[CLOSED][ROOT][SNAPDRAGON] Introducing SamFAIL: Root Your SM-G950* From Odin!

[partcyborg]

Introducing:

SamFAIL!

[Size=DEPRECATED]DEPRECATED![/size]
This ENTIRE THREAD is old, busted, and has been deprecated for some time. Please stop reading it, and go to the link below this line of text:
https://xdaforums.com/galaxy-s8/development/root-partcyborgrom-aqi6-deodexed-t3702988

It has some very clear advantages over this version:

- Supports All existing bootloader revisions
- Latest version(s) of Nougat
- Huge community of support
- Telegram channel
- Preinstalled audio mods, visual mods, looks really good
- Actually still works
- very debloated without compromising many touchwiz features. It's over 50% faster on my device
- Deodexed, xposed FULLY supported.
- Rooting method improved, essentially foolproof

I don't want to have this thread closed, but I will





A New Alternative Root Method For The US Samsung Galaxy S8! (G950U Snapdragons)

Rooting your s8 just got easier.


DISCLAIMER 1: Although this method does not trip the "Knox Flag" you are still taking a risk by rooting your device. We are not responsible for your blazing fast smartphone with root! Let's hope this one doesn't catch on fire!
DISCLAIMER 1.5: THIS IS NOT FOR EXYNOS!

First and foremost, SHOUTOUTS!
- @partcyborg for finding the root method!
- @me2151 for testing on Note 8 and facilitating root on the Note 8!
- @elliwigy for... Shenanigans! And thread template
- @Chainfire For opening the door to make this root useful. He will be missed! (no he is not dead, just retired.)
- @samsung for the amazing phone and leaving rediculous loopholes open for us to root!


Disclaimer 2: The method to root should be pretty straight forward as the hard work has already been done for you. With that being said, you will need to know how to download files from the internet, extract a zip file and to use ODIN. That is basically it! Oh yea, PLEASE BE SURE TO READ ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS THOROUGHLY BEFORE ASKING FOR HELP!

Once again...

READ THE ENTIRE SET OF INSTRUCTIOMNS BEFORE BEGINNING!

There are important things to note about this process that WILL likely trip you up if you expecting them. Some things are not intuitive and may sound unimportant to follow but trust me they are. Every single step added her is absolutely necessary.

Prerequisites:
- A working computer with a working USB drive that is capable of successfully flashing firmware to your device.
- Comsey ODIN and Normal ODIN (Found in Post #2 As well)(In case you give up and want to go back to stock)
- SamFAIL S8 Custom Hybrid Combo/Stock firmware package (also in Post #2)
- A functioning Snapdragon Galaxy S8 G950U/U1 or ANY other US Snapdragon based Galaxy S8 that can run the standard 950U firmware. Must be able to boot to download mode, and NO EXYNOS OR
- The CSC file for your phone(also in Post #2)(NOTE: You MUST use the CSC matching your device or your network will not function correctly. If your CSC is not in the downloads section you must download your devices firmware and extract the CSC from it and use that one. I will continue to add CSCs as I have time to download them but please be patient as they can take a while to download. Bonus points if you can send me individual .tar.md5 CSC archives so I don't have to download 4GB of ROM.


Part 1 Instructions:

0) BACKUP YOUR CRAP This procedure wipes your entire phone, so anything that you don't want gone for good back up somewhere NOT ON THE PHONE for the duration of this process. TECHNICALLY it should be safe to leave on a SD card, but checking one accidental checkbox in Odin will make you lose it. Take the SDCard out or copy the stuff to your computer.
1) Unzip the SamFAIL S8 ZIP archive. Inside there will be two tarballs (.tar files). If you have flashed a rom before these should hopefully look familiar. NOTE: There is no CP archive because the hybrid BL_ archive contains all drivers needed to operate your device.
2) Boot up Comsy Odin. Reboot your phone into download mode. Connect your phone to your pc and make sure that you get the Blue box that signifies proper connectivity and that the Odin log has said "Added!"
3) In the AP slot, place the AP tarball. There will not be a long pause like stock ROMs as there is no md5 signature to check.
4) In the BL slot, place the hybrid combo/stock firmware package. Again, you can place these in any slot and Odin will handle it just fine.
5) Click on the OPTIONS tab, and select the following checkboxes: Auto Reboot, Re Partition, F. Reset Time, NAND ERASE ALL.

