Rooting the Magic

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Hey, quick question. Should you be able to root the sapphire exactly the same way as the dream by first downgrading to the early android builds, or will a new hack have to be found?

I'm wondering whether to get a magic or not, but I'd want to root it and there doesn't seem to be any documentation on it yet.

Cheers, Luke

bumping this as i probably wont get one unless i can root it..... although root doesn't offer much extra now with cupcake....

Originally Posted by MontAlbert

bumping this as i probably wont get one unless i can root it..... although root doesn't offer much extra now with cupcake....

You'd get Superuser access, which would allow (amongst other things) Wi-Fi Tethering and the taskmanager - two programs I really, really want to use!

Here's hoping one of the smarter lads get their hands on one of these soon! I'd donate!

Wifi tethering, screenshots, taskmanager, (proper) themes.. all good reasons to go root.

Originally Posted by slonzor

Hey, quick question. Should you be able to root the sapphire exactly the same way as the dream by first downgrading to the early android builds, or will a new hack have to be found?

I'm wondering whether to get a magic or not, but I'd want to root it and there doesn't seem to be any documentation on it yet.

Cheers, Luke

Downgrading wouldn't help, as there is a lack of the physical keyboard on the magic to type in commands through the terminal exploit in the rc29 and lower android build. (without 1.5 there is no keyboard functionality without adb (read about this Project)

Originally Posted by MontAlbert

bumping this as i probably wont get one unless i can root it..... although root doesn't offer much extra now with cupcake....

One think I like about this forum. Is that info taken from one thread can be used to help another thread...

Maybe we can root the magic using the adb shell commands they have discussed there. Its theonly thing I can think of to enter anything into the phone without a physical keyboard.

Yesterday I did some research on my Magic about rooting it.

I think it's not very easy. At least not as easy as with the Dream.
The Google Terminal emulator doesn't work on the Magic due to the lack of the physical keyboard. So I used the adb shell and discovered the following:

/system/bin/sh is executed as user "shell". So we can't do anything funky with it. You can't even view all the config files in /etc or change into every directory you want
The sdcard is mounted with gid and uid 1000 which is user and group "system". It is also mounted with nosuid and noexec. So we also have no chance of executing stuff from it.
I wonder where these groups and users are coming from since there is no /etc/passwd

A portscan revealed that there are no daemons listening on the wifi interface -> No possible exploitation.

Perhaps porting one of the early Dream roms that can easily be rooted and then taking advantage of their vulnerabilities will be a more feasible solution? I know that without the physical keyboard there would be no way to type but it might be possible to configure a build with a custom app that runs at startup and performs the necessary keystrokes for you. Just a suggestion mind, no idea if its practical.

I'd quite like to be able to use the wifi tethering apps as well, and whatever else may be released in the future that takes advantage of root capabilities.

Does anybody know if a Bluetooth keyboard works?

the telnet application has an textbox so textbox allows virtual keyboard & if telnet app is configured to run like terminal emulator means just skip the connect method it would give same functionality as the terminal emulator...

is what i am saying right?

wouldnt matter anyways. The but that let us gain root is patched, and I doubt they made the exact same mistake twice.