Droid Rooting, Zipit Doom & USB Live Chrome OS- Hak5 Episode 618
Hacking the Motorola Droid: Root Access!
As expected the Motorola Droid has been rooted. That is to say there’s a hack that’ll unlock SU, or super user privileges on the phone. The hack is essentially su bundled in an unsigned update that can be run from the SD card. The unlocking process, which has changed since introduction, is outlined at this AllDroid.org forum thread.
At time of writing the process is to download this zip, rename it to update.zip and copy it to the root of your Droid’s SD card. Shutdown the Droid and start it by holding Power and X. Once greeted by an exclamation point on your screen hold the camera and volume+ buttons. From the menu choose the update.zip with the D-Pad, and once updated choose reboot.
Keep in mind that when it comes to unlocking moving targets like this it’s best to check with droid forums beforehand.
A Linux Doom Source Port
It was only a matter of time before we put Doom on The Zipit Z2. The recently unlocked linux-based wireless device is a prime candidate for fragging, what with it’s QVGA color display, WiFi and all. After unlocking, installing Doom is simply a matter or launching Fluxbox with startx and downloading PrBoom, a cross-platform Doom Source Port, with apt-get install prboom. The trick in launching PrBoom from /usr/games/ is to add the -width 320 -height 240 parameters. While PrBoom comes included with Freedoom, a free and open source Doom compatible IWAD, you may provide your own doom or Doom2-iwad parameter.
It is also worth noting that PrBoom comes with it’s own tcp game server for deathmatch. If anyone wants to try a little Zipit Z2 deathmatching hit us up. Or if you’re looking for some Doom goodness on the PC check out my favorite port, Skulltag.
Boot Chromium OS from USB
While still early in it’s development stages, Google’s upcoming Chrome OS is a neat OS to play with — especially on a netbook. While the Virtual Machine images floating around are nice for a glimpse, if you really want to immerse yourself in the Chrome OS experience it’s best to boot it from the metal. This can be achieved by “burning” this Chromium OS image to 3GB or greater USB or SD media. Here’s a torrent.
If you’re familiar with dd it’s simply a matter of downloading the torrent, unzipping and imaging the included chrome_os.img to your media. For example, dd if=’chrome_os.img’ of=/dev/sdb where /dev/sdb is the path of your removable media.
If you’re in Windows you’ll be delighted to find that the linked zip contains a copy of WinDD, as well as writing instructions. More information can be found at this makeuseof.com article. Important tidbits include the fact that the default user and password are chronos / password and that a terminal can be accessed by CTRL+ALT+T. Oh, and the xrandr command is available if your desired resolution isn’t detected automatically. The syntax is typically xrandr -s 1024×768 or similar.
January 31 2010 05:33 pm | Uncategorized
August 14th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
At the same time as I really like a bodily keyboard, after managing the Samsung Captivate for approximately quarter-hour, it’s hard to head back. Right now I’m debating whether or not to go to Verizon for the Droid X, cross to Dash for the EVO, or stick with AT&T for the Captivate…choices, decisions.