Database Develop

[Q] HBOOT 1.16.0000, known ROMs to work?

So far I've had no luck using custom ROMs as it just stays on the htc boot screen and does not work. I can confirm that 'MiUi' does work on my phone - however it is buggy and I don't like it.
I want cyanogenod or either android revolution HD but none of these work.
I thinkit has something to do with the HBOOT being 1.16.000, and the ROM version i'm after is 2.34.981.1 (virgin or optus branded) - am with virgin though in Australia.
I have a custom bootloader/recovery whatever you call it, I wipe the cache, dalvik cache and factory wipe, before installing all ROM's. I can't update to stock ROM either because there is none for hboot 1.16.000
So right now my phone is pretty much a paper weight until I can get it working again.
I prefer custom ROM's if there is any that work, if not I atleast want the stock ROM to work for now so I can use my phone. If someone can help me through the process to get it working it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

jakeyo said:
So far I've had no luck using custom ROMs as it just stays on the htc boot screen and does not work. I can confirm that 'MiUi' does work on my phone - however it is buggy and I don't like it.
I want cyanogenod or either android revolution HD but none of these work.
I thinkit has something to do with the HBOOT being 1.16.000, and the ROM version i'm after is 2.34.981.1 (virgin or optus branded) - am with virgin though in Australia.
I have a custom bootloader/recovery whatever you call it, I wipe the cache, dalvik cache and factory wipe, before installing all ROM's. I can't update to stock ROM either because there is none for hboot 1.16.000
So right now my phone is pretty much a paper weight until I can get it working again.
I prefer custom ROM's if there is any that work, if not I atleast want the stock ROM to work for now so I can use my phone. If someone can help me through the process to get it working it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hyun is looking for you at revolutionary irc channel.
Sent from my HTC Incredible S using Tapatalk

I know.. I have spoken to him.

jakeyo said:
I know.. I have spoken to him.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any luck? still unable to flash anything?

jakeyo said:
So far I've had no luck using custom ROMs as it just stays on the htc boot screen and does not work. I can confirm that 'MiUi' does work on my phone - however it is buggy and I don't like it.
I want cyanogenod or either android revolution HD but none of these work.
I thinkit has something to do with the HBOOT being 1.16.000, and the ROM version i'm after is 2.34.981.1 (virgin or optus branded) - am with virgin though in Australia.
I have a custom bootloader/recovery whatever you call it, I wipe the cache, dalvik cache and factory wipe, before installing all ROM's. I can't update to stock ROM either because there is none for hboot 1.16.000
So right now my phone is pretty much a paper weight until I can get it working again.
I prefer custom ROM's if there is any that work, if not I atleast want the stock ROM to work for now so I can use my phone. If someone can help me through the process to get it working it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you go to the development section of the HTC Incredible 2 forum, attn1 has a script tool that uses the latest Revolutionary/Unreovked exploit to downgrade the ROMand HBOOT to a version that is supported by Revolutionary.
If you look at the script, it is pretty simple. You would just need to use an older Virgin Mobile RUU.zip instead of the Inc2 version. It looks like the 2.12.981.2 would be the one to try.

Hang on a second, how did you S-off the Hboot 1.16?
I thought you need S-off to be able to flash a custom Rom...
How did you install Miui?
Am I missing something here?

Doesnt matter if you need S-ON or S-OFF, as long as you get permissions to access root files.
Someone installed a custom bootloader so I can install custom ROM's, and it just works.... apparently the radios are locked though.
So, another day gone by and my phone is still not working. I can use MiUi, but I ran out of data on my 3g sim and wifi doesnt work, so now I have no internet on it.

katu2006 said:
Hang on a second, how did you S-off the Hboot 1.16?
I thought you need S-off to be able to flash a custom Rom...
How did you install Miui?
Am I missing something here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm pretty sure no soff will cause the issues he is experiencing, though he doesn't seem to be listening

no, you're all just noobs.
It was the boot.img, we swapped it with the MiUi then put back the original one, now it boots up on cyanogenmod7.1 and works completely fine.
Can access root files, can take screenshots, everything is normal.
and I have s-on.