After finishing the above steps, your Odin should look exactly like this:

6) Read step #5 again and confirm that you have everything selected EXACTLY as shown in the picture and written in the words. Check it again and when you are sure everything is correct press START.

7) Wait for ODIN to complete the flashing of the system partition. Naturally, ODIN and your phone will see this image is not signed and return FAIL. Your device will say "Secure Check Fail: system" or something close to it. THIS IS EXPECTED, DO NOT PANIC OR GIVE UP. Your flash may have failed, but it did not fail hard enough

At this point you may be wondering "What is going on and how does failing to flash get me root?"

The answer is because of a very simople to fix (pre-launch) issue with secure boot verification. I will explain in more detail when we are done and you have root but the short story is, yes they fail the flash when it does not match a known image, but they do so at the end, AFTER all of the data has been written to the disk!

it indicates that everything is ruined and you should bring them your phone right away. Fortunately we are smarer than that. Despite not saying so, while this screen is showing the device is in fact in download mode ready to receive new firmware.

This screen will likely say something like "System Failure" and there will be instructions displayed to take your device to the nearest repair store. Laugh at Samsung's silly attempt at subterfuge.


Now, lets put that data to good use with part II:

8) Reboot the phone into download mode again (hold down power, vol down, bixby) until the device resets back to a blue-green ("Download Mode Color") screen. If you have not seen or experienced a bad flash before, this screen may be new to you. You should see something that says "OPERATING SYSTEM UPDATE FAILED" and find that your phone will boot only to this state and nothing else. DO NOT PANIC! THIS IS EXPECTED and exactly what we want. Odin/Secure Boot are refusing to boot because you flashed unrecognized code, and wants you to flash code it recognizes. Lets give them what they want.

9) If you closed Odin or hit Reset after the first clash, open it again. Plug your phone back in if necessary and ensure that Odin sees you device just like last time.

10) IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! It is IMPORTANT that you be sure to remember to do the following: Click the RESET button onthe bottom middle of the page. Alternatively, you can Uncheck "NAND Erase All" "Re-Partition", but its extra work to remember which ones.
WARNING: IF you fail to do this, Odin will happily erase your device and have to start from scratch. Worse though is the failure mode. If you don't notice is not obvious that it is caused by this, which will likely cause you and others unecessary grief.

11) Click on the BL row again and Load the same Hybrid Firmware Combination as last time. Be sure the checkbox next to it is selcted.

12) IMPORTANT: If you did not click "Reset", be sure that the AP_ROOTEED_YSTEM tar is NOT loaded. You can uncheck the check box next to it and it will not be sent as part of the coming flash. If you do not do this, you will fail again and it will be for real this time.

13) Click on the CSC row and load the CSC file you downloaded that matches your device and service plan. Be sure that the checkbox next to it is checked.

14) Double check that your screen and options now look like this or has the same options.
- NAND ERASE is UNCHECKED
- F RESET is CHECKED
- REBOOT is CHECKED

This part is basic ODIN flashing here guys... Not rocket science!

15) Press START and watch the LOG tab to see what is happening. If it says the words "Erasing..." you have failed to follow directions and ust start completely over with step again.

16) This is where the Matic happens... Odin will flash all of the fimrware files in the tarball, and will fihnd that all of them are 100% valid signed images by Samsung. Since Odin has a very poor memory, he completely forgets that you had just flashed a bad system image, and marks your secure boot flag as "Safe" and lets you proceed to boot!

17) Have a good laugh (at least i found if funny)

18) The phone will reboot to recovery and dump you there for one of two reasons:
a) You will see the progress bar advance over a feconds to 32% or so and then stop, printing an error about faling to find resize data. This is normal and happens with every flash of CSC OYN that I have ever seen. You are safe to advance to the nxt step.
b) The recovery will immediately exit with an error that says "Failed to mount /system (Invalid Argument)". This is unfortunately bad news as it means that the failed flash attempt was not successful in writing enough data to see the file system. Do not dispair yet though! This happens sometimes with this method. Start off by starting over from scratch. If that does not work, reach out to me and I will walk you through a few procedures that will eventually fix it.

19) If you made it past step 18, all you need to do now is execute a data wipe/factory reset. This is necessary and your device will not boot withiout it, as there is no userdata image file flashed through odin.

