It was only a matter of time, really. Netherlands-based developer “Chainfire” posted the above photo yesterday showing the fruits of his labour: the Pixel, successfully rooted — after a bit of trial and error, of course. All the remains is to prepare the root for public consumption.
Here’s Chainfire’s tweets announcing his “victory” over the device (and what comes next).
Victory is mine! Full systemless root achieved. Boot image mods only, /system fully intact, dm-verity switchable. #pixel
— Chainfire XDA (@ChainfireXDA) October 27, 2016
Automating, cleanup, packaging, etc, could take a few days.
— Chainfire XDA (@ChainfireXDA) October 27, 2016
The developer (unsurprisingly) doesn’t go into detail about his rooting efforts, but it’s sufficient to say it was a somewhat frustrating affair…
Re: Pixel root, disabling dm-verity on stock is problematic. Recompiling/patching, then ‘system’ root can work. Trying to find a better way.
— Chainfire XDA (@ChainfireXDA) October 26, 2016
(always possible I overlooked something, but it seems disabling dm-verity without kernel binary recompile/patch is not possible)
— Chainfire XDA (@ChainfireXDA) October 26, 2016
…until it wasn’t.
Of course, had I known three days ago what I know now, it would have been done yesterday. Once you know what to patch, it’s easy.
— Chainfire XDA (@ChainfireXDA) October 27, 2016
If you haven’t read our local review of the Pixel, you can check it out here.