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Root [ROOT] Ultimate DROID3 Root/ROM Thread

doogald, would I backup my current ROM the same way I backed up the stock ROM and copy it to the stock ROM location? That is, get rid of my stock ROM and put my Minimoto ROM backed up in the stock ROM? Thanks again for your help.

No, this is different. If you start Safestrap by restarting the phone and pressing menu, you'll see that one of the Safetrap boxes says Backup. Selecting that will back up the currently selected slot to either external SD or internal memory (I always use external) so that you can restore the phone later on if something bad happens after flashing the patch file I created.
 
No, this is different. If you start Safestrap by restarting the phone and pressing menu, you'll see that one of the Safetrap boxes says Backup. Selecting that will back up the currently selected slot to either external SD or internal memory (I always use external) so that you can restore the phone later on if something bad happens after flashing the patch file I created.
Yes, I see the backup option in Safestrap and I just did that to my external card as well. Safestrap by default checked the System and Data boxes but kept unchecked the Cache and .android_secure boxes. I stayed with those default options. Do you do the same?
 
Yes, I see the backup option in Safestrap and I just did that to my external card as well. Safestrap by default checked the System and Data boxes but kept unchecked the Cache and .android_secure boxes. I stayed with those default options. Do you do the same?

.android_secure is where any apps that are moved to the "media area" are stored on your internal sd card. I believe that this folder is not wiped when you do a factory reset. Cache will be rebuilt when you run apps again, so there is little need to bak it up - it saves space not to. That's probably why these are not backed up by default.

Again, after running minimoto for a week without trouble, I think you'll be fine. ;)
 
.android_secure is where any apps that are moved to the "media area" are stored on your internal sd card. I believe that this folder is not wiped when you do a factory reset. Cache will be rebuilt when you run apps again, so there is little need to bak it up - it saves space not to. That's probably why these are not backed up by default.

Again, after running minimoto for a week without trouble, I think you'll be fine. ;)
Thanks again, yes, I did as you suggested and now have the stock text messaging app running on Minimoto. So far it looks pretty good. It didn't regroup the ungrouped messages that I had before, but going forward, hopefully it will group them like it used to in the stock ROM. All of my texts seem to be preserved just fine and in the proper order. Previous group texts (from when I ran the stock ROM) are still grouped as such. Yes, I did notice that the reboot takes a little longer, but still much shorter than the stock ROM takes to boot up.

Another weird thing I noticed about Minimoto is that voice dial no longer works. Did you notice that? In the stock ROM, I could click on the phone icon, then the mic icon (lower right part of the dial keypad), and say "Call <Name>" or "Call <#>" and it would do that. Now, when I click on the mic icon, nothing happens, as if that functionality was removed from Minimoto. Just wondering if you or anyone else running Minimoto noticed that.
 
doogald, I'm confirming that while my text message time stamp threading is still a bit messed up (as they became when I went to the Minimoto ROM), any group text replies I'm now receiving with the stock messaging app you provided me is now working as it was with the stock ROM.

What I mean by messed up time stamp is as follows. Normally, if I text with someone back and forth, let's say 5 rounds, then there would be 10 messages in all, 5 sent, 5 received, and in alternating order. When my text messages were converted from stock to Minimoto, it seemed to group them by day so that all of one person's received messages came in a row and then all of my sent messages came all in a row. But thankfully, it only seemed to do that within a day as opposed to the entire history.

A related question about the stock messaging app you so kindly provided. The stock messaging app icon looks like an icon whereas the Minimoto version is a blue smiley face. When I click on one of my contacts' shortcuts, it presents 4 options: call, contacts, text, and e-mail. The text and e-mail icon are now identical (the envelope). What is the best way to differentiate them so that the e-mail icon is the one that has the "@" within the envelope? Thanks again and I hope this is also helping others. :)

Edit: Please disregard my final paragraph. For anyone else wondering, if you select the second envelope icon, you'll get a choice of e-mail or text. If you make the default for that (4th icon) as e-mail, then the picture will change to the e-mail icon (the envelope with the "@"). My 3rd icon, which was the 1st envelope icon, had a choice of Skype or text. I defaulted it to text and now all is well where hitting the envelope for a contact shortcut immediately goes to the stock text app and the "@ envelope" icon automatically brings up the e-mail app.
 
