Mike Southby

** UPDATED FOR UK and US USERS **

So here you go a step by step guide to rooting your G1 and installing what is in my opinion the best, most stable ROM out there; the stable 4.0.4 ROM release from Cyanogenmod.  I decided to put this together after spending hours researching the best way to go about it and finding the information out there both confusing and scattered.  Hopefully I have managed to get all of the information in one place so it should make a daunting task simpler.

Caveat:  All modifications which attempt to bypass the base system settings allowing you to install custom ROMs *could* brick your phone (and if you’re not sure what is meant by that, please don’t read any further!).  I am not responsible, this guide gives you the information you’ll need, what you choose to do with it is down to you.

1. Connect your phone to your computer using a USB cable.  If you are using the current latest ROM from T-Mobile (even if it is unlocked and you have a different providers SIM), you’ll have to manually choose to mount your phone by pressing and pulling down the USB icon in the top left corner of the screen, then choose Mount.  The old version of the ROM will mount automatically, you’ll know if this is the case as your phones SD card will show up in your My Computer automatically.
2. Right-click on the removable disk and format ensuring you choose FAT32.  To ensure everything works as it should, I recommend using the full format option and not opting to speed things up by using quick format!
3. Make a note of exactly what size your SD card is by right clicking the removable disk and clicking properties, you’ll need this information later in step 20.  Make a note of the exact number of bytes!
4. Download and unzip the RC7 image file from http://g1upgrade.com/DREAMIMG-RC7.zip for UK users or http://g1upgrade.com/DREAMIMG-RC29.zip for US users.  Next copy the DREAMIMG.nbh file over to the SD card.
5. Once the files have copied over, you can right click on the removable disk and choose Eject to ensure that the data is not corrupted in the event of delayed write.
6. Power off your phone.  Once it is off, turn it back on by holding the Camera and Power buttons at the same time.  This will take you into the boot loader.
7. Once the boot loader loads, press the Power button as the on screen prompt suggests, this will start the update process.
8. Once the update has completed you’ll need to press the trackball to continue.  Reboot your phone by pressing Talk, Menu and Power at the same time and wait for your phone to restart, you should now have a blank phone similar to when you bought it albeit with the earlier version of the ROM.
9. Go through the installation, filling in your Google account settings when prompted.
10. Open your browser (on your phone now, not your computer) and go to http://g1upgrade.com/root.apk
11. Once the file has downloaded, click on it and you will warned that it is a non-market application, you’ll be given the option of going to the appropriate settings dialogue to allow the file to be installed, do this and select the appropriate answer when the security prompt appears.  Go back and click on the application again to install.
12. Go back to your home screen and open your apps, run the new root app which should now appear.
13. Bypass the first step and go down to the second step which allows you to download the IMG and HardSPL files, do this.  Once the files have downloaded you’ll have an onscreen prompt telling you that you need to write down some information for the next step, there is no need to worry about this although you should reboot your phone.
14. Once rebooted, go back to your home screen and open your keyboard, now press Enter, pause a second and then press Enter once again.  Note:  You will *not* see anything happen here, I thought I had done something wrong and repeated the above steps over and over until I realised this!
15. Type telnetd and then press Enter once again.  When you type telnetd you will get the search feature appear, just ignore this, the important stuff is happening in the background and you won’t get any onscreen confirmation.
16. Run the root application again and scroll down to the third option and click the option to root your phone.  You should now have the first step completed, a rooted phone!  If there are any errors at this stage then the telnetd wasn’t running and you should go back to option 14 again.
17. Power off your phone.  Once it’s off, press the Home and Power buttons until the phone starts to turn back on.  This time, the phone will boot into the recovery mode and you’ll be greeted with a yellow sign.  Open up your keyboard once again and press Alt+L which will turn on the text options and then Alt+S which will install the update (downloaded in the previous stage).  The phone will probably reboot a few times.  If you are prompted to press any specific combination of buttons then do that, otherwise press Home, Menu and Power.
18. At this stage, you should now have root access to your phone.  Now, let’s install the Cyanogen recovery image, which gives us a much more user friendly interface when in the recovery mode which we will be making full use of in the next steps.
19. Go to the android market on your phone and search for Terminal Emulator and download.  Once it has installed, run the app and type the following commands, pressing Enter after each line.  You will also be asked to accept root permissions, you will of course need to say yes:
    su
cd /sdcard
wget http://n0rp.chemlab.org/android/cm-recovery-1.4.img
flash_image recovery /sdcard/cm-recovery-1.4.img
20. Back on your computer go to http://egret.net/kb_mb.htm and type in the size of your SD card in step 3 into the Byte field, hit the convert button and make a note of the value given in the Megabyte field.  In the following step, you’ll need to enter values for the new FAT32, ext2 and swap partitions you are about to create, working these values out is easy.  Start with your total size and subtract 32 (this will be for swap) and then a further 512 (this will be for ext2), the rest will be the FAT32 partition.  In the next step I have based the values on performing these calculations on my own SD which is 8GB
21. Reboot your phone into the recovery console by starting it using the Home and Power buttons, you should now see the new recovery console which enables you to select the options using the trackball, scroll to the bottom and choose the console option.  Type the following pressing Enter after each line, remembering to substitute your values from the step above:
    parted /dev/block/mmcblk0
rm 1
mkpartfs primary fat32 0 7617
mkpartfs primary ext2 7617 8129
mkpartfs primary linux-swap 8129 8161
quit
upgrade_fs
recovery
22. Restart your phone.
23. We now need to upgrade the radio, download the updated file from http://code.google.com/p/sapphire-port-dream and rename it to update.zip, connect your phone to your computer via the USB cable and copy the file onto your phones SD card, power off your phone afterwards.
24. Turn your phone back on and enter the recovery console by turning it on with the Home and Power buttons.
25. Click to apply the update.zip file and then reboot your phone again.
26. We now need to upgrade the SPL, download the updated file from http://code.google.com/p/sapphire-port-dream and rename it to update.zip, connect your phone to your computer via USB and copy the file on to your phones SD card, then power off your phone.
27. Turn your phone back on afterwards and enter the recovery console by turning it on with the Home and Power buttons.
28. Click to apply the update.zip file, but do not reboot.  If you were to try and reboot your phone at this stage it would probably just stay stuck on the G1 loading screen.  You need to install the updated ROM next.
29. On your computer, download the ROM from http://www.cyanogenmod.com and rename it update.zip, I choose the stable 4.0.4 release but you choose!
30. Go to the console option again and type the following followed by Enter:
    ums_enable
31. The phone should now be mounted for you to copy over the update.  Copy the update file from step 29 onto the SD card.
32. Unmount the SD card by typing the following followed by Enter after each line:
    ums_disable
recovery
33. Unplug your phone from your computer.
34. Click the option to fix the ext files and then to apply the update from the SD card
35. Press the Home button to confirm that you want to apply the update and head to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.
36. Finished!  ENJOY.

I pieced together all of this information from a variety of sites, but mainly xda-developers.com, anddev.org and androidcommunity.com, there are of course other sites with information which I suggest you research further if you are serious about modding your G1.  That’s the beauty of the open source platform.

If you find this guide useful, I’d welcome any feedback or comments below although not for the ROM itself, remember this is not mine and you can substitute for any ROM or your choice.

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