Joined
·
357 Posts
Message for Verizon: http://i.imgur.com/2Cmoq.jpg
IMPORTANT
This can be considered somewhat dangerous. Flashing bootloaders is scary stuff and if something goes wrong during a bootloader/chain flash, you're probably going to end up bricked.
If you get to a point where you don't want to go any further, or things don't work, you can always flash the stock rom using Odin in your bootloader mode.
Get that here: Download (unzip first)
This method is known to work on all versions of the Verizon SGS3 up to VRBMB1. It probably works on newer versions than that too.
I do, however, recommend that you downgrade to VRBLK3 before proceeding. That should hopefully prevent problems that can arise on newer ROM versions. Download VRBLK3
INTRO
I want to give a quick intro into what we are going to do here. Hopefully it will help out with questions that people have while attempting this process.
As we all know, Verizon thought it to be a good idea to have Samsung lock the bootloader on this device. (see my message for Verizon at the top of this post)
What the locked bootloader prevents us from doing is flashing, via odin, a custom recovery or kernel. What we can do however, is revert to an older (semi-insecure) bootchain which we have acquired, flash our custom recovery, and then continue on from our freshly flashed custom recovery by flashing the fully unlocked bootloader and anything else we want.
DOWNLOADS
(I know it looks like a lot of files, but they are relatively small. Just don't rename any of them)
==============================================================================================================
IMPORTANT
This can be considered somewhat dangerous. Flashing bootloaders is scary stuff and if something goes wrong during a bootloader/chain flash, you're probably going to end up bricked.
If you get to a point where you don't want to go any further, or things don't work, you can always flash the stock rom using Odin in your bootloader mode.
Get that here: Download (unzip first)
This method is known to work on all versions of the Verizon SGS3 up to VRBMB1. It probably works on newer versions than that too.
I do, however, recommend that you downgrade to VRBLK3 before proceeding. That should hopefully prevent problems that can arise on newer ROM versions. Download VRBLK3
INTRO
I want to give a quick intro into what we are going to do here. Hopefully it will help out with questions that people have while attempting this process.
As we all know, Verizon thought it to be a good idea to have Samsung lock the bootloader on this device. (see my message for Verizon at the top of this post)
What the locked bootloader prevents us from doing is flashing, via odin, a custom recovery or kernel. What we can do however, is revert to an older (semi-insecure) bootchain which we have acquired, flash our custom recovery, and then continue on from our freshly flashed custom recovery by flashing the fully unlocked bootloader and anything else we want.
DOWNLOADS
(I know it looks like a lot of files, but they are relatively small. Just don't rename any of them)
ROOT AND RECOVERY
WHAT TO DO NOW?
BACK TO STOCK
Consider everything below this line legacy, the above method is much easier to achieve root and unlocked bootloader
==============================================================================================================
First off, you'll need some files. This basically flashes a custom system.img.ext4 which has your su binary. You then boot up and flash cwm or twrp
1. USB Drivers: http://tinyw.in/Fdoz
2. Odin: http://samsung-updates.com/Odin307.zip
3. One Rooted system.img tarball:
- Root66: A more proper rooted image than what I had originally had available to work with: http://forum.xda-dev...d.php?t=1762204
OR
- Stripped down (unzip first), more details here on what this one is: http://rootzwiki.com...tripped-rooted/
- http://goo.im/devs/i...img.tar.md5.zip
- torrent (please seed!): http://goo.im/devs/i...rom.zip.torrent
OR4. One recovery image:
- Full Stock, rooted:
- http://goo.im/devs/i....system.img.tar (this is big ~1.5gb, I'll work on slimming it down)
- torrent (please seed!): http://goo.im/devs/i...img.tar.torrent
- mirror: http://tinyurl.com/tytillithz thanks tillithz!!
Ok, lets get started....
- CWM recovery.img: http://goo.im/devs/i...35/recovery.img (this was ripped out of CWM-Recovery-LTE-SGS3-Sprint-v4.zip from the e4gt team)
OR- TWRP image (courtesy of birdman): http://goo.im/devs/birdman/twrp8.img
1. Boot into Odin mode on the phone. Do this by powering off and then holding vol down, home and power to power on. Then press vol up to accept the disclaimer. Plug into your computer.
2. Fire up Odin (Heimdeil may work in linux, haven't tested) choose the PDA section and browse to wherever you downloaded rooted.system.img.tar then click flash. This takes awhile, be patient. Took me around 8 minutes to flash this.
3. It will auto reboot. It should boot up and thing should act mostly normal except that you'll be able to adb in and use su to take root
If you don't want a custom recovery, you may stop here. You are rooted.
Continuing on to get a custom recovery on your device...
4. You'll need adb installed and working for this. If you don't know how, this isn't the thread for that. Open a command prompt and follow these commands:
(if you downloaded twrp8.img, use that instead of recovery.img in the commands)
5. ProfitCode:adb push recovery.img /sdcard/<br /> adb shell<br /> su<br /> dd if=/sdcard/recovery.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p18<br /> reboot recovery
EXTRA CREDIT: Hate the VZW boot logo and audio as much as I do? Flash this in CWM: http://www.mediafire...m6urrypvx2c156p
Its a stock Samsung Boot animation (pulled from Blazer ROM)
enjoy
Thanks to many people...
Epic 4g Touch Team
Samsung-Updates.com
rizdroid for this: http://forum.xda-dev...304&postcount=1 which i loosely followed to build our rooted system.img
Many others for bits an pieces for this whole thing
FAQ:
Q: It's not working!!! Keeps failing!!!
A: Try again. Turn the phone off (battery pull) and boot into download mode again
Q: Odin doesn't seem to be doing anything!
A: Be patient, it can take awhile sometimes. I've also noticed if you try to flash something, and leave the phone plugged in and try to flash something else it won't work. Unplug, then replug, then try flashing again
Q: Does this trip the flash counter?
A: No
Q: Can we flash custom kernels?
A: Not properly at this time. If we flash to our boot partition, we'll end up with this: http://i.imgur.com/Ci0gY.png We can still recover from this by booting into odin mode and flashing the stock boot.img, found here: http://goo.im/devs/i...tock.kernel.tar