A related question about the stock messaging app you so kindly provided. The stock messaging app icon looks like an icon whereas the Minimoto version is a blue smiley face. When I click on one of my contacts' shortcuts, it presents 4 options: call, contacts, text, and e-mail. The text and e-mail icon are now identical (the envelope). What is the best way to differentiate them so that the e-mail icon is the one that has the "@" within the envelope? Thanks again and I hope this is also helping others. :)

I'll have to take a look at it. It may require that the entire stock messaging (including email) structure needs to be installed. It may require just the email app. It may take me a few days to look at this. I do know that the third icon is the text messaging one; or, text messaging comes before email.
 
I'll have to take a look at it. It may require that the entire stock messaging (including email) structure needs to be installed. It may require just the email app. It may take me a few days to look at this. I do know that the third icon is the text messaging one; or, text messaging comes before email.


Ok, I have something, but I should mention that it adds a second email icon to the app drawer, and that if you select that icon, you will get a force close. Just the one; it's otherwise benign. Also, if you select that email icon from the contact popup with the @ in the middle, I think it will also force close.

Let me know if you're interested and I'll post it.
 
I am getting ready to return my D3 to stock condition, then re-root it, install safestrap 3.05 (ss) and finally minimoto 1.7 (mm) (all the current levels)

I am running ss and mm now, but somehow I have trashed the non-safe primary partition. It just hangs when I attempt to boot it. I think I did this because I didn't get everything uninstalled right before I installed ss.

I plan to follow the instructions provided by overlayer on http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1686911

But I am not sure exactly when to re-root. Is it after I do the SBF but before the OTA to get back to .906? I think that is when to run motofail, but I am not completely sure, so I decided to ask the question.
 
I plan to follow the instructions provided by overlayer on http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1686911

But I am not sure exactly when to re-root. Is it after I do the SBF but before the OTA to get back to .906? I think that is when to run motofail, but I am not completely sure, so I decided to ask the question.

I'd reroot after the OTA. The OTA will unroot the phone anyway, so you'll save yourself that step.

Before you run the SBF, though, you could try wiping data on stock and see if the phone will start. If it doesn't start after a wipe data/factory reset, you can still do Overlayer's 1step, but you may be able to save that step.
 
OK, thanks for the tip. I am all for saving steps (and time.)

I did try to wipe data and factory reset the non-safe partition, but it still hangs. I think that because I didn't get the previous bootstrap recovery removed it somehow messed up the non-safe slot when I installed SS.

I am praying that doing a full SBF will straighten things out.

Thanks for the quick response.
 
Well, it took a couple of tries to get through the process without any stupid errors on my part, but everything worked as advertised. I now have three safestrap slots that boot as expected.

I am waiting patiently for safestrap to allow "safe" slot systems to be restored to the primary "unsafe" slot, since it is reported that even better performance will result.

Once again, the forums came to my rescue.
 
I'll have to take a look at it. It may require that the entire stock messaging (including email) structure needs to be installed. It may require just the email app. It may take me a few days to look at this. I do know that the third icon is the text messaging one; or, text messaging comes before email.

Ok, I have something, but I should mention that it adds a second email icon to the app drawer, and that if you select that icon, you will get a force close. Just the one; it's otherwise benign. Also, if you select that email icon from the contact popup with the @ in the middle, I think it will also force close.

Let me know if you're interested and I'll post it.
It looks like I edited my original post just before you posted your reply. You could disregard that "A related question" paragraph.

So far, the cons I listed of Minimoto when it comes to texting:
OK, now the downsides. The text messaging is worse:
1.) Keyboard has a smiley face where the return key should be
2.) Group text messages are no longer grouped. Whenever I receive a group text reply, it now shows it in the individual's thread.
3.) With the stock ROM, I can take a picture and send it as an MMS text. Now, when I take a picture, if I want to send it, I have to go through my gallery of pics and then choose that pic. It's much less efficient that way.
4.) With the stock ROM, if a text message didn't go through for some reason, there was a menu option (long press that unsent message) to resend it. There's no longer a resend option. I have to forward the message, which requires putting in the contact's name.
5.) I don't have group contacts anymore. Does Minimoto no longer support it? I have to put in all of the people's names to send a group text or pull up an archive of an older group text that I transferred over via Titanium Backup and then send a group message that way.
With your stock text app returned to Minimoto (thanks again), the cons are now amended as follows:
1.) Fixed.
2.) Fixed - this was the biggest con for me.
3.) I haven't tested this yet.
4.) Fixed.
5.) Fixed.

