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I don't believe that is correct. All you need is adb and the various Android command line tools. Those are all first party. If you downloaded a third party tool

I don't believe that is correct. All you need is adb and the various Android command line tools. Those are all first party. If you downloaded a third party tool to make it easier, that's fine I guess, but it's not a requirement. Some of this I can understand. Root permissions does introduce some additional security considerations. We haven't fixed this in decades of computer usage in a way that preserves security, ease of use, and giving people easy access under the hood. My mother would click any number of scary UAC prompts in Windows just to get to the webpage she's trying to get to. That's not Windows' fault, but it is reality.

Fradow 7y ago
That's correct. adb doesn't give you root privileges. For example, you cannot install system apps with adb unless you have a rooted device already. You certainly have access to a lot of things with adb, but it can hardly be considered root on non-rooted devices.
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  > adb doesn't give you root privileges. That's not true. It does have root support built in with 'adb root' that then runs future shell commands as root. The factory image has this disabled, though, so you do need to flash a build that supports it. That would be a 'userdebug' build variant ( https://source.android.com/setup/build/building#choose-a-target https://source.android.com/setup/build/building#choose-a-tar... ) So strictly speaking you can have root through purely first-party, open source, AOSP tools exclusively. It does, however, require doing a full build & flash yourself. That process is at least documented, though, so there's that. Just think of it like Gentoo
rebane2001 7y ago
I think what he was referring to was the need to use "complicated" tools not built into systems to gain root I do think it is a good thing though. For people like you and me, it's easy to do, but we also understand what root is and the dangers of it. For someone who doesn't, it's better off for them to not be able to root their device in the first place. Of course, we could bring up the catch 22 that is learning. If I hadn't tried out rooting, the terminal, modifying the filesystem etc back when I was younger and didn't know anything, I probably wouldn't know much about that stuff now.
zrm 7y ago
> My mother would click any number of scary UAC prompts in Windows just to get to the webpage she's trying to get to. That's not Windows' fault, but it is reality. It kind of is Windows' fault, because it's pretending to protect you from things it doesn't actually understand. I have had trouble getting people to install Signal on their phones because it wants access to your texts and contacts. But it only wants that because it's a messaging app. It's not as if it uploads your texts to the Signal Foundation -- its very purpose is to do the opposite, and the source code is published so that anyone can verify as much. But because the validation provided by mobile app stores is theater, it doesn't understand that and treats Signal the same as any random flashlight app written by Some Guy in Russia who wants to sell your contacts to Viagra spammers in order to buy a new Mercedes. If this idea of validation and curation is to mean anything then it should be that it validates that Signal has both a legitimate reason to access your contacts and doesn't do anything untoward with them, and then allows Signal to access your contacts by virtue of you having installed it, but not so for a flashlight app. There shouldn't be a pop up allowing naive relatives to either break Signal or volunteer your contact information to spammers. Even if it's possible to grant the flashlight app greater permissions, there is no need for that interface to present itself in a way that allows users inclined to mash buttons an easy way to do the wrong thing. Use better defaults and then making changes can be six taps deep in a scary system menu that the app itself can't launch. Which is how Linux package managers already work. If you try to put an app that hoovers up your contacts and sends them to spammers into the Debian repositories, it'll get refused. And packagers can restrict apps to by default only doing the things they ought to be able to do using apparmor and the like, instead of relying on the untrusted author or the unknowing end user. The user can still override it manually, but then you're typing things at a command line, which deters novices who don't know what they're doing and gives experienced users a red flag that there had better be a good reason why they have to do it that way.

Fradow 7y ago

That's correct. adb doesn't give you root privileges. For example, you cannot install system apps with adb unless you have a rooted device already. You certainly have access to a lot of things with adb, but it can hardly be considered root on non-rooted devices.

kllrnohj 7y ago
> adb doesn't give you root privileges. That's not true. It does have root support built in with 'adb root' that then runs future shell commands as root. The factory image has this disabled, though, so you do need to flash a build that supports it. That would be a 'userdebug' build variant ( https://source.android.com/setup/build/building#choose-a-target https://source.android.com/setup/build/building#choose-a-tar... ) So strictly speaking you can have root through purely first-party, open source, AOSP tools exclusively. It does, however, require doing a full build & flash yourself. That process is at least documented, though, so there's that. Just think of it like Gentoo

rebane2001 7y ago

I think what he was referring to was the need to use "complicated" tools not built into systems to gain root I do think it is a good thing though. For people like you and me, it's easy to do, but we also understand what root is and the dangers of it. For someone who doesn't, it's better off for them to not be able to root their device in the first place. Of course, we could bring up the catch 22 that is learning. If I hadn't tried out rooting, the terminal, modifying the filesystem etc back when I was younger and didn't know anything, I probably wouldn't know much about that stuff now.

zrm 7y ago

> My mother would click any number of scary UAC prompts in Windows just to get to the webpage she's trying to get to. That's not Windows' fault, but it is reality. It kind of is Windows' fault, because it's pretending to protect you from things it doesn't actually understand. I have had trouble getting people to install Signal on their phones because it wants access to your texts and contacts. But it only wants that because it's a messaging app. It's not as if it uploads your texts to the Signal Foundation -- its very purpose is to do the opposite, and the source code is published so that anyone can verify as much. But because the validation provided by mobile app stores is theater, it doesn't understand that and treats Signal the same as any random flashlight app written by Some Guy in Russia who wants to sell your contacts to Viagra spammers in order to buy a new Mercedes. If this idea of validation and curation is to mean anything then it should be that it validates that Signal has both a legitimate reason to access your contacts and doesn't do anything untoward with them, and then allows Signal to access your contacts by virtue of you having installed it, but not so for a flashlight app. There shouldn't be a pop up allowing naive relatives to either break Signal or volunteer your contact information to spammers. Even if it's possible to grant the flashlight app greater permissions, there is no need for that interface to present itself in a way that allows users inclined to mash buttons an easy way to do the wrong thing. Use better defaults and then making changes can be six taps deep in a scary system menu that the app itself can't launch. Which is how Linux package managers already work. If you try to put an app that hoovers up your contacts and sends them to spammers into the Debian repositories, it'll get refused. And packagers can restrict apps to by default only doing the things they ought to be able to do using apparmor and the like, instead of relying on the untrusted author or the unknowing end user. The user can still override it manually, but then you're typing things at a command line, which deters novices who don't know what they're doing and gives experienced users a red flag that there had better be a good reason why they have to do it that way.