Now, wait for the device to boot up (it will take 3-5min like most new isntalls) and then you can try out your new root!

20) Once phone boots up, Setup your device as normal and proceed to the SuperSU app. It will ask you to update the SU Binary. Select Normal method and let it do its thing. A popup should show up to disable KNOX. Follow its instructions then SU should say it was Successful in updating and it needs to reboot(You may have to do it multiple times. I belive its 2 or 3 times then its good) ENJOY SamFAIL ROOT!

NECESARY CLEANUP

The reason that this works at all is that modern filesystems like ext4 (what android uses) are very robust in the face of errors on the disks. Particularly in the days of old when everything was on spinning platters, that may moving parts was a lot more prone to failure, so filesystems were designed to keep your data safe in the face of losing parts of the disk. Fortunately for us this allos us to successfully mount and load android off of an incompleted filesystem. To make sure that the device is table, and that future SamFAIL attmpts do not degrade into "Invalid Argument" errors, we need to do a filesystem repair.

Download fsck.ext4 and push it to your device to fix any errors that cropped up from the SamFail dirty flash.

Connect via adb (or shell on your device) and run the following

FROM YOUR COMPUTER WITH PHONE PLUGGED IN AND AD ENABLED:

adb push <localpath to fsck.ext4 /tmp/

Then on the Device:

su
chmod 755 /tmp/fsck.ext4
mount -o ro,remount /system
/tmp/fsck.ext4i -f $(find /dev -name system)

It is possible that oyu will see a LOT of errors reported. Do not worry though all of the stock os will have made it through ok. Press "a" to say auto-yes to all the questions and your filesystem will be healthy from here on out.

EPILOGUE

It is HIGHLY recommended that you follow this step with the flashing of either a custom rom or a full stock /system ROM using FlashFire. The image I provided that is pre-rooted essentially has no more work done to it than that, and I have no plans to do that work anytime soon. Unforutnately my experiments with using SamFAIL to flash more custom /system partitiuons made them a lot more unstable and frequently would not boot at all. Consider this a stepping stone that requires a little less work than SamPWND used to be before more automation work was done.

The AQH3 Image in post #2 has the "warning this device has been modded" message and i took a brief stab at it but wasnt able to get it locked down. If someone wants to do so i will havppily upgrade the rom to a better vesrion. Otherwise there are some really cool bnew roms out for the s8/s8+ now that I recommend checking out.

The more exciting prospect is that this can be used by ANY Samsung device with a permissive Selinux version without dm-verity. That covers a wide range of devices which we will be investifating.




DISCLAIMER 3:
* SamFAIL DOES NOT TRIP KNOX
* SamFAIL DOES NOT FIX THE 80% BATTERY CHARGE ISSUE
* Boot.img is SECURE which means you MUST use SYSTEM ROOT. (Similar to SamPWND)
* This means that MAGISK DOES NOT WORK
* Which also means SAFETY NET FAILS. So any apps you enjoy that require passing Safety Net will most likely not work while you are rooted with SamFAIL
* Again, similar to SamPWND, this root method uses a factory binary boot.img which is necessary to boot the modified system. THIS MEANS BATTERY ONLY CHARGES TO 80% (Thanks Samsung.)
* SamFAIL DOES NOT UNLOCK YOUR BOOTLOADER AND DOES NOT SIM UNLOCK YOUR PHONE.
* This *should* in theory, work for other Snapdragon Models of the Note 8. If you have another model and are successful please post so we can add "support" for other models.


Back to Stock?
- Download the full STOCK firmware of your choice.
- Flash it in ODIN/Comsey ODIN as you would any other time!
- It will take a few reboots for the "custom" splash screen to go away.


Donations:
As always, the devs have been hard at work recently to bring you root. Donations are definitely NOT REQUIRED but if you feel generous and want to spot the devs a few bucks for their hard work you can donate to this Paypal Address:

Donations

NOTE: this message is geared more towards the Note 8 users, for whom this root method is their first and only.


DOWNLOADS will be in POST #2
UPDATES will be in POST #3(RESERVED FOR FUTURE UPDATES)



As always, ENJOY ROOT and thank SamFAIL for making it all possible!

P.S. See why we called it SamFAIL now? Massive fail on Samsungs part.