I'll updated Minimoto texting cons 3 and 4 as I encounter them.

In terms of Minimoto, the biggest feature now missing is I can't do voice dialing anymore (via the microphone icon), as mentioned in my previous post. : \
 
For anyone else wondering, if you select the second envelope icon, you'll get a choice of e-mail or text. If you make the default for that (4th icon) as e-mail, then the picture will change to the e-mail icon (the envelope with the "@"). My 3rd icon, which was the 1st envelope icon, had a choice of Skype or text. I defaulted it to text and now all is well where hitting the envelope for a contact shortcut immediately goes to the stock text app and the "@ envelope" icon automatically brings up the e-mail app.

Ok, good find!

I've also put together a patch that adds support for the car dock and, I think, the desk smartdock (which I don't have - I have the car dock.) The car dock works fine (though I don't really use it all that much.) If anybody wants it, I've attached it to this post.

Long-pressing the search key, even in the dialer, allows you to use voice search, and I think that will allow dialing commands, if you really want to voice dial. (I never do it myself.) Give that a try for voice dialing.

One more thing: in the patch I originally provided there was a file I included for /system/app/vzwappdirectedsmspermission.apk. I don't think that you actually need that file - I have removed it and my phone continues to text just fine. If you have an app link Root Explorer or ES File Explorer you can delete that file, restart the phone, and you should be fine. I'm going to go back and replace the blursms.zip patch file with one that does not include that .apk for future updates to Minimoto.
 

Attachments

Ok, good find!

I've also put together a patch that adds support for the car dock and, I think, the desk smartdock (which I don't have - I have the car dock.) The car dock works fine (though I don't really use it all that much.) If anybody wants it, I've attached it to this post.

Long-pressing the search key, even in the dialer, allows you to use voice search, and I think that will allow dialing commands, if you really want to voice dial. (I never do it myself.) Give that a try for voice dialing.

One more thing: in the patch I originally provided there was a file I included for /system/app/vzwappdirectedsmspermission.apk. I don't think that you actually need that file - I have removed it and my phone continues to text just fine. If you have an app link Root Explorer or ES File Explorer you can delete that file, restart the phone, and you should be fine. I'm going to go back and replace the blursms.zip patch file with one that does not include that .apk for future updates to Minimoto.
I don't really use the car dock/smart dock capability for my phone.

Thanks, I installed ES File Explorer and then cut and pasted the vzwappdirectedsmspermission.apk file to my external card just in case I need it. I'll go ahead and reboot my phone to make sure my text messaging still works. It's only a 16KB file, I believe, but I guess it's a piece of bloat that you figured isn't necessary?

I'll try the long press of the voice mic icon to see if that helps.
 
Thanks, I installed ES File Explorer and then cut and pasted the vzwappdirectedsmspermission.apk file to my external card just in case I need it. I'll go ahead and reboot my phone to make sure my text messaging still works. It's only a 16KB file, I believe, but I guess it's a piece of bloat that you figured isn't necessary?

As far as I can tell, only some of Verizon's pre-installed apps for the D3 require this to be installed - the Family Locator service app, VZ Navigator, and maybe City ID.

My guess? Just based on its name, Verizon uses an SMS "message" to have the phone wake up and locate itself, and this app manages the communication between text messaging and those VZW apps (as well as preventing the normal SMS app from seeing the SMS messages - in other words, it intercepts those special messages before the text messaging app even sees them.)

It's just a guess, but I found that app listed in the required permission on the AppBrain market. See here: VZW Family Locator | AppBrain Android Market (go to the "Permissions" tab".)

Minimoto does not include that vzwappdirectedsmspermission.apk file, but when I saw the "SMS" in the name of the file, I decided that it may be necessary for Blur messaging. After installing the patch, I did a little research to discover that it does not appear to be used. Plus, of course, I can send and receive text messages without that .apk file being present.