jakeyo said:
no, you're all just noobs.
It was the boot.img, we swapped it with the MiUi then put back the original one, now it boots up on cyanogenmod7.1 and works completely fine.
Can access root files, can take screenshots, everything is normal.
and I have s-on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes im a noob that has been using android since 2009..
You seem like a supreme douche.
Weren't you the one who was crying about wanting to go back to his iphone lol

jakeyo said:
no, you're all just noobs.
It was the boot.img, we swapped it with the MiUi then put back the original one, now it boots up on cyanogenmod7.1 and works completely fine.
Can access root files, can take screenshots, everything is normal.
and I have s-on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're calling us noobs, but you don't even know what was done on your phone...
What's the following sentence supposed to say?
"It was the boot.img, we swapped it with the MiUi then put back the original one"
To get a custom Rom, you actually have to INSTALL it...To get the custom Rom installed, you need CWM recovery. But if you have HBoot 1.16.000, you can't have a custom recovery yet.
In less your "friend" did a downgrade of the HBoot to 1.13.000, it's unlikely that you have CWM recovery on your phone. Even so, to my knowledge HBoot 1.16.000 does a version check and won't let you downgrade it.
So, the question remains, how did you get CWM recovery on your phone?

katu2006 said:
You're calling us noobs, but you don't even know what was done on your phone...
What's the following sentence supposed to say?
"It was the boot.img, we swapped it with the MiUi then put back the original one"
To get a custom Rom, you actually have to INSTALL it...To get the custom Rom installed, you need CWM recovery. But if you have HBoot 1.16.000, you can't have a custom recovery yet.
In less your "friend" did a downgrade of the HBoot to 1.13.000, it's unlikely that you have CWM recovery on your phone. Even so, to my knowledge HBoot 1.16.000 does a version check and won't let you downgrade it.
So, the question remains, how did you get CWM recovery on your phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This thread is awesome

no, if I hold down power down and power button I see S-ON and HBOOT 1.16.0000
He typed in commands to give it root permissions, not sure exactly as he remote controlled my computer and typed it in. Then yes, he flashes CWM onto the phone then I installed revolutionary.
Firstly, I went onto the HTC dev site (created an account) and followed the steps to unlock the bootloader. In the end, it was successful, and once it's finished it will wipe the phone (AND WILL STILL SAY s-on)
So then the bootloader is now unlocked, and he did various commands in fastboot. My guess is that he installed CWM from there and it just worked.
at first, cyanogenmod would not boot, so he copied the (boot.img that is working) from MiUi and repled it with cyanogenmod's. The phone booted up and worked. Then he put it back how it was and it now works. Strange, but something must've given it a kick.
I'll repeat myself.
HBOOT 1.16.0000
S-ON
Cyanogenmod &.1 (stable)
Full root access
Need I say more to prove it?
As far as I know, I just cannot flash radios, which actually require the S-OFF....
sorry if I come across as rude, just a long day..

Talk to aftab565 he has the same hboot as you and has arhd running. Sounds like your phone was temp rooted and flashed and I would advise against letting people you don't know take remote access of your pc.

Hopefully it works for him I couldn't help.

Just replied to his thread.
And I know I was aware. I had full control though (could press a certain key to disconnect the connection - and only gave a temporary password) He was only typing in CMD things to do with the phone that I've heard of before
(ADB shell, fastboot recovery etc) and in the end worked well. He said my job is done and disconnect himself, so good guy
Didn't take my eyes off the screen either.

jakeyo said:
Just replied to his thread.
And I know I was aware. I had full control though (could press a certain key to disconnect the connection - and only gave a temporary password) He was only typing in CMD things to do with the phone that I've heard of before
(ADB shell, fastboot recovery etc) and in the end worked well. He said my job is done and disconnect himself, so good guy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You gotta give props to these guys for donating their time. Every day there's more talk about h-boot 1.16.0000 so I figure if devs want to keep devin there'll be a rev released eventually.

