Sunday, March 02, 2014

Root Samsung Tab 2 10.1" GT-P5110 Android 4.2.2

Recently I managed to root my Samsung Tab 10.1" using the instructions from xda-developers CF-Auto Root thread and this blogger. Unfortunately I had to use Windows as Odin is not available for Linux.

1. I installed Odin from the CF-Auto Root thread and Samsung USB drivers from the Samsung website.

2. Enable USB Debugging in Settings > Developer options

Here you may notice that there is no "Developer options" in Settings. This option has become hidden in Android 4.2. In order to make it visible, do the following:

i. Got to Settings > About device
ii. Tap on the Build number multiple times until you see a message that you are now a developer or something like that. (I can't remember the exact words)

3. Download CF-Auto Root from the XDA forum thread (CF-Auto-Root-espresso10wifi-espresso10wifixx-gtp5110.zip) and unzip the file.

4. Run Odin as administrator.



5. Switch off the Galaxy Tab and boot into Download Mode. Now, this is where the instructions did not work for me. Almost all the websites I've searched for instructed to press "Volume Down and Power" to boot into Download Mode. It didn't work for me and it took me ages to realise a very simple thing. On my device:

To boot into Download Mode: Press VOLUME UP and Power. And I see this:

Then I press Volume down as per the instruction to Continue and I see this:


To boot into Recovery Mode: Press VOLUME DOWN and Power and I get this:

I hope that clears up the matter for anyone who is having problems booting into Download Mode. Back to the rooting instructions:

6.  Connect the tab to the computer and in my case the ID:COM box turned yellow.


7. Click on PDA and select the CF-Auto-Root-espresso10wifi-espresso10wifixx-gtp5110.tar.md5 file.

8. Make sure that Auto Reboot and F. Reset Time is checked and Re-Partition is NOT checked.

9. Click Start. Once the installation is finished, the device will restart and we're done. :)

Using bluetooth on Gentoo and Fluxbox

These are my settings for bluetooth on my Gentoo. 

1. I don't use bluetooth often and on a side note, I'm connected to the internet using wired network. Therefore I created a script called wireless.start in /etc/local.d to switch off both wireless and bluetooth at boot.

Contents of wireless.start:

#!/bin/sh

rfkill block wifi
rfkill block bluetooth

2. When I want to use bluetooth to connect to my phone or tablet in order to transfer files, I just run the following commands:

rfkill unblock bluetooth

/etc/init.d/bluetooth start

blueman-manager

3. In my previous post regarding installing bluetooth, I mentioned that I was using gnome-bluetooth and not blueman. However the latest gnome-bluetooth package on Gentoo no longer provides bluetooth-applet which I used to manage pairing and file transfer with my handheld devices. The latest release of blueman on the other hand works. So I've switched to blueman.