When/if the next Minimoto version comes out, I'll test my patch again, but you may want to go up to my message where I uploaded the patch and download the new one - I updated it last night. It's here: Post 146.
 
I downloaded and unzipped motofail (tried from a couple of different places). First, it is flagged as a trojan by my malware scanner, which I think is expected. If anyone can confirm that I'd appreciate it. Second, there is no motofail.exe, the only exe is adb.exe. Am I supposed to rename motofail to motofail.exe? Seems a little fishy, never had to do that before, at least not in many years.
 
your virus scanner, removed motofail.exe,
redownload
disable virus protection, then unzip, and run


edit:sorry run the run.bat
 
I downloaded and unzipped motofail (tried from a couple of different places). First, it is flagged as a trojan by my malware scanner, which I think is expected. If anyone can confirm that I'd appreciate it. Second, there is no motofail.exe, the only exe is adb.exe. Am I supposed to rename motofail to motofail.exe? Seems a little fishy, never had to do that before, at least not in many years.

Get Motofail from Dan Rosenberg's site.

http://vulnfactory.org/blog/2012/02/11/rooting-the-droid-4-a-failed-bounty-experiment/

No, do not rename Motofail. That is an executable Linux file that gets copied to the phone. You need to:

Unzip that file into its own folder

Turn on USB debugging on the phone. Settings:applications:development

With the phone on, connect to the pc by cable

Run the "run.bat" batch file, which will walk through the steps to root the phone.
 
As far as I can tell, only some of Verizon's pre-installed apps for the D3 require this to be installed - the Family Locator service app, VZ Navigator, and maybe City ID.

My guess? Just based on its name, Verizon uses an SMS "message" to have the phone wake up and locate itself, and this app manages the communication between text messaging and those VZW apps (as well as preventing the normal SMS app from seeing the SMS messages - in other words, it intercepts those special messages before the text messaging app even sees them.)

It's just a guess, but I found that app listed in the required permission on the AppBrain market. See here: VZW Family Locator | AppBrain Android Market (go to the "Permissions" tab".)

Minimoto does not include that vzwappdirectedsmspermission.apk file, but when I saw the "SMS" in the name of the file, I decided that it may be necessary for Blur messaging. After installing the patch, I did a little research to discover that it does not appear to be used. Plus, of course, I can send and receive text messages without that .apk file being present.

When/if the next Minimoto version comes out, I'll test my patch again, but you may want to go up to my message where I uploaded the patch and download the new one - I updated it last night. It's here: Post 146.
Sorry for being a little MIA. I deleted that file (vzwappdirectedsmspermission.apk) and my stock messaging that you helped me put back into Minimoto is working just fine. Also, I'm happy to say my phone hasn't frozen yet in the past few weeks or a month. If you recall, I had about 2 or 3 freezes during the first couple of weeks of my using Minimoto, where the phone would be on, but not responding. And the only way I could get it to respond was to remove the case, back cover, and battery, then put it back together and reboot the phone.

My phone did reboot on me a couple times the past couple weeks on its own for some reason, but I'll probably just blame that on whatever bugs may be with Android 2.3.4. Thanks again for your help with getting the stock messaging back on.
 
Thanks to the information provided here and elsewhere, I am now running Minimoto! So far I have been thrilled. It's fast, smooth and uses a significant amount fewer resources than my de-bloated stock. Also, a number of annoyances I had been dealing with for a long time have been resolved.

I am interested in adding back in the Blur Email. I tried to pull it out of a deodexed .906 stock rom, but it force closed whenever I tried to use it. I'm wondering whether it would work in conjunction with the stock SMS solution posted by Doogald, as this appears to have some additional components of the original Blur system. Does anyone know if this would work or if any other components would be required?

Can anyone comment on whether additional resources are consumed by reverting to the Blur SMS?

Thanks!
 
I am interested in adding back in the Blur Email. I tried to pull it out of a deodexed .906 stock rom, but it force closed whenever I tried to use it. I'm wondering whether it would work in conjunction with the stock SMS solution posted by Doogald, as this appears to have some additional components of the original Blur system. Does anyone know if this would work or if any other components would be required?