I really appreciate the amount of work hes done, in total I recon he's spent about 6 hours trying to help me getting it to work.
Never left me by myself, he always helped me through every step and was always there if I needed help. I've now got CM7 thanks to him. If he didn't fix it, I would have a useless phone because I couldn't even put on the stock ROM because of my HBOOT im guessing (I did an OTA update to get 1.16.0000 therefore too new to download)
I think SOME of the custom roms do have support for 1.16.0000 and what you only need is the boot file from them to boot up your non-booting ROM then you're all good.

ok, just to put some closure and sanity on this thread.
Firstly I'm probably bettery know as hyuh on #revolutionary, and it was me who was connected to his PC.
I use teamviewer to connect to people remotely, this allows anyone who doesn't like the look of *anything* I do to diconnect me...The user in front of the PC has full control of my session and I remind them to close teamviewer after we're done.
Secondly to those who think you need to be S-OFF to install a custom ROM or custom recovery, this is simply not true in the case of the 1.16 hboot. If you follow the HTC unlock procedure then you will have sufficient access to the phone to do this, it is not S-OFF just an unlock. Your phone will be in state "S-ON unlocked" This allows certain partitions on the emmc to be written to, and this sufficient for custom ROMs.
Really all that is requird is:
Code:
fastboot flash recovery <recovery.img>
then follow the normal flashing procedures.
In jakeyo's case CM7 would not boot, but MIUI would. When I say it would not boot I do not mean a boot loop here, I mean no boot period. At this point I had expected to need to rebuild a boot image for CM7 for him suspecting that HTC had done something different in the new hboot with paritions or the boot image offset.
The reason for flashing the MIUI boot image on top of CM7 was simple, to get to adb in the boot image. However seeing nothing particularly strange in the boot sequence ( other than the mismatch and resulting bootloop) I decided to reflash the CM7 boot image through fastboot.
The phone booted fully this time without issues.
It appears that the boot image simply did not flash properly from recovery the first time but I don't have a vivo to troubleshoot further.
A couple of things:
1. Don't take the OTA for 1.16 hboot if you haven't already done so.
There is currently no unofficial unlock/S-OFF
There is no RUU to fix the phone if you screw up.
There is nothing in the OTA you can't get in other ways.
2. If you're on 1.16 and want custom ROMs and aren't worried about warranty, go ahead and do unlock from HTC, but bear in mind:
There is no RUU, so you can't go back to stock
You can't flash radios
You can't superCID or similar ( but not needed since there is no RUU )
2a. You don't need any existing root method to exist, there is no exploit involved in any of this, this will work irrespective of the current status of a root expoit existing or not.
2b. The phone does not have to be listed by HTC as being supproted. Any phone with a suitable hboot can be unlocked.
if this:
Code:
fastboot oem get_identifier_token
returns an identifier code then the phone can be ulocked.