 

[partcyborg]

SamFAIL Downloads​

Rooted AQH3 Android 7.0 System for Galaxy S8 Snapdragon (Flashing in Odin)
AP_SamFAIL_G950U1_AQH3_ROOTED_SYSTEM.tar:


Hybrid Stock/Combination Full Firmware (minus userdata and system) For Rooted Devices.
AQI6 Stock, AQI1 Combo (for Flashing in Odin):
BL_SamFAIL_G950U1_HYBRID_AQI6_STOCK_AQI1_COMBOtar.tar


VZW CSC OYN for US VZW Customers on AQH3 (for Flashing in Odin):
CSC_OYM_SamFAIL_G950U1_AQH3_VZW.tar.md5


Staticly Compiled fsck.ext4 binary for fixing filesystem issues:
fsck.ext4

 

[partcyborg]

*YANK*

(reserved for future use)

 

[me2151]

Yay!

 

[elliwigy]

Nice!

 

[Ad.Shk2]

Are there any custom ROMs for the Snapdragon variants (specifically the Canadian variant W8)?

 

[elliwigy]

Are there any custom ROMs for the Snapdragon variants (specifically the Canadian variant W8)?

i have 1 or 2 but not gonna upload em until theres more stuff done.. its basically got minor visual mods and deodex n theusual stuff

 

[Ad.Shk2]

That sounds promising... I've been patiently waiting for custom ROMs for the Canadian variant... Good luck to you bro!

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

 

[elliwigy]

That sounds promising... I've been patiently waiting for custom ROMs for the Canadian variant... Good luck to you bro!

but yea,just not enough done yet in order to release.. i hope note 8 root will kick offmore mods n such for us

 

[Ad.Shk2]

I'll be going for Aosp based ROMs too, since it's for the Snapdragon

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

 

[partcyborg]

Are there any custom ROMs for the Snapdragon variants (specifically the Canadian variant W8)?

There is one that supports at least everything thats part of CSC OYN:

https://xdaforums.com/tmobile-galaxy-s8/development/samsung-tmo-galaxy-s8-sampwnd-turbo-t3662719

Its listed under the tmoblle section because the developer has tmobile, but as our devices are multi-csc so is his rom

 

[Ad.Shk2]

There is one that supports at least everything thats part of CSC OYN:

https://xdaforums.com/tmobile-galaxy-s8/development/samsung-tmo-galaxy-s8-sampwnd-turbo-t3662719

Its listed under the tmoblle section because the developer has tmobile, but as our devices are multi-csc so is his rom

The OP states: "this custom rom is only for tmo. i removed all other carriers config files..."

Also, what's CSC OYN?

Sorry about my illiteracy in this regard, I'm a Nexus/pixel guy which are a breeze to root and customize.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

 

[partcyborg]

The OP states: "this custom rom is only for tmo. i removed all other carriers config files..."

Also, what's CSC OYN?

Sorry about my illiteracy in this regard, I'm a Nexus/pixel guy which are a breeze to root and customize.

Aww that's a bummer, last I talked to him he was fine with other carrier use.

 

[elliwigy]

Aww that's a bummer, last I talked to him he was fine with other carrier use.

all he has to do is flash a csc after the rom lol if all he did was remove the other carrier stuff

 

[NexusS4gFreak]

Will this work for the S8 Plus?

 

[elliwigy]

Will this work for the S8 Plus?

yes if and when a modified system.img is created lol i dont plan on making it as i am already maintaining SamPWND root

 

[partcyborg]

Will this work for the S8 Plus?

yes if and when a modified system.img is created lol i dont plan on making it as i am already maintaining SamPWND root

I'm going to do my best to make one shortly but given I do not have an s8+ to test on I'm not so sure how effective I will be

 

[Venkat548]

Does this work? Anyone tried. I really want to root my Canadian model sm-g950w

 

[geokilla]

I'll be going for Aosp based ROMs too, since it's for the Snapdragon

I think the usual comment about camera quality degrading still stands when using AOSP ROMs? Have yet to root the Samsung S8 but I'd like to do it soon, along with flashing a debloated ROM for my sister.

 

[MrSteelX]

Aww that's a bummer, last I talked to him he was fine with other carrier use.

His rom has all the carrier info in it. He just doesn't update the op except the link to new rom.