Database Develop

[Q] Re-lock after root, and keep root?

Hi all - I've read that in order to root it is necessary to unlock the bootloader and then root, but I've also read some threads where the bootloader can be re-locked. My question is whether I can still be rooted then, maybe with the use of OTA rootkeeper or some such. I haven't rooted yet (my prime uses would initially be for adblocking and wifi tether), but I'm thinking I will soon. However, I'd really like to be able to hold out until the 4.2/4.3 OTA comes out before flashing ROMS (need stable bluetooth in a bunch of areas, and want to wait and see if there are problems with that update in stock).
So, any way to be stock, re-locked and rooted?

Can't you just root using the normal method then flash stock recovery to remove "*** Tampered***" and then re-lock with fastboot? You're system partition wont be stock obviously because it will have the su binary. You're boot loader will say "*** Relocked ***" though. I'm thinking it might be possible to remove "*** Relocked ***" using JTAG if someone can find the area in memory where the history of unlocking is stored.
Unlock bootloader, flash custom recovery, use Aroma File manager to copy su to /system/bin and set permissions, reflash stock recovery, relock bootloader, install Superuser from play store. This should work but I haven't tried it.

What if: I want to completely unroot, unlock and install OTA

I am currently Rooted, unlocked bootloader, running a 5.0.2 ROM and TWRP. If I just wanted to unroot, lock boot loader and star from scratch. Meaning, accept OTA, unlock bootloader, root and install TWRP. Is this possible?

Yes.
If you want to make it easy
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2947452
Sent from my Nexus 6

Xirix12 said:
I am currently Rooted, unlocked bootloader, running a 5.0.2 ROM and TWRP. If I just wanted to unroot, lock boot loader and star from scratch. Meaning, accept OTA, unlock bootloader, root and install TWRP. Is this possible?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wouldn't re-lock these devices ever... maybe if you sell it or turn it in. Too risky. Just use Wugs from that link, once 5.1 is there, flash it using his toolkit. Then root. Done.
I can't believe the amount of threads here and in the Nexus 9 board where guys are bricking their devices due to that darn "OEM unlock" being unchecked.

How to relock the bootloader?

Hi,
I've searched and found how to do it but it was for Android 5.1 but I'm on 7.0 and I my recovery is TWRP 3.0.2-0 and apparently there are more steps to do if you are on TWRP, I'm wondering what are they.
Thanks

test84 said:
Hi,
I've searched and found how to do it but it was for Android 5.1 but I'm on 7.0 and I my recovery is TWRP 3.0.2-0 and apparently there are more steps to do if you are on TWRP, I'm wondering what are they.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First, questions need to go in the Nexus 6 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting Thread, not the General thread. Second, the steps to lock the bootloader have not changed. It's done from the bootloader with fastboot and the command "fastboot oem lock". It shouldn't matter what recovery you have.

Re-locking needs stock recovery(maybe full stock; boot, recovery, system) if you try to re-lock your boot loader without stock recovery you might hardbrick your phone. So just backup your apps and files, flash a stock image from google and re-lock your boot loader with "fastboot oem lock". Which probably needs wiping your phone.

Before you do anything search these forums for the many people who locked their bootloader and then when they had problems ended up with a bricked and useless device. Unless you have a very special reason for locking, leave it unlocked

dahawthorne said:
Before you do anything search these forums for the many people who locked their bootloader and then when they had problems ended up with a bricked and useless device. Unless you have a very special reason for locking, leave it unlocked
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Click to collapse
this right here...there is really no reason to ever re lock your bootloader

I flashed the factory image and and it went fine. But the bootloader is still unlocked. My main concern for locking the bootloader is to prevent any malicious app to root the phone and hide themselves by like installing as system app or something. And I'm not planning to flash any custom ROM. So:
1- Since I'm on stock ROM, is there still a possibility of hard bricking my phone if I relock?
2- If I leave it unlocked, will malwares be able to tamper with the phone by the means I mentioned or similar approaches?
Thanks

2. No, they don't. Bootloader is on a completly different layer.

test84 said:
I flashed the factory image and and it went fine. But the bootloader is still unlocked. My main concern for locking the bootloader is to prevent any malicious app to root the phone and hide themselves by like installing as system app or something. And I'm not planning to flash any custom ROM. So:
1- Since I'm on stock ROM, is there still a possibility of hard bricking my phone if I relock?
2- If I leave it unlocked, will malwares be able to tamper with the phone by the means I mentioned or similar approaches?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I feel your concerns. I think the safest bet is to watch where you download apps and content from. And make sure "unknown sources" is turned off. That should minimize your potential for problems. I think the main thing is watching where you get apps from.