globatron said:
ok, just to put some closure and sanity on this thread.
Firstly I'm probably bettery know as hyuh on #revolutionary, and it was me who was connected to his PC.
I use teamviewer to connect to people remotely, this allows anyone who doesn't like the look of *anything* I do to diconnect me...The user in front of the PC has full control of my session and I remind them to close teamviewer after we're done.
Secondly to those who think you need to be S-OFF to install a custom ROM or custom recovery, this is simply not true in the case of the 1.16 hboot. If you follow the HTC unlock procedure then you will have sufficient access to the phone to do this, it is not S-OFF just an unlock. Your phone will be in state "S-ON unlocked" This allows certain partitions on the emmc to be written to, and this sufficient for custom ROMs.
Really all that is requird is:
Code:
fastboot flash recovery <recovery.img>
then follow the normal flashing procedures.
In jakeyo's case CM7 would not boot, but MIUI would. When I say it would not boot I do not mean a boot loop here, I mean no boot period. At this point I had expected to need to rebuild a boot image for CM7 for him suspecting that HTC had done something different in the new hboot with paritions or the boot image offset.
The reason for flashing the MIUI boot image on top of CM7 was simple, to get to adb in the boot image. However seeing nothing particularly strange in the boot sequence ( other than the mismatch and resulting bootloop) I decided to reflash the CM7 boot image through fastboot.
The phone booted fully this time without issues.
It appears that the boot image simply did not flash properly from recovery the first time but I don't have a vivo to troubleshoot further.
A couple of things:
1. Don't take the OTA for 1.16 hboot if you haven't already done so.
There is currently no unofficial unlock/S-OFF
There is no RUU to fix the phone if you screw up.
There is nothing in the OTA you can't get in other ways.
2. If you're on 1.16 and want custom ROMs and aren't worried about warranty, go ahead and do unlock from HTC, but bear in mind:
There is no RUU, so you can't go back to stock
You can't flash radios
You can't superCID or similar ( but not needed since there is no RUU )
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Get a mod to make a hboot sticky there will be floods of this crap further down the road.

[Q] Roms do not work properly

I have 2 custom roms on my phone, cyanogen mod 7.1 stable and miui v.2.4.6.
Cyanogen has everything working except there is a wifi error, meaning i cant use wifi at all. Miui reboots by itself every few seconds, but i wanna be able to use it. What to do? These are the 2 best roms around, and none of them work!

freidchikin said:
I have 2 custom roms on my phone, cyanogen mod 7.1 stable and miui v.2.4.6.
Cyanogen has everything working except there is a wifi error, meaning i cant use wifi at all. Miui reboots by itself every few seconds, but i wanna be able to use it. What to do? These are the 2 best roms around, and none of them work!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We need some information about your IncS. What HBOOT version are you running? What method did you do to S-OFF and root your phone?

I'm gonna go ahead and guess. Bootloader unlocked, still on stock kernel.
Flash boot.img found in the rom zip using the fastboot flash boot boot.img command.

I think his device is S-ON with HTCdev unlock. The boot.img was not flashed.

keroro430 said:
I think his device is S-ON with HTCdev unlock. The boot.img was not flashed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I recall reading this somewhere. Oh yea, the post above you

reply
My hboot version is 1.16, s-on with htc bootloader unlock. Then used clockwork mod recovery. I thought ya didnt need s-off?
And yes it still screwed up after doing boot.img (i tried it before on both roms)

Try to downgrade the hboot to 1.13 and get a revoluationary s-off.
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA

Whats the easy way to downgrade hboot? Im new to this stuff.

Check the stickies from this forum.
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA

Nonverbose said:
I'm gonna go ahead and guess. Bootloader unlocked, still on stock kernel.
Flash boot.img found in the rom zip using the fastboot flash boot boot.img command.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
freidchikin said:
My hboot version is 1.16, s-on with htc bootloader unlock. Then used clockwork mod recovery. I thought ya didnt need s-off?
And yes it still screwed up after doing boot.img (i tried it before on both roms)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok then the quote above you was spot on. You simply need to manually flash the boot.img when you an unlocked bootloader.

freidchikin said:
My hboot version is 1.16, s-on with htc bootloader unlock. Then used clockwork mod recovery. I thought ya didnt need s-off?
And yes it still screwed up after doing boot.img (i tried it before on both roms)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Correct. You do not need s-off to flash a custom rom. I strongly advise against attempting to get s-off if you cannot correctly flash a rom.
You mentioned "tried doing" a boot.img. You cannot use the one in your cwm backup folder as this is not the right one. It must be from the rom you wish to install. This must be done EVERY TIME you change rom on an unlocked bootloader. You should also be wiping cache, dalvik and data.

There is no ruu available for downgrade- i checked. Are you guys sure i need s-off to run miui?

Same problem. I flashed boot.img from the right rom. I did all of those procedures and it still constantly restarts. Also wifi no work. What wrong with miui?

