Motorola XOOM Rooted

Since it’s another Google experience device, and ships with fastboot support (albeit, limited), it really does come rooted out of the box. Just needed to figure out the board kernel base, and compile up a new kernel.

Unfortunately the kernel was not available in the Android repositories. At first, I tried using the Harmony kernel, since they are both tegra 2 250 chips. That turned out to be major fail. As soon as I was about to give up, I noticed that AOSP had updated their tegra kernel repository with some new tasty branches for stingray. Kudos to these guys for being so on the ball! I was able to compile that up and get a working recovery to obtain root, and then get Superuser on the device.

I also built up a recovery, but due to a nonfunctional SD card slot (until they release a firmware update that enables the slot), nothing really works. That will come later.

Here are the instructions to root your device (this assumes you have adb and fastboot installed on your computer):

1. # Download the XOOM root zip.
2. # Unzip the package.
3. # Put your junk in the box.
4. adb reboot bootloader (skip the next 3 steps if you have already unlocked via fastboot)
5. fastboot oem unlock
6. # wait for reboot
7. adb reboot bootloader
8. fastboot flash boot rootboot.img
9. fastboot reboot
10. # wait for reboot
11. adb remount
12. adb push su /system/bin/
13. adb shell ln –s /system/bin/su /system/xbin/su
14. adb shell chmod 4755 /system/bin/su
15. adb push Superuser.apk /system/app/

Yep, that should do it.

As I mentioned, I have a working recovery, but will not be releasing it until Google or I get the SD card working.

ROM Manager support will come as soon as that happens. But feel free to buy a Premium copy in advance.

And hit me up on Twitter @koush!

PS. Stock boot image for XOOM.

ROM Manager – Any Recovery

This has been a bit overdue, but users who don’t want to use ClockworkMod recovery can now install zip files off their SD card using ROM Manager! (This is a Premium feature only.)

However, there are technical limitations that prevent full ROM Manager support for AmonRa recovery and such. These other recoveries need the proper hooks for ROM Manager to communicate with them and and do scripted installations and backups. But of course, ClockworkMod recovery is open source and can be forked and ported to new devices.

Adding Your ROM to ROM Manager

Update: You can now host your ROM on ROM Manager's high speed server for free using ROM Manager Developer Portal! The following instructions are for advanced users that want fine tuned control over their ROM list, and want to utilize some of the advanced features. ROM Share will automatically host and setup your ROM for you in ROM Manager; all you need to do is upload the update.zip!

First, you'll then want to get yourself listed in the list of developers in ROM Manager:

To do that, create a JavaScript file that looks like this to describe where to find information about your ROMs:

Make sure that the URL you provide for your ROM list above will not ever need to change. I don't like doing extra work! Send me that JavaScript you just created. I'll need to add it to the ROM Manager master manifest (which has the list of all the developers and their respective ROM list URLs) before it will show up in ROM Manager. The best way to send it to me is by opening an issue on ROMManagerManifest on Github. If you are super awesome, you can fork, edit the manifest, and send me a pull request. Do NOT email me your manifest.

Now, you'll want to describe your list of ROMs that the user sees when they click you:

To do that, you need to create another JavaScript file that will live at the URL you provided. It should look something like this:

And that's it! Your ROM is now listed in ROM Manager!

But, if you want to use the more advanced features of ROM Manager, such as download mirroring, and ROM customization, check out this manifest:

Note that you can do cool things that install a sequence of installation zip files. "choices" makes a user choose between several zips (use a URL of "" for no action). Only one of those choices will be installed. You can also have multiple choice selections. And "addons" lets the user choose any number of additional zips to install. You can view my manifest for a full sample.

Finally, to register your ROM for OTA updates, you need to edit your /system/build.prop in your ROM to include your Developer ID ro.modversion (as mentioned above) so ROM Manager can identify the version of your ROM. This is optional as well, but why not get OTA updates if it's just a couple lines of settings!

ro.rommanager.developerid=cyanogen
ro.modversion=CyanogenMod-5.0.5-Droid

And that's it! Once you upload that file, your ROM will now be available to other Premium users! Good luck, and let me know if you encounter any bugs or need help!