HowTo: Get Root Access to your HTC Aria (aka HTC Liberty)

July 9, 2010

Here’s a full walkthrough of how to get root on your HTC Aria..

UPDATE:  simple click and forget it root tool – http://unrevoked.com/

Credit goes to eugene373, attn1, |OP|, and modest_mandroid from xda-developers and this thread.

I am reposting the instructions and adding some very helpful timesaving advice so you won’t make the common mistakes most folks make when trying to root this device.

Prerequisites
Note: If you’re in Linux, you only need to do Step 4, Step 6, and Step 7.

Download and install HTC Sync & Android SDK
HTC Sync Locations:

  • HTC Aria support website (requires serial number, which means turning off phone)
  • Mega Share link

Android SDK: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html (just unzip this)

Run Android SDK GUI Updater

Mac/Linux: In Finder/dolphin/file browser, double click /android-sdk-mac_86/tools/android
PC: Go into the folder where you unzipped the Android SDK and open SDK Setup.exe
*NOTE* If you receive a fetch URL error
**To fix error go to Settings in the "Choose Packages to Install" window and check "Force https;//... sources to be fetched using http://..."
Now close and re-open "SDK Setup.exe".

Install Packages

1. Download and install any packages you want, just make sure "Usb Driver package, revision x" is checked.
(if you don't see the package then it is already installed)
2. close "Android SDK and AVD Manager".

Enable USB Debugging

1. With your device unplugged from your computer, go to Settings -> Application -> Development on your device and turn on USB Debugging.
2. Now plug your device in to your computer.
3. Open command prompt from directory '/tools' of sdk
run this command:
Mac/Linux:  './adb devices'
PC: adb devices

Here’s a screenshot of how it looks on a pc when the android sdk sees your device:

HTC Aria found using adb devices

Prep the SD Card

*NOTE* Complete this step or ‘adb devices’ will not recognize your Aria in the bootloader!!
1. Unplug your device and turn it off.
2. Remove the mini sd card and format that bastard as FAT32 on your favorite laptop/desktop machine (you may need an external card reader)
3. Place the formatted card back in your phone, but leave the phone off

Working with Root.zip
Download Root.zip from one of these locations:

 File: Root.zip
CRC-32: d202268b
   MD4: 857b2a354f20fb8c2287458dd83dd0dc
   MD5: 893103ba320a230b60139a22bb983d4f
 SHA-1: d481b8080c17aedddd5711efa1e32d83e717a6d5

Now let’s get started…

1. Unzip Root.zip
2. Place the contents ("update.zip", "ota.zip", and "loop") into the Android SDK tools folder.
3. Command Prompt or Terminal and CD to the SDK tools directory.
--------------------
4. Hold the "Volume Down" key and simultaneously press Power button (Let's enter that bootloader, shall we?).
4a. Once you're in the bootloader, wait about 30 seconds until some diagnostic checking is done.
5. Press "Volume Down" to highlight Recovery, but do not push Power to execute just yet.
--------------------
6. Now run your loop file from the prompt (either type "loop" in Windows or "./loop.sh" in Linux)
6a. (refer to ice3186's post http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=7009698&postcount=3 for Mac instructions)
Note: The loop does nothing but show you the connection status of your phone. It's not technically required, but we'll use it in this guide.
7. Once the loop is running in your prompt, get ready to connect the phone to the computer with the USB cable, but don't connect one end quite yet.
--------------------
8. With Recovery still highlighted on your phone, you will need to push the Power button and then immediately plug in the other end of the USB cord.
9. After a few seconds, you should see your device listed in the loop.

device found with the loop.bat file!

You are almost there!

1. Unplug the USB cable from the bottom of your phone and plug it back in. You probably don't need to do this, but let's be safe. Wait for your device to show up in the loop again. Hit CTRL-C to terminate the loop.
2. You should see a triangle/exclaimation over a phone graphic.
3. Hold the "Volume Up" key (note it's Volume UP this time) and simultaneously press Power.
4. After the menu comes up, use the volume and power buttons to select and run update.zip. (This will fail, but we already know that! Select it anyway.)
5. Paste "adb push ota.zip /sdcard/update.zip" into your prompt and press Enter *OSX users add a ./ in front of all terminal commands please)
6.
This is very important!! Have this next command ready in your prompt before running update.zip again!!
This is the command. Paste it into your prompt, but DO NOT press Enter yet.
adb push update.zip /sdcard

7. Run update.zip and as soon as you see a faint progress bar appear behind the text at the bottom of the screen, push Enter to execute the command in your prompt.
8.
If successful:
--You should see Clockwork Recovery and you now have Su and Superuser.apk installed!
--You can now reboot your phone into the OS to verify.
If unsuccessful, repeat steps 7 and 8 (directly above)

You did it! Now Let’s Make it Stick!
This step is optional, but it will save you the pain of going through all of these steps again in the future.
Unrevoked team: Recovery reflash tool (updated – Now for Aria/Liberty!)

Troubleshooting

advice from modest_mandroid of xda-developers

If you cannot see your device show up in 'adb devices' in recovery, boot into the OS normally and see if it shows up. If it does not, then it's a safe bet that you have one of two problems - you do not have all the drivers installed, or you do not have 'usb debugging' enabled. This can be enabled in 'settings->applications->development->usb debugging'. To avoid driver issues, it's highly recommended that you do this process in linux or osx. 

If, on the other hand, your phone DOES show up in Android but not in recovery, or if it just blips on the screen for a second (when running the loop) as an offline device, then it might be the formatting of your sd card. Do NOT format your sd card from your phone or within Android. The ONLY time I managed to get the phone to show up in recovery without disappearing immediately was by removing the sd card, formatting it in windows or osx with an external card reader, copying the files over (new rom or rooting files), and then replacing it in the phone while the phone is off. After putting the card back in your phone, try the procedure again - go to the bootloader->hboot->recovery (while the cable is unplugged), then press the power button and immediately after plug the cable in (usually works when you plug the cable in about .2-.5 seconds later). If it does not show up at all, reboot the phone and try again, but do NOT let it boot back to Android. You can get back in to the bootloader by waiting until the 'HTC quietly brilliant' screen shows up and typing 'adb reboot bootloader' with the usb cable attached. 

It took me a really long time to figure that out. I don't think the type of sd card matters so much as the formatting of it. I actually used the 2gb card that came with the phone, and it worked almost every single time after I reformatted the card.

Also, if you manage to get it working and root the phone, do yourself a huge favor and install the custom Unrevoked recovery image mentioned in the original rooting thread, so you never have to deal with this nonsense ever again.

Also also, if you get to the step where you do 'adb push ota.zip /sdcard/update.zip' and you get an error:0, installation aborted message, you did something wrong. The problem is that you aren't actually supposed to flash ota.zip. What you're supposed to do is push ota.zip to your phone as update.zip, and leave it there. Don't touch anything else. What you will do after that is type 'adb push update.zip /sdcard/update.zip' in the command prompt (WITHOUT hitting enter yet, just get ready to). You will then select 'sdcard:update.zip' and press power and IMMEDIATELY AFTER pressing power, you will press enter on the command prompt to execute your adb push command. What this does is causes recovery to read the ota.zip file you uploaded and recognize it as a legit update, but you replace it with update.zip before it actually gets extracted (if your timing is good). So recovery reads the signature of ota.zip, but actually extracts the stuff in update.zip and runs that instead. 

Hope that helps with some common problems I observed. Good luck, dudes.