My two cents.. and two questions
freidchikin said:
Same problem. I flashed boot.img from the right rom. I did all of those procedures and it still constantly restarts. Also wifi no work. What wrong with miui?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you remember to do a "wipe data/factory reset" and wipe the dalwik cache before installing the ROM? Did you see any error messages right after the installation?
Does CM7 restart as well, or is it only MIUI? I remember this happening to me with Virtuous Quattro, and the download file turned out to be faulty. Check that as well.
And no, you do not need s-off to run MIUI.

yes, i did all of that. I do not think the download file is faulty, but i dont know how to check. No, only miui is the rebooting, cyanogen mod only has wifi problem

freidchikin said:
yes, i did all of that. I do not think the download file is faulty, but i dont know how to check. No, only miui is the rebooting, cyanogen mod only has wifi problem
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had WiFi problems with MIUI, but not the one you describe here, and have never seen this with any of the ROMs I have had on my phone, specially Cyanogen. Have you tried flashing Virtuous Quattro or Kaijura's Ice Cream Sandwich?
And to check the downloads, use an md5 checker; there are many available on the internet for free.

Well miui keeps crashing, so i gave up on it.
I am using cyanogen stable 7.1 and everything is working fine except wifi. It wont detect any networks and sometimes it would say that the wifi or settings is not responding. Does anyone know how to fix the wifi?

[Q] S-OFF failure? WiFi fails to work, corrupted radio partition?

OK, so I got a HTC One yesterday. Checking the development status here I decided not to bother with stock a single day and went straight ahead to prepare it for custom ROMs. While I was at it I decided to go for S-OFF as well so i would be able to flash radios in the future.
I think something went wrong, the status is: phone boots into (stock) system allright, but it will not establish a WiFi connection at all (it worked prior to S-OFFing), when I move the slider from disable to enable it says "Turning on..." and is grayed out but it is stuck there for infinity. Switching Bluetooth on and off works, but due to this glitch I fear that somehow my radio partition got corrupted (if I recall that is usually where S-OFF flags etc are stored).
Here is exactly how I proceeded: I got the revone command line tool and moonshine tool in the newest versions.
First I used revone according to the steps outlined on XDA, which worked and displayed an S-OFF in the bootloader header. To my understanding this only gave me S-OFF, so then I proceded with moonshine to install unsecure bootloader, superuser.apk and su. This tool also ran through as described without a glitch and rebooted me into the bootloader showing the custom moonshine S-OFF header. I then used the One-in-all-tool to install a custom recovery (TWRP in this case). This also worked great.
Then I was getting ready to put on a custom ROM and tried to hook the device to my PC via USB as a mass storage to copy over the custom ROMs I downloaded. At first boot HTC Tell jumped up and claimed it "fixed something because it noticed it was not as expected". I fgured this was to be expected, with the device S-OFFed and stock ROM still on it but gave it no 2nd thought. I checked and S-OFF stuck even through this.
Copying the ROMs as planned would not work, I can browse the /mnt/sdcard contents and also read files from there, but no matter how and when I try to write anything it fails with an error (device is disconnected or not ready). I then tried to sideload a filemanager with SMB client feature so I could transfer the ROMs through my local WiFi but then I noticed the glitch with the WiFi which could not be resolved even with reboots and clearing cache/dalvik cache throuch recovery.
What is my best bet now? Try to rollback the moonshine S-OFF and reinstall the original bootloader which was backed up? Just install a custom ROMs and assume all is good and it will straighten itself out? Flash the original RUU stock ROM, therefore prolly going back to stock and re-doing the entire S-OFF process? Any ideas on how to further diagnose what (if anything) is wrong? Is it all possible to roll back to a completely stock base by flashing the RUU through TWRP?

You didn't need to use Moonshine, you could've just flashed CWM/TWRP and flashed the SuperSU package to get root access. As you're S-OFF I would flash an RUU to get back to a stock state (you'll keep S-OFF) and then try to re-root using the normal methods.
What software build are you on at the moment?

