Rooting Samsung Galaxy Tab

Z4root is the application that needed to be side-loaded. Was no longer available in Android Market. AT&T does not allow side-loading (installing applications from directories). But to change that, you need root…  Here’s what I did:

  • Download z4root.apk.
  • Download Android SDK
  • Connect the tablet, and run ‘adb install z4root.apk’
  • On tablet, run the new app.
  • Now, in principle, all applications could be installed like this, but that requires a computer every time. So to fix that, I followed the instructions here to reset the permissions permanently. Couple of things:
    • I needed root access for ADB to get to the right directory. This involved opening up on the Tab the “Superuser” application, then in a ADB shell, run ‘su’. Click the permission window on the Tab itself.
    • I copied the settings.db to /mnt/sdcard, then used ‘adb pull /mnt/sdcard/settings.db settings-orig.db’ to pull it from the phone
    • I copied it into settings-mod.db
    • I used SQLite Manager to modify the file, then copied it back to the /mnt/sdcard location, then used the ADB shell to copy it back.
    • In the ADB shell, ‘reboot’, and it worked.

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