[HOW TO] Root Motorola Defy

[pedrodh]

Sqoerk Im not sure if that's what he asked. It's true that rooting process doesn't delete files BUT having root you can delete files in a number of different ways, even a terminal will do.just fine. There are some free softwares also, so you dont actually need paid software.

About deleting system apps. Yes you can delete them all. Of course if you do phone wont work but it wont be bricked either. You just put the phone in bootloader mode and go to a computer with windows, start RSD Lite and flash the debranded motorola defy original ROM, and everything will be just ok again.

Now what would brick the phone you would need to.delete the bootloader, but for doing that you would have to explicitly correctly mount its partition first, and thats not easy to find, and its certanly impossible to do by mistake. That said its very hard to brick this phone.

btw systems apps are here /system/app

 

[Sqoerk]

Sqoerk Im not sure if that's what he asked. It's true that rooting process doesn't delete files BUT having root you can delete files in a number of different ways, even a terminal will do.just fine. There are some free softwares also, so you dont actually need paid software.

About deleting system apps. Yes you can delete them all. Of course if you do phone wont work but it wont be bricked either. You just put the phone in bootloader mode and go to a computer with windows, start RSD Lite and flash the debranded motorola defy original ROM, and everything will be just ok again.

Now what would brick the phone you would need to.delete the bootloader, but for doing that you would have to explicitly correctly mount its partition first, and thats not easy to find, and its certanly impossible to do by mistake. That said its very hard to brick this phone.

btw systems apps are here /system/app

You are right, it's hard to brick the phone. But it isn't that hard to get it in state where you can't boot normaly. This is what I meant with bricked. Sorry for this mistake.

To be onest, when you don't really know about rooting, then a flash with RSD Lite isn't much easier for you. So better read twice what to do. Another question (I dunno the answer) are your settings gone after flashing with RSD Lite?

 

[pedrodh]

Yes I have to agree in the being careful part. If you don't know RSD Lite, then get to know how to flash trough there first, and then play with erasing system apps .

are your settings gone after flashing with RSD Lite?

No. From my personal experience RSD Lite just installs what came with the ROM you're flashing. So it will replace system apps with the ones on the ROM file, and it will write other files in other places, but it won't erase existing stuff that the ROM file doesn't contain. So for example, if you've used Gmail, then a file with your account setting will be created, and since that file doesn't come with the ROM it won't be replaced, nor erased. Therefore when you boot the phone after flashing you'll have your account ready to use.

To have the phone completely stock, you have to flash the ROM, then boot, and go to Privacy > Factory Reset , then restart and now everything (apart from sdcard contents) will be gone. To completely erase everything you can also format the SDcard after that.

 

[jboogie3]

I think its bull how these site are giving you credit for rooting this phone even thought i was the first to root this back in october before the phone was even out!I have a thread and everything at m3 http://modmymobile.com/forums/637-motorola-defy-general/557910-motorola-defy-root-droid2method.html
ya i know you can use z4root now but man i sure deserve some props for this smh...

 

[pedrodh]

Look, I never said in the first post that I was the one coming out with the method. I never meant to steal credit from anyone and you're right to be angry about.

When I got the phone I tried successfully to root the phone this way and since by that time the defy section had just opened up and there wasn't yet a post here I decided to share. I forgot to tell where I learned about this though .
I'll rewrite the first post and make a reference to you.

 

[croxley]

Thank you for you replies. I will not root my Motorola Defy at the moment because I may somehow not knowingly may damage it.

 

[MOH-A-MMED]

z4root the easiest way

 

[gobble_di_gook]

z4root the easiest way

that may be.... but i cannot find it in the appstore when i search for z4root? and if i try to download from the thread i get an error telling me it is an incompatible version??

EDIT: Installed via an appinstaller... still don't know why i can't find it in appstore

 

[romdroid.]

when u download z4root from market will u autmaticlly get superuser program and then download from e.g appplanet and usb tethering etc?

 

[crazyVII]

top method--- permission denied

Or, download z4root by ryan in the market. Click permanent root, done.

Sent from my MB525 using XDA App

if i tried to copy via adb.. i got the message permission denied...

i'd suggest all people to use the z4root app, there,
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=833953

but thanks anyway :=)
+1 motorola defy out there

 

[Jasper.tw]

if i tried to copy via adb.. i got the message permission denied...

i'd suggest all people to use the z4root app, there,
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=833953

Taiwan and Hong Kong version defy is just released recently.
I used z4root (several versions, including a version from the link above) and UniversalAndroot but didn't work.
Then I tried the adb and got permission denial.


As for step 4 code:

cd /data/local/tmp
chmod 0755 exploit.bin
./exploit.bin

It ended but still stay in adb shell.

As for step 6 code:

mount -o rw,remount -t ext3 /dev/block/mmcblk1p21 /system
cp /sdcard/Superuser.apk /system/app/Superuser.apk
cp /sdcard/su /system/bin/su
cp /sdcard/busybox /system/bin/busybox
chmod 4755 /system/bin/su
chmod 4755 /system/bin/busybox
mount -o ro,remount -t ext3 /dev/block/mmcblk1p21 /system
exit

it ends with "operation not permitted."

And I am not the only one who can not get the defy rooted both in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Maybe motorola has changed the lastest rom to stop us modify the phone.
Just a guess...

 

[7iain7]

I am sure the ROM has been updated. I installed rom JRDNEM_U3_2.51.1
and lost root access.

 

[blackbeans]

Confirmed! z4root worked! Tks 4 sharing! I downloaded it from BlackMarketApp not from default google market!

 

[yiminghung]

I meet the same status with you , Taiwan version seem can't root with this rule?

 

[joyguard]

Who can root the Chinese version of 2.2 ROM?

 

[greenday646]

Hi all,

Unable to root defy experience the same problem as above "operation not permitted", tried various methods but to no success, Z4, Superoneclick, droid2root and the above method all fail. please help. build number JRDNEM_U3_2.51.0

 

[ellendel]

Just update to froyo 2.2 and then downgrade to 2.34 for example and you will be able to root the phone at last.

 

[pedrodh]

Check out this method for your version : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=889133

 

[Conzo427]

Rooting your phone can seriously damage it

I had rooted my Defy for the sole reason of slightly overclocking it as it seemed very "laggy" to me. I used z4root to do this. A few weeks after, I started to see the error "the process com.google.process.gapps has stopped unexpectedly. please try again" It seemed random but was certain to happen when I accessed the market or gmail. A few days later, the phone started to reboot itself, again, somewhat randomly, but certainly when I used navigation. (imagine how frustrating THAT was!)

Finally I decided that the only solution was to do a factory reset, not only did this not solve the problems, it seemed to make them worse.

I have just processed a warranty claim on my phone, HOPEFULLY, they don't figure out that I rooted my phone and voided the warranty.

The kicker is that this was the result of a one touch rooting solution, so it isn't as though I did a wrong step.

Just let this serve as a word of caution to those considering rooting their phones. (or an open invitation for some explanation of how to avoid these problems

 

[pedrodh]

That's easy to fix. Just flash a defy .sbf file, that should do a proper hard reset. Read this to learn about it : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=853674