Thank you for your quick reply.
FYI, I am on PN07IMG_M7_UL_JB_50_HTC_Europe_1.29.401.13_Radio_4A.14.3250.13_10.33.1150.01_release_316789_signed. That was ther software / radio version installed when it came out of the box.
However, as per advice from the guys in moonshine IRC channel I have re-flashed the boot.backup-img moonshine created when it ran and the problem with WiFi seems to be gone. I will play around a bit more, but it could be the issue is resolved (although I fail to understand eactly why).

Sounds like the custom HBOOT could be the issue

Yes, I have just now understood how HBOOT and the bootloader / boot.img are two separate things.
I think my reasoning for using both tools was kind of: "well, instructions for moonshine say it needs a HTCDEV unlocked device to run, and then will install su / superuser.apk in one swoop, yet revone will S-OFF / unlock my phone without hopping through the HTCDEV hoops, so hell, I will just use revone to S-OFF / unlock and then moonshine to S-OFF again and get su / superuser.apk conveniently..." The facepalm in this might be obvious to the hardcore / experienced coders / developers here but it made sense for my layman brain (at least at that late time of night...).
The question at hand is resolved though, the device behaves just fine as of now.
Out of curiosity, what would happen if I went and flashed the entirety of the stock RUU (including all partitions like recovery, ramdisk, radio, hboot, etc) through TWRP? Would that work at all? And would it, as I presume, return the device to completely bone-stock-out-of-the-box or would there still be traces modifications?

Walter_White said:
Out of curiosity, what would happen if I went and flashed the entirety of the stock RUU (including all partitions like recovery, ramdisk, radio, hboot, etc) through TWRP? Would that work at all? And would it, as I presume, return the device to completely bone-stock-out-of-the-box or would there still be traces modifications?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not all of that stuff can be flashed in recovery. Some partitions like hboot have to be flashed in rebootRUU mode. You can return to stock that way, but running a RUU is simpler and usually safer (provided you have the right RUU).

[Q] Trying to install the 4.3 OTA to a stock rom, stock recovery, but having issues

Hello all,
Firstly, I've got a (still unlocked) U.S. dev edition with S-On and Hboot 1.44.0000. I've been trying to install yesterday's OTA, but I can't seem to do it. The only changes I've made to my One since I got it were rooting it and installing TWRP in order to flash the MoDaCo toolkit. I understand that the stock recovery is needed to flash OTAs, and so I used fastboot to flash the stock recovery, but when I try to install the update, the progress bar in the recovery goes about 1/4 of the way and then it stops and displays the red triangle with exclamation mark. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, honestly.
I've seen varying advice aimed at other people also having difficulty suggesting I need to relock the bootloader (though as a dev edition, it was never locked, right?) or to get S-Off and then flash it somehow, so I'm not entirely sure what to do. I'd rather not resort to using a RUU as I will lose all of my data.
I didn't think a developer edition phone would be this difficult to deal with, as I've never had any problems flashing countless ROMs, kernels, etc with other android devices. I've never had an HTC phone though, so I've got no experience with S-On/Off, and to be honest I still don't understand what it is.
Anyway, how should I proceed? Thank you.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2265618

Thank you for that, but I mentioned that I didn't want to use RUUs. There has to be a way to do this without losing my data.

1) Put your phone in s-off now that you have the 1.44 hboot, trust me is better for you.
2) Maybe you have a custom kernel.
For install OTA you need stock rom, stock recovery and stock kernel.
3) Maybe more info can help us

