Rooting Nova Air C

[bassme]

Alright. Good to know edl.exe isn't the problem that seems to leave something on my machine. I'll keep at it on my own. My laptop (the only device that isn't fully dedicated to some other project) that I'm using has 3 usb a 3 ports and one usb c port. No usb 2.

I'll make sure to keep doing resets after every failure. If/when I get some other result I'll post on here again.

Thanks for the help!

[Renate]

I'm sorry that is so frustrating. It seems like everything is so erratic. Have you had problems with USB and interference? Does ADB/MTP work fine on your device and that laptop? If you have a little USB 2.0 hub you can insert that in the path and see if it makes a difference.

Probably needless to say, but don't disconnect the cable at all during this. Try downloading usblog.exe You can just leave that running in the corner and you can see if there are clean transitions from ADB to EDL.
http://www.temblast.com/windows.htm
It's possible that Windows 11 is connecting, then reconnecting. Or connecting and flushing the input. If you have another machine (especially non-11), definitely try that.

I just did about 20 loading the loader in a row on my Poke3 with no problem and no variation at all in response. I just did another dozen using a USB 2.0 connection instead.

[bassme]

I have root!

Not long after my last post I was able to get edl.exe to fully work and pull boot.img. Then was able to get the magisk installed and the boot.img patched. After much trial and error I was able to get the fastboot driver installed, and boot into the patched boot.img.

Thanks for all your patience and explaining, Renate. It really did help.

Now to take notes on what all I did on this PC to get everything working, so I don't stumble through it as much next time...

[Renate]

You can always put an image on your device using:

• edl.exe /w /pboot boot.img (might need a /u)
• fastboot flash boot boot.img
• # dd if=/sdcard/boot.img of=/dev/block/by-name/boot

Of course that might be boot or boot_a or boot_b for the partition name.

[wakkaday]

i get this error

PS C:\Users\wakkaday\OneDrive\Desktop\boox> adb reboot edl
* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
error: no devices/emulators found

when i tried agaim, now it finds no devices/emulators found
i have enabled usb debugging via the apps setting..


i am connecting via usb to my window 10 computer.. i have all the files saved on desktop fiolder.
the boox is in usb debugging mode

[Renate]

C:\>adb devices

You may not have the correct (or any) Windows driver installed.

You can download my usblog.exe from http://www.temblast.com/windows.htm
Plug and unplug your device. What appears and disappears in usblog.exe? (You don't need to mention the serial number.)

[wakkaday]

Originally Posted by Renate

C:\>adb devices

You may not have the correct (or any) Windows driver installed.

You can download my usblog.exe from http://www.temblast.com/windows.htm
Plug and unplug your device. What appears and disappears in usblog.exe? (You don't need to mention the serial number.)

i have put all the folders (platform tool) and the files in first link in a single folder on my c drive.

on my nova c, usb debug mode is on (selected from app settings) i also did develper mode, via an app playstore, and clicked build several times etc

occasionally i do get some information when connected by usb, as indicated above, but generally its just blank information


https://ibb.co/Hr5XbYD

https://ibb.co/h82HCFc

[Renate]

You didn't mention what you get with "adb devices" so I'll presume that you tried it, but it didn't print anything?

18d1/4ee2 is MTP/ADB. It shows up because the MTP driver is easy to find, but I'll bet that you never installed a driver for ADB. See that folder labelled "adb driver"? Have you used it?

C:\>devmgmt.msc

Go to Device Manager. Look for your ADB interface. It might be under "USB devices" or "USB controller" or "Portable devices" or even "Android". It might have an ! mark or it might not. Go to reinstall driver and manually select that "adb driver" folder.

Then do "adb devices".

[Herschenglime]

Hi! Thanks so much for writing up this guide!

Any tips on undergoing this process from a Linux machine? It seems like a lot of the instructions involve dealing with Windows USB drivers, but the edl.exe utility seems pretty custom and I'm not sure where I'd look for Linux alternatives.

Admittedly I'm not very experienced with Android tinkering aside from flashing a ROM to an old tablet, but I'd like to be able to get a root firewall set up once my Nova arrives.

Thank you for your help!

[Renate]

The most usual client for EDL has always been the Python version at https://github.com/bkerler/edl
This is theoretically platform-agnostic, presuming that you can get all the dependencies working.

I got fed up with dependencies, so I wrote a native Windows version without any dependencies (availible in my sig).
The command line syntax and capabilities are different than the Python version.
Since for the typical user the major use case is to pull system and recovery images, my version can pull images trimmed of useless padding (the /t option).

[nivieru]

For linux get bkerler/edl, and follow their instructions.
You will need to disable ModemManager in order for edl to work:

$ sudo chmod -x /usr/sbin/ModemManager
$ sudo pkill ModemManager

or using systemctl as per the instructions.

Also, there's this post https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...57&postcount=9

[Herschenglime]

Thank you both for the tips and resources, I'll be sure to read them over!

This might be a dumb question, but does rooting void the Boox warranty? I wouldn't think that it would affect an Amazon return if I decided the device wasn't for me, but if I ever had to send it in for repairs down the line, would I just need to remove root before shipping it off, or do they have some sort of Knox-like measure on the device?

[mergen3107]

Originally Posted by Herschenglime

if I ever had to send it in for repairs down the line, would I just need to remove root before shipping it off, or do they have some sort of Knox-like measure on the device?

I haven't heard of such things about Onyx, but I suppose they don't care.
The warranty card didn't explicitly prohibit rooting.

I would assume they just flush the storage and flash the original firmware anew (via edl, or edl cable) if you send it for software repairs.

Otherwise, *I think* after you edl-flash there is no way of telling what was there before. I might be wrong though

[Herschenglime]

Thank you all for your help, I was able to successfully root the device and start setting up my firewall!

I just installed the 04-27 firmware update and had to re-root. Is there some way to preserve root across OTA updates, or is it necessary to undergo the process of grabbing the boot.img and patching it every time? Thanks for the info!

[Renate]

You could be lazy and just use the old Magisk'ed image but you'd miss any improvements in the kernel and at worst it wouldn't work.

I don't use Magisk but make modifications to the boot image, /vendor and /system and patch SELinux policy. The biggest job is verifying the compatibility of the the binary patches I've made previously. Once I've done that and verified/altered addresses, patching the boot image takes a minute, patching the file systems takes a minute. Total time: less than an hour.