oh god, why’d it break‽

[Update] – Fixed the DREAIMG.nbh link,  it should now work fine – tested it this time.  Thanks @Doshin!

This is the instructions that ended up working flawlessly to root my G1, install JesusFreke’s 1.51 T-Mobile US ROM,  and setup AppstoSD.  I must’ve wiped my phone about a half-dozen times and spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to make this work the way it was supposed to.  (By the way,  thank you Krista,  for convincing me to get a G1 over a Blackberry Bold.  I love this phone.)

Androidandme has a great guide to root your phone which I’ve condensed here – and stripped out everything that didn’t work for me.

First backed up all of my data using MyBackup Pro ($4.99 in Market) and saved it to my SD card.

Hooked the phone up to my system and mounted,  then copied over all my pictures,  videos,  and backups.

• Click the notification on your phone that says “USB Connected”.  Select the “Mount” option.

Formatted the entire SD card using FAT32 (do not use Quick Format).

• Right click Removable Disk and select Format.
• Select FAT32 for the file system,  then click Start

Once the disk is done formatting,  download DREAIMG.nbh.  You can do this with the root application below,  but this always downloaded corrupted over 3G & Edge (I did both, several times) and wasted a bunch of time.  I’ve uploaded a copy of RC29 DREAIMG.nbh to my Dropbox account.

• DREAIMG.nbh http://bit.ly/wfAOO (90mb)
• Copy DREAIMG.nbh onto the SD card root (don’t put it into a folder) through the USB mount.
• After the copy finishes, right click Removable Disk and choose Eject.
• Disconnect the USB cable from your phone.

Now we’re going to wipe the phone entirely (make sure you’ve used MyBackup Pro,  or Nandroid before doing this,  seriously) and install RC29 with the exploitable root hole.

• Power off your phone by holding the red ‘end talk’ button (Power) down, and choosing Power Off
• Hold the Camera button down,  and power the phone back with the Power button
• Once the bootloader fully loads,  press the Power button to start update
• When completed press the trackball (Action Key) to continue
• Reboot the phone by pressing Talk, Menu, Power at the same time
• Go through the steps to setup a fresh install of Android

Now download the root script here from the Android browser: http://bit.ly/L9ast (Leads to: http://www.androidactivity.com/root/root.apk)

Tap on the root.apk in your browser download list,  it will notify you that this program needs to be allowed because it is a non-Market application.  Click the provided Settings button and allow non-Market apps.  Hit the back button,  then tap the root.apk download to install.

Now there are two ways to do this,  both worked for me,  but I’m paranoid of downloading critical updates OTA at this point.

• OTA: Run the root.apk in your apps list and tap Step2:  Download IMG and HardSPL files to get the recovery files.
  • or
• Direct: Download the IMG and HardSPL files directly on your computer,  and copy onto the root of your SD card with a USB mount.
  • Recovery (2.7MB) [recovery.img] – http://bit.ly/K7FXI
  • HardSPL (177k) [update.zip] – http://bit.ly/qdm7P

Once the files are downloaded onto your SD card’s root perform these steps.

• Go to the home screen and open up your keyboard.
• Hit enter, pause a second, then hit enter again.
• Type telnetd in all lower case minus the quotes. Ignore the contact search that comes up.
• Press enter again.

Now run the root.apk application and tap Step3: Protect your root.  This will root your phone with the SPL upgrade.  Any errors means telnetd is not running,  so go back and do those steps again.  Now we need to reboot the phone again and run the update.zip on the SD card.

• Hold the Power button down and choose “Power Off”
• Hold the Home button down and the Power button until the phone turns back on
• When the yellow warning sign appears,  hit ALT+S on the keyboard
• When finished reboot the phone by pressing Talk, Menu, Power at the same time

Last step before adding the custom build is updating the radio to support Android 1.5.

• Download the radio update (9mb) [update.zip] – http://bit.ly/102Ndj
• Plug your phone into your computer and mount USB
• Copy update.zip onto the root of the SD card (overwrite or remove previous files if still there)

• Hold the Power button down and choose “Power Off”
• Hold the Home button down and the Power button until the phone turns back on
• When the yellow warning sign appears,  hit ALT+S on the keyboard
• When finished reboot the phone by pressing Talk, Menu, Power at the same time

Time to update to a custom build of Android.  I went with JesusFreke’s 1.51 US build,  which has the T-Mobile apps built in.

• Download the JF 1.51 update (36mb) [JFv1.51_CRB43-US.zip] – http://jf.andblogs.net/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=14
• Plug your phone into your computer and mount USB
• Rename JFv1.51_CRB43-US.zip to update.zip
• Copy update.zip onto the root of the SD card (overwrite or remove previous files if still there)

• Hold the Power button down and choose “Power Off”
• Hold the Home button down and the Power button until the phone turns back on
• When the yellow warning sign appears,  hit ALT+L to display loader
• Press ALT+W to perform a factory wipe [Thanks to David for pointing this out in the comments,  ran into the same issue on a friend's G1 and a wipe prior resolved.]
• Once wipe finishes,  press ALT+S to load update.zip
• When finished reboot the phone by pressing Talk, Menu, Power at the same time

Alright.  Now you’re running a custom Android build.  Other builds are available as well,  here’s a few resources in case you’re curious (the steps are the same to install those instead).  Haykuro & The Dude both have their own builds,  and you can download different JF versions at his blog.

Before doing anything else I highly suggest running configuring your Apps and Cache to run off of your SD card – the whole reason I went through all of the nonsense above is because I screwed my installation up trying to do this after I already had my phone pretty loaded with stuff.  Without AppstoSD eventually your G1 will run like absolute crap as the memory dwindles down and it can be pretty frustrating.

• Format your SD card one more time to FAT32 just to be safe
• Download this zip containing a2sd.sh and init.rc – (1k) [a2sd.zip] – http://bit.ly/3QXx1
• Unpack a2sd.zip to your SD card’s root
• Start the Terminal Emulator and type:
  • su
  • cp /sdcard/init.rc /data/
  • cp /sdcard/a2sd.sh /data/
• Reboot your phone

Now install the AppstoSD2 application created by MarcusMaximus

• Go here in the Android browser to install – (68k) [AppstoSD2.apk] - http://bit.ly/18jVr7
• Choose the amount you want to partition your card,  I did around 500-600MB,  doubt you’ll need even that much.  Whatever you do,  don’t go past 1.5GB.
  • It might take a minute – do not restart/power off your phone,  just wait.  It’ll eventually reboot on it’s own. [Update: I've been told that it might not reboot automatically and the app will give a 'reboot now' button instead,  I haven't seen this myself,  drop me a line in the comments or on twitter if it does!]

• After the reboot run AppstoSD2 and press Copy Apps to SD

• Start the Terminal Emulator and type:
  • su
  • mkdir /system/sd/app-private
  • mkdir /system/sd/dalvik-cache
• Reboot one last time

You’re done!  If you check the Settings it should say that you have however much space you made your Ext2 partition as available system memory – and your phone should never lag.