Deksloc said:
Hello all,
Firstly, I've got a (still unlocked) U.S. dev edition with S-On and Hboot 1.44.0000. I've been trying to install yesterday's OTA, but I can't seem to do it. The only changes I've made to my One since I got it were rooting it and installing TWRP in order to flash the MoDaCo toolkit. I understand that the stock recovery is needed to flash OTAs, and so I used fastboot to flash the stock recovery, but when I try to install the update, the progress bar in the recovery goes about 1/4 of the way and then it stops and displays the red triangle with exclamation mark. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, honestly.
I've seen varying advice aimed at other people also having difficulty suggesting I need to relock the bootloader (though as a dev edition, it was never locked, right?) or to get S-Off and then flash it somehow, so I'm not entirely sure what to do. I'd rather not resort to using a RUU as I will lose all of my data.
I didn't think a developer edition phone would be this difficult to deal with, as I've never had any problems flashing countless ROMs, kernels, etc with other android devices. I've never had an HTC phone though, so I've got no experience with S-On/Off, and to be honest I still don't understand what it is.
Anyway, how should I proceed? Thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm having the exact same issues. I'm on HBOOT 1.44, S-On (I'd love to get S-Off, but revone keeps giving me error code -1...), and previously got the OTA's to work by flashing stock recovery, running the OTA, then reflashing TWRP. This one doesn't seem to work that way, though. If you figure anything out, or find the right stock recovery, please do share!

[Q] S-OFF and secure kernels

Big question:
If I want a custom ROM that will run root Apps that modify /system, is S-OFF required? Or are there custom ROMs with non-secure kernels?
More minor questions:
When developers (for the M7 etc) put out a custom ROM...
Are all putting out a kernel? are some signed/unsigned? are some secure/insecure?
Must you use a stock-signed kernel if you support folks with S-ON?
Can you boot unsigned kernels with just HTCDev UNLOCKED (and S-ON)? I assume yes, isn't this what CWM and TWRP run on?
S-OFF defeats the secure-kernels ability to keep /system prestine?
Thanks so much!!!

syserr said:
Big question:
If I want a custom ROM that will run root Apps that modify /system, is S-OFF required? Or are there custom ROMs with non-secure kernels?
More minor questions:
When developers (for the M7 etc) put out a custom ROM...
Are all putting out a kernel? are some signed/unsigned? are some secure/insecure?
Must you use a stock-signed kernel if you support folks with S-ON?
Can you boot unsigned kernels with just HTCDev UNLOCKED (and S-ON)? I assume yes, isn't this what CWM and TWRP run on?
S-OFF defeats the secure-kernels ability to keep /system prestine?
Thanks so much!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes you can flash custom rom's with s-on and an unlocked bootloader, this is basically why HTC gave you the ability to unlock your bootloader, even they know most users use custom rom's and most are better than their own.
S-off is not required, however, s-off (security off) gives you the ability to do things like backflash, flash different RUU;s, and change firmwares, radios etc, but if you don't know what you are doing or unsure of yourself, it will also no longer stop you from flashing something wrong, making it very easy to mess up or even brick your phone.
and to answer your first question, ive yet to find a custom rom that doesn't come already rooted and with an unsecure kernel, but always be sure to read the op of which rom your interested in as it contains important instructions, even down to which version of recovery you should be using to flash the rom, you'd be very surprised about how many people actually get this wrong and then require help because their rom isn't booting because they couldn't be bothred to read the instructions, it will also state what type of kernel it comes with.
on a different note, you don't you don't have to flash a custom rom, if your happy with your current stock rom, you can just unlock the bootloader, flash a custom recovery and then flash an unsecure kernel like elementalx or kangaroo kernel etc, TWRP recovery itself will set up root for you on exit.

