Hack: Howto get root on your G1

Update: This is obviously way out of date, please see: Android DLS Wiki and Android Blogging Network for the latest.

Many people were surprised that root was disabled on the production T-mobile G1's, and everyone knew that we would eventually get root access, but who knew it'd be this easy?!? Some users at XDA-Developers and android-dls.com have discovered a simple hack to enable root access.

Here are the steps you can take:

1. Download and install a terminal emulator on your phone. (Click here for Term.apk)
2. Make sure your phone is not connected to your PC and open up the Terminal Emulator and run 'telnetd'
3. Now telnet into your phone from your PC (run 'netstat' in the terminal emulator to get the phone's IP)
4. In the telnet terminal you are now root!

5. (optional) To permanently enable root access you can create an "su" command in /system/bin ( Warning: creating su on your system could make you vulnerable to malicious software. You could name it something besides su, but you would still be vulnerable ):

mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system cd /system/bin cat sh > su chmod 4755 su

It's likely that the next system update will fix this hole, but until then enjoy having full access to everything on your phone!

Update: Term.apk updated to include launcher icon

Update #2: Some people were having issues installing the Term app, so I published it onto the Market as "Terminal Emulator" to make it a bit easier