need some serious help after rooting

[passerby99]

Ok here's what's going on. I've been reading recommendations for rooting and what to do after rooting.

I rooted the phone given the instructions from here:
htp://androidnerds.net/2011/10/08/lg-esteem-oneclickroot-now-ready
this works for the optimus slider as demonstrated in mstechify's video on youtube

So i have superuser, then i installed gingerbreak.

I keep reading things about doing a nandroid backup (nothing that I seem to find provides a clear, easy to understand guide about it). I started to follow the instructions here about nandroid backup, which seemed to suggest i needed to follow the Recovery instructions first:
htp://forums.androidcentral.com/virgin-mobile-optimus-slider/133562-how-root-custom-recovery-nandroid-backup.html
Then i realized "oh ****, i don't want to wipe my phone so it's back to the way i bought it out of the box" and stopped the process just before entering those commands into the Terminal Emulator.

So what's the usefulness of a nandroid backup now? How do i do it without reverting my phone back to the VM701_recovery.img?

Also, ClockworkMod doesn't seem to have any purpose for this phone. I install it from the android market, open the application, and select "Flash ClockworkMod Recovery"
A menu pops up that says "Confirm Phone Model" and this is what the menu choices are:
Commtiva Z71 (Boston, Blaze, and more)
Dell Streak
Geeksphone ONE
Huawei Ascend
Huawei ascend 2
Huawei pulse
Huawei pulse mini
Huawei u8220/u8230
Micromax A70
Spice MI700 (Commtiva Link N700 and more)

What the actual f_ck?? I thought this was supposed to be an incredibly popular app among rooted android users. I've never even heard of these phones before. I guess none of these people using this mod use Motorola Droid phones either?

I also installed Busybox installer, ran it, supposedly installed Busybox, yet I notice nothing different.. no icon for it, no listing under "Manage Apps". At this point in my frustration I can't even remember why I installed it. It was also highly recommended.


So here are my key questions:
- What will having gingerbreak on my phone after rooting do? The youtube video from Mstechify suggests it will help me undo Superuser should I need to return my phone.
- ClockworkMod for this phone... what gives?
- Nandroid backup in relation to my situation..?
- How close am I to having a f_cked up phone?

Thank you if you took the time to read and respond, I appreciate it.

 

[oatflake]

Ok here's what's going on. I've been reading recommendations for rooting and what to do after rooting.

I rooted the phone given the instructions from here:
htp://androidnerds.net/2011/10/08/lg-esteem-oneclickroot-now-ready
this works for the optimus slider as demonstrated in mstechify's video on youtube

So i have superuser, then i installed gingerbreak.

Ok, first off, I don't think you need gingerbreak. The LG Esteem procedure which gives you superuser is all you need to get "root". Gingerbreak is another procedure, so it's redundant.

I keep reading things about doing a nandroid backup (nothing that I seem to find provides a clear, easy to understand guide about it). I started to follow the instructions here about nandroid backup, which seemed to suggest i needed to follow the Recovery instructions first:
htp://forums.androidcentral.com/virgin-mobile-optimus-slider/133562-how-root-custom-recovery-nandroid-backup.html
Then i realized "oh ****, i don't want to wipe my phone so it's back to the way i bought it out of the box" and stopped the process just before entering those commands into the Terminal Emulator.

So what's the usefulness of a nandroid backup now? How do i do it without reverting my phone back to the VM701_recovery.img?

I don't think it's that useful, unless you're going to be doing some serious modifications to the phone like installing a whole new ROM. Just FYI, I have NOT installed any new roms with my phone; I've only installed root and then hand-installed various applications that require root. I personally think Virgin and LG did a pretty good job with this particular factory ROM so there isn't as strong a need to install a ROM like on other phones.

Also, ClockworkMod doesn't seem to have any purpose for this phone. I install it from the android market, open the application, and select "Flash ClockworkMod Recovery"
A menu pops up that says "Confirm Phone Model" and this is what the menu choices are:
Commtiva Z71 (Boston, Blaze, and more)
Dell Streak
Geeksphone ONE
Huawei Ascend
Huawei ascend 2
Huawei pulse
Huawei pulse mini
Huawei u8220/u8230
Micromax A70
Spice MI700 (Commtiva Link N700 and more)

I think you're discovering the fact that most of the "rooting" tools and applications are built by developers who only have access to a few phones (at most), and so everyone just picks up little bits of these applications, modifies them for their own phone, then posts them back for everyone else to use. ClockworkModRecovery is just another application that's designed to be placed in the "recovery" partition which can be used to help you in case you screw up the main "rom" partition where the main code lives. It's like a second bootable hard drive built-in to your phone to let your phone be able to write over the main area in case you screw something up royally.

The problem you have is that the CWM in the market isn't built for this phone. That's where there are threads on this forum where people have built their own version of a recovery application that is to be used INSTEAD of CWM. It has similar functionality, it's just built for this phone.

I also installed Busybox installer, ran it, supposedly installed Busybox, yet I notice nothing different.. no icon for it, no listing under "Manage Apps". At this point in my frustration I can't even remember why I installed it. It was also highly recommended.

Busybox is a collection of utilities to make working with a rooted phone easier. The LG Esteem one-click root procedure above ALREADY installs Busybox for you. So that's why you didn't notice anything different; it was already installed!

Once again, this is a case of the guy who developed the LG Esteem installer saying "hey, since we're rooting a phone why don't I go ahead and package a bunch of useful stuff anyway". There's a LOT of overlap like that in the Android hacking community, and often it means you're going to have to know the history of who has done what to make it crystal clear what should be installed.

Sorry your first experience is like this, but welcome to the wild west of Android hacking!

So here are my key questions:
- What will having gingerbreak on my phone after rooting do? The youtube video from Mstechify suggests it will help me undo Superuser should I need to return my phone.
- ClockworkMod for this phone... what gives?
- Nandroid backup in relation to my situation..?
- How close am I to having a f_cked up phone?

Thank you if you took the time to read and respond, I appreciate it.

I think I sort of answered the above questions, but in short summary:

LG Esteem exploit does basically what you want. Gingerbreak is another way of doing it, and some people have also bundled a "reversal" utility which helps you remove the bits of rooting. As far as I know, NOBODY has built an automatical reversal utility for the LG Optimus Slider, so it's a one way trip to a rooted phone unless you know how to remove it manually (and it's not that hard, so don't panic)!

Your phone is fine. As long as you can start it up, and run "adb shell" to log into your phone there is hope.

 

[mknollman123]

The main reason that I bothered with recovery was to be able to install custom roms. And the main reason that I installed a custom rom was to free up memory in the phone. - I had moved all apps to SD that I could and was still getting low mem issues after just a week of owning it.

If you do not plan on doing this then just nuse root to put in root apps and things like that and move on.

 

[primetechv2]

There should be a pretty easy method of getting rid of root if needed, even from a terminal if you prefer...something like

cd /system/bin
su -c rm busybox
su -c rm su

No promises if that is the right location or command chain, but after some light research I did something very similar to unroot my Slider before returning it to Best Buy.

Sent from my Optimus Slider