Komodo Contacts for Android Blog

how to unlock and install superuser (su) on android without breaking OTA updates

Requirements:

Phone that allows unlocking ie: N1, NS etc

You will need to first install the android sdk for your pc which can be found here:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

This should come with fastboot but if you are on osx fastboot-mac can be found here:
fastboot-mac.zip (Fastboot for mac)

Download a custom recovery for your phone. This site seems to have a decent http://www.clockworkmod.com/recovery_images.html
If not try googling for recovery that will work with your phone model.

Download SU for your phone here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=682828

How To Do IT

Copy the custom recovery .img and su.zip files to the SDCard in your phone

Connect your phone via USB and put it into fastboot mode. reboot phone and hold volume down and power. If this doesn’t work try googling for “phonemodel how to get to fastboot or recovery”

once in fastboot mode on your pc enter the commands:

This will unlock your phone. Accept the onscreen prompt.

fastboot oem unlock

Temporarily boot your custom recovery image

fastboot boot customrecovery.img

In your custom recovery use the menu option to flash the SU.zip file from your SD card.

Now reboot your phone.

Your phone is now unlocked and able to run applications in super user mode!

Here are some tools u might be interested in now

TCPdump - Analyze protocols

http://www.vbsteven.be/blog/android-debugging-inspectin-network-traffic-with-tcpdump/

Dropbear/DroidSSHD  - Secure Command Shell

http://code.google.com/p/droidsshd/

Nmap - Port scan

http://wjholden.com/nmap/

If anyone has any specific ports of linux tools that might be interesting for android development let me know in the comments and i’ll add a link.