Seanie280672 said:
yes you can flash custom rom's with s-on and an unlocked bootloader, this is basically why HTC gave you the ability to unlock your bootloader, even they know most users use custom rom's and most are better than their own.
S-off is not required, however, s-off (security off) gives you the ability to do things like backflash, flash different RUU;s, and change firmwares, radios etc, but if you don't know what you are doing or unsure of yourself, it will also no longer stop you from flashing something wrong, making it very easy to mess up or even brick your phone.
and to answer your first question, ive yet to find a custom rom that doesn't come already rooted and with an unsecure kernel, but always be sure to read the op of which rom your interested in as it contains important instructions, even down to which version of recovery you should be using to flash the rom, you'd be very surprised about how many people actually get this wrong and then require help because their rom isn't booting because they couldn't be bothred to read the instructions, it will also state what type of kernel it comes with.
on a different note, you don't you don't have to flash a custom rom, if your happy with your current stock rom, you can just unlock the bootloader, flash a custom recovery and then flash an unsecure kernel like elementalx or kangaroo kernel etc, TWRP recovery itself will set up root for you on exit.
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Thank you for your answer!
I'm beginning to think I don't need S-OFF. I want to be able to back flash and RUU back etc, but it's not necessary. I'm assuming you can back flash HBOOT, where as with S-ON you can never back flash HBOOT.
One thing concerns me... how are unsecure kernels made? (I believe ViperOne, was still secure when I was running it.) Do you have to compile from source? Or can your "unsecurize" a stock secure kernel? Or both?
Thanks!

syserr said:
Thank you for your answer!
I'm beginning to think I don't need S-OFF. I want to be able to back flash and RUU back etc, but it's not necessary. I'm assuming you can back flash HBOOT, where as with S-ON you can never back flash HBOOT.
One thing concerns me... how are unsecure kernels made? (I believe ViperOne, was still secure when I was running it.) Do you have to compile from source? Or can your "unsecurize" a stock secure kernel? Or both?
Thanks!
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Its my belief that all kernals are built from the stock kernel or the kernel files available from the HTC Dev site, but as im not a developer I cant say for sure, although I would love to learn things like this I just don't have the time and know that it also requires Linux to build a kernal, im clueless when it comes to Linux, and yes it is possible to "unsecurize" a stock kernel, ModPack 007 for lollipop comes with the option to do this very thing, however don't start thinking that an unsecure kernel is so people can hack into your phone, or your phone is going to crash every 5 minutes, its not like that, its unsecure so that you can modify and replace system files etc, ie write protection removed = unsecure kernals.
Kernals like ElementalX and Kangaroo take the modding further than just removing write protection, they add many other features, which can generally be found in the op of each kernel.
If you want to back flash anything, HBOOT, Firmware, RUU etc then you need S-off full stop, theres no other way to do it.
As for S-on, I hate it, I feel totally locked down, im a very big HTC fan and cant wait for the M9, ive owned many HTC's and pretty much the first thing I do after unpacking it and messing about with it for a couple of hours is s-off it, it free's the phone up for anything, however if your not careful and don't know what your doing, you can very easily kill it, s-off means security off, so your device is no longer protected from a bad flash, with s-on it will just error out and boot again in most cases, s-off however in the same situation will turn your nice phone into a paper weight.
when I first got my HTC one M7 it came with HBOOT 1.56, very hard to s-off, firewater was the only tool that could do it, and kept failing, I must of flashed 50+ (probably and exaggeration) rom and kernel combinations to try and get firewater to work, all failed, this was before sunshine s-off was about, thankfully I found a shop in Sheffield which did it by java card, as I travel up there quite a bit it wasn't an issue to get it s-off'd next time I went up there.
Anyone please feel free to correct me if any of this is wrong, like I said im not a dev and its all a learning curve.

Seanie280672 said:
... and yes it is possible to "unsecurize" a stock kernel, ModPack 007 for lollipop comes with the option to do this very thing, however don't start thinking that an unsecure kernel is so people can hack into your phone, or your phone is going to crash every 5 minutes, its not like that, its unsecure so that you can modify and replace system files etc
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Thanks for all the great info.
I should have clarified my concern about an unsecure kernel. Not that I was worried about getting hacked etc... More I was worried that my options would be limited to only ROMs with a limited number of unsecure kernels. If creating an unsecure kernel was difficult, I'd worry about a shortage. Booting into TWRP for unsecure kernel so I can modify /system is very restrictive to someone that is not used to it.
I compiled my first Linux kernel in 1995. I too want freedom. "Android" is a big field... but HTC and HBOOT are really outside of my Android experience -- it's great to learn so much. Thanks!