Le S3...X522 still can't be unlocked?

Still looking for the Le S3 X522 version bootloader unlock, as far as I know it still can't be unlocked, or can it?
Would be nice to have it unlocked.
How does a locked bootloader affect root? I know you can temporarily unlock bootloader, does any of this affect xposed?

Ummm yes... It can be unlocked. I'm running Lineage 7.1.1 on the S3 right now...

Bootloader still cannot be unlocked permanently, only temporary, in other words I can unlock it and flash everything I needed but once it is rebooted it will lock again and in order to flash something it will have to be unlocked again, it has nothing to do with booting into twrp, it might even look like it is flashing but really it will not, maybe some things can be flashed but things that affect system will not.

You don't need to permanently unlock the bootloader. You just unlock it long enough to install twrp. Once you have twrp you can flash whatever you want.

bdogz24 said:
You don't need to permanently unlock the bootloader. You just unlock it long enough to install twrp. Once you have twrp you can flash whatever you want.
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Click to collapse
But how exactly?

[Q] No OEM Unlock, Rooting, and stock ROM

I know that there are a lot of the missing OEM Unlock posts, but this isn't about how to force it to appear.
What I would like to know is that if I want to stay on the stock ROM, but I don't have the OEM unlocked option, would I be able to factory reset to clear out encryption and then root with Magisk?
The guide says that I need to have OEM unlocked to be able to root, so I'm curious what would happen if I tried to root with the OEM still being locked? Would I soft brick it?
This is quite different from the other phones I've used and it's extremely frustrating that Samsung decided to pull this kind of bs on everyone and so far, there's no solution to it.
Thanks

If the OEM switch is not visible and switched on, then you cannot flash any non-official binaries, which means you can't flash TWRP or Magisk, which at this point means you can't get root. That's why everything boils down to the OEM switch being enabled. Please contact Samsung expressing your dissatisfaction about this OEM issue. All of us should, until they react to remedy this.

If we can get to fastboot, why can't we boot TWRP, install Supersu/magisk and dm-verity thus gaining root.
This wouldn't replace the stock recovery.
I believe this was how the Axon 7 was rooted prior to bootloader unlock being presented/found.
I do this on one of my phones (not Samsung) as I only want root access and still be able to get OTA updates.
Would booting TWRP instead of flashing it trip Knox and would root be gained or would you find the boot partition or other system files be altered and you get the error that seems to popping up on these devices?
Just throwing this out there as food for thought.

ultramag69 said:
If we can get to fastboot, why can't we boot TWRP, install Supersu/magisk and dm-verity thus gaining root.
This wouldn't replace the stock recovery.
I believe this was how the Axon 7 was rooted prior to bootloader unlock being presented/found.
I do this on one of my phones (not Samsung) as I only want root access and still be able to get OTA updates.
Would booting TWRP instead of flashing it trip Knox and would root be gained or would you find the boot partition or other system files be altered and you get the error that seems to popping up on these devices?
Just throwing this out there as food for thought.
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Click to collapse
Having an unlocked bootloader is what would allow us to use fastboot to boot or flash an image. Just because we can access fastboot, doesn't mean we can get it to write to partitions, even temporarily. I haven't messed with a Samsung phone for years, so I could be wrong. This has been my experience with google bootloader in general.

fragtion said:
If the OEM switch is not visible and switched on, then you cannot flash any non-official binaries, which means you can't flash TWRP or Magisk, which at this point means you can't get root. That's why everything boils down to the OEM switch being enabled. Please contact Samsung expressing your dissatisfaction about this OEM issue. All of us should, until they react to remedy this.
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From what I did read from other threads, if you don't see the option in the Developer Option Settings, then you shouldn't need to enable it