See this post above: http://androidforums.com/droid-3-al...ate-droid3-root-rom-thread-4.html#post5600953

I have a solution, with the minor drawbacks that are listed. I never posted that zip, but I'll dig it out and post it later. It is quite possible that it requires the Blur SMS patch as well, but I'll look into that later.

There is also the K9 Mail third party app, by the way. Search for that in the Play Store. That may be good enough...

Can anyone comment on whether additional resources are consumed by reverting to the Blur SMS?

Thanks!

Honestly, I do not know. I just think that the space consumed by the app is larger than the CyanogenMod 7 MMS app that is in Minimoto, and the developer is trying to minimize the actual size of the ROM on the phone. It is possible that it consumes more RAM/battery, but I doubt that it would be noticeable.
 
A related question about the stock messaging app you so kindly provided. The stock messaging app icon looks like an icon whereas the Minimoto version is a blue smiley face. When I click on one of my contacts' shortcuts, it presents 4 options: call, contacts, text, and e-mail. The text and e-mail icon are now identical (the envelope). What is the best way to differentiate them so that the e-mail icon is the one that has the "@" within the envelope? Thanks again and I hope this is also helping others.

Edit: Please disregard my final paragraph. For anyone else wondering, if you select the second envelope icon, you'll get a choice of e-mail or text. If you make the default for that (4th icon) as e-mail, then the picture will change to the e-mail icon (the envelope with the "@"). My 3rd icon, which was the 1st envelope icon, had a choice of Skype or text. I defaulted it to text and now all is well where hitting the envelope for a contact shortcut immediately goes to the stock text app and the "@ envelope" icon automatically brings up the e-mail app.

Not sure you saw this, but it looks like the issue originally posted about was figured out by the original poster as a non-issue.

Either way, it sounds like your proposed solution involved reinstating the blur email client, which I would like to do. I had played with K-9 and Aqua Mail, but I generally enjoyed the simplicity and functionality of the stock blur email.

If it can easily be added back in, then great, but it's not as if I have no other options, and I would hate to put you to any trouble if this is not something you can do without much effort.

Either way, I appreciate your response and your expertise.
 
Just to update, I still cannot get the Moto Blur email to install without force closing. I'll keep working on it, but it may be a while...
 
Please don't go to so much trouble; if it doesn't work, i can live without it. I would also hate to see you put a bunch of blur components back in to the rom to make it work. I had hoped it would be easy after adding in the SMS. I appreciate you giving it a try.
 
Not sure you saw this, but it looks like the issue originally posted about was figured out by the original poster as a non-issue.

Either way, it sounds like your proposed solution involved reinstating the blur email client, which I would like to do. I had played with K-9 and Aqua Mail, but I generally enjoyed the simplicity and functionality of the stock blur email.

If it can easily be added back in, then great, but it's not as if I have no other options, and I would hate to put you to any trouble if this is not something you can do without much effort.

Either way, I appreciate your response and your expertise.
Firstly, congrats on getting Minimoto (MM) on your Droid 3. :smokingsomb: I've enjoyed mine vs. stock quite a bit, esp. after Doogald helped me get the stock text messaging app back on. (MM's version is poor IMO.) I don't use e-mail on my phone, so I can't compare the stock's vs. MM's.

The MM'd phone is definitely snappier. Way more free RAM (by close to 100 MB, which is significant for our under-RAM'd phone). The main downside I see is with Android 2.3.4 it has. It is buggy and my phone crashes/freezes or reboots about once a week. And if it doesn't, then it becomes sluggish to the point where I have to reboot it. I know Doogald mentioned there's an Android 2.3.6 ROM for our D3, but since it's bloated up compared to MM, I never bothered with it. But I'm guessing 2.3.6 would be more stable than 2.3.4 in terms of fewer crashes/freezes/reboots.

BTW, does voice dialing work for you with MM? It apparently does for Doogald but it doesn't for me ever since I went from stock to MM. :confused: I'm referring to pressing the mic icon and saying something like "Call Mom Cell One". In the past, it would dial my mother's cell phone #. Now, the mic icon doesn't do anything. :(
 
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