to try again but now im thinking that it must do some system check, its looking for a camera and it isnt finding it. Does anyone have any suggestions now? I know Im stumpped on this one.
Click to expand...
It probably tries to load the drivers, but upon not finding them, it gets stumped and reboots.
 
Im thinking the same thing. Which sucks. Im sure its in there somewhere but im going to need someone with much more knowhow than myself to get around this one.
 
I actually have figured out how to take care of this a long time ago. There were no apps at the time. I was never able to get rid of the drivers without error but I did make a script that would move the stock app to a folder and would take a fake camera app (had a lower case c instead of capital so I could tell the difference) that even had the same Icon as the camera app. It would read "the camera on this device has been disabled" if you tried to open it. I was hoping that would satisfy management at work if we were to get checked. My brother ended up showing enough people though how to just move the camera app around with root explorer and they were on to us enough to just change the cell phone policy once again. They are not allowed on the floor but can be left on our lockers ect.

I had this done on my eris, incredible and thunderbolt, I learned allot in the process:
Allot of commands and how to use terminal.
How to use gedit to save commands.
How to use app inventor.
How to sign and zip apps so that you can change the icon on them from app inventor. (now you can change the icon natively anyways and there are simple programs that allow you to publish them anyways too now)

I had posted allot of this on xda (much of it in question form) but no one seemed interested and many of my posts were, ok now I figured this out and Im stuck on this now.

Great now there is support for it now, but it sucks that its too late for me due to our new phone policy at work.

I might revisit it after seeing what the solution is in the link you provided. I might be able to come up with 1 app that will do it all without even needing root access.
 
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