Bonsai MasterKey ROOT and CWM/Recovery Tool

[Randy T]

Wanted to make the AndroidCentral community aware of a new tool that Bonsai has released to make unlocking/rooting your phone even more simple. For anyone new to running custom ROMs and still considering, we hope this makes things easy enough to make the jump.

Bonsai MasterKey comes in versions for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. It provides a graphical interface that walks you through the proper configuration of your phone usb connection and then proceeds to unlock the device and installs the latest version of the Bonsai Recovery/CWM tool to help you manage installation of custom ROMs.

You can find the MasterKey tools at this link: Bonsai Tools for Android Devices | Bonsai for Android

We hope to continue to add support for other Android phones and tablets as we get access to those devices.

 

[ragnarokx]

So if a user wanted to use this method for unlock and recovery, would the recovery stay intact if a non-Bonsai ROM was flashed?

 

[mattallica76]

So if a user wanted to use this method for unlock and recovery, would the recovery stay intact if a non-Bonsai ROM was flashed?

Yes it would. As long as another recovery is not included in the ROM you are flashing. It can be used to flash other mods and ROMs also.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[Paul627g]

Tried this out for the first time and it worked like a charm. Rooting doesn't get any easier than this....

 

[monkey30butt]

Is this for RFS or EXT4?

 

[mattallica76]

Is this for RFS or EXT4?

It's for both. This will root your Epic (and soon other devices) and install the Bonsai recovery, which is compatible with both RFS and ext4 filesystems.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[dragon57]

Masterkey works great. I just had to reflash my Epic back to stock, then used Masterkey to root it. Quick and painless. Highly recommended.

 

[ZiggSVO]

if you run this over your CWM rooted phone would it give you the bonsai recovery? I had it on my phone and something I installed put CWM3 back on....hmmm

 

[Randy T]

if you run this over your CWM rooted phone would it give you the bonsai recovery? I had it on my phone and something I installed put CWM3 back on....hmmm

Are you seeing CWM3 when doing a reboot to recovery with something like QuickBoot, or when you do a 3 finger boot to recovery?

Anything that flashes a recovery kernel will overwrite the Bonsai Recovery.

If other things you are flashing are leaving that alone, then you should still have the Bonsai recovery when you 3-finger boot from a powered off state.

 

[ZiggSVO]

Are you seeing CWM3 when doing a reboot to recovery with something like QuickBoot, or when you do a 3 finger boot to recovery?

Anything that flashes a recovery kernel will overwrite the Bonsai Recovery.

If other things you are flashing are leaving that alone, then you should still have the Bonsai recovery when you 3-finger boot from a powered off state.

Thanks for your fast response Randy! As I was refreshing this I was wondering the same thing lol. Yes I was booting from quickboot lol...3 finger got me to bonsai recovery
Tried to run the unlocker over this though and it was a no go as it couldnt connect to my device for some reason.

 

[Randy T]

Thanks for your fast response Randy! As I was refreshing this I was wondering the same thing lol. Yes I was booting from quickboot lol...3 finger got me to bonsai recovery
Tried to run the unlocker over this though and it was a no go as it couldnt connect to my device for some reason.

Once the device is rooted, the Unlocker does not always run. Not sure why it would not find the device though. Typically it hangs checking for success. We'll work on making that a bit more tolerant in future release.

 

[maxxed]

I odined back to ec05 and tried to use this unlocker but it did not find my device and yes I have USB debugging enabled..

 

[ZiggSVO]

Once the device is rooted, the Unlocker does not always run. Not sure why it would not find the device though. Typically it hangs checking for success. We'll work on making that a bit more tolerant in future release.

It was hanging at the testing unlock portion of it, and I kept having to reconnect but it never went
Was just trying to run it figuring it would give me the recovery but like we talked about I never lost it

 

[Randy T]

It was hanging at the testing unlock portion of it, and I kept having to reconnect but it never went
Was just trying to run it figuring it would give me the recovery but like we talked about I never lost it

Yes, this is the behavior on an already rooted device. We'll fix this in a future release to be a bit more graceful.

 

[Randy T]

I odined back to ec05 and tried to use this unlocker but it did not find my device and yes I have USB debugging enabled..

There are a myriad of issues with debugging usb connectivity to these phones. All of that lives outside of MasterKey. If MasterKey cannot communicate with the device, then running adb at the command line will also likely fail.

You didn't say what platform you are on. I'll assume Windows since you are running ODIN.

You might want to reinstall the Samsung usb drivers. I believe that the driver needed by ODIN is different from the driver component needed to run adb. I've found when installing the usb drivers on windows that I have to first run the install, then reboot, then plug in the phone and let it download and install the remaining usb driver components, then reboot, then on next reboot it usually works.

 

[ZiggSVO]

Yes, this is the behavior on an already rooted device. We'll fix this in a future release to be a bit more graceful.

No need to be more graceful, the unlocker is great! love the interface on it already. Just didn't see anywhere saying if you were rooted it would do that or might do that

 

[WesR6]

I tried to root a friends new Epic and could not get this to work for the life of me. I think it may have something to do with the computer I'm using because I've had problems with one click root in the past. I ended up having to use CWM 3.0.2.5 to get root.

It would hang on the testing unlock portion untill I exited out of that screen. I tried to reboot both computer and phone. Still wouldn't work. After multiple attempts I used the 3finger reboot to get into recovery thinking that maybe it had worked but was just hung up there, unfortunatly it was still samsung recovery. Think I'll try my desktop next time I need root and see if I can get the program running there.

 

[Terrified Tapir]

Does anyone know how long Masterkey normally takes to run?

I have a stock phone and got to the point where it says "Configuring Android Device," but it has spent about an hour on that step.

 

[Terrified Tapir]

Oh, hang on. I was scared to restart the process, but I did. I ran it again and it worked this time, very quick, about 2 minutes!

 

[Paul627g]

Good glad to here it worked out. Normally during any type of rooting process you usually don't have to worry about bricking a device. Either it roots the device or it doesn't.. Bricking of a device usually happens with user error with Odin. It can occasionally happen with other things but its very rare.