77Eric77 said:
From what I did read from other threads, if you don't see the option in the Developer Option Settings, then you shouldn't need to enable it
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Click to collapse
I was reading about this as well and what I got from that was in regards to custom roms, the oem unlock option is default to unlock and hidden. but for the stock rom, it's locked by default unless visibly given the option. otherwise when you go into download mode, it'll show FRP Lock: On.
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

di11igaf said:
Having an unlocked bootloader is what would allow us to use fastboot to boot or flash an image. Just because we can access fastboot, doesn't mean we can get it to write to partitions, even temporarily. I haven't messed with a Samsung phone for years, so I could be wrong. This has been my experience with google bootloader in general.
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Click to collapse
Ah, but if I want to just root and nothing else, would I still need to have the bootloader unlocked? I'm used to rooting stuff but the technicalities and mechanics of the process escapes mr.
my hope is to atleast root the stock rom and factory reset including wiping the internal sd to start fresh. but if I factory reset on a stock rom, the internal storage would still be encrypted right?
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

mputtr said:
Ah, but if I want to just root and nothing else, would I still need to have the bootloader unlocked? I'm used to rooting stuff but the technicalities and mechanics of the process escapes mr.
my hope is to atleast root the stock rom and factory reset including wiping the internal sd to start fresh. but if I factory reset on a stock rom, the internal storage would still be encrypted right?
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk
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This is why I want to know if we can boot TWRP. It boots TWRP but leaves the stock recovery.
However, I'm not sure if the boot image is altered when flashing root. I know Magisk seems to alter the boot image but not sure if SuperSU does.
Would this trigger KNOX?
If it does trip KNOX, it's not worth booting into TWRP, might as well just bite the bullet and install but only if bootloader is unlocked 1st... Too expensive to just brick it for an experiment...

ultramag69 said:
This is why I want to know if we can boot TWRP. It boots TWRP but leaves the stock recovery.
However, I'm not sure if the boot image is altered when flashing root. I know Magisk seems to alter the boot image but not sure if SuperSU does.
Would this trigger KNOX?
If it does trip KNOX, it's not worth booting into TWRP, might as well just bite the bullet and install but only if bootloader is unlocked 1st... Too expensive to just brick it for an experiment...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
personally I don't care about knox. I just want to be able to root and restore my apps so I can transfer my stuff from my s7 to the note 8 and freeze all the bloatware like touchwiz and stuff.
from what I gleaned from reading the threads is magisk makes a copy of the boot image as a backup.
but again I just want root and I can wait for a longer term solution in how to fix this moronic 7 day jail bs.
but I think knox will get tripped the moment you root
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

mputtr said:
I was reading about this as well and what I got from that was in regards to custom roms, the oem unlock option is default to unlock and hidden. but for the stock rom, it's locked by default unless visibly given the option. otherwise when you go into download mode, it'll show FRP Lock: On.
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
I didn't have OEM option as well (FRP lock was ON), I just followed me2151 guide but I was getting the partition error, so in first part I also added BL and after that everything went smoothly.
KNOX wasn't tripped, it's rooted as of this moment and tomorrow I will be installing custom rom.
PS: And yes it was an experiment but I was willing to take the risk because after reading half a day about no OEM option in developer options everyone was saying if it's not there you don't need it, I wasn't 100% sure but I was 98% sure I'm not going to brick it. btw I'm using Telus N950W note8 (locked)

I think you might want to be careful on that. I'm not sure who "everyone" is but the others like Dr.Ketan did not even recommend rooting without unlocking the option first and it seems to me that the general gist of the other thread (the 150+ page thread) was that you need it explicitly unlocked.
The ones who talked about not seeing the option means you probably don't need it are talking about custom roms (like renovate) that purposefully hid the option since it's already defaulted to unlocked on that rom.
I haven't used any custom roms yet, but that seems to be what I'm reading.

77Eric77 said:
I didn't have OEM option as well (FRP lock was ON), I just followed me2151 guide but I was getting the partition error, so in first part I also added BL and after that everything went smoothly.
KNOX wasn't tripped, it's rooted as of this moment and tomorrow I will be installing custom rom.
PS: And yes it was an experiment but I was willing to take the risk because after reading half a day about no OEM option in developer options everyone was saying if it's not there you don't need it, I wasn't 100% sure but I was 98% sure I'm not going to brick it. btw I'm using Telus N950W note8 (locked)
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Click to collapse
just following up. Were you able to root and flash a custom rom with OEM Unlocked checked after all?
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

mputtr said:
just following up. Were you able to root and flash a custom rom with OEM Unlocked checked after all?
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk
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I was able to root it but the boot loader is still locked. It's faster without the bloatware and what not. KNOX is disabled. There is still no twrp and custom rom for Snapdragon to the best of my knowledge. It did change the model of the phone from N950W to N950U1.

finally got the OEM Unlock option and rooted + stock recovery... i had to restart my phone to bring my android ID back to the one I always used.. and got locked out...
so 7 more days for me. And all I wanted to do was to have Titanium backup up and running so i can transfer my phone over....
i am hating what samsung has done