[Galaxy Ace S5830 General] matts95:
There appear to be two main options for rooting Samsung devices on linux and mac.

Option 1: (un-tested)

root.zip (recovery)

This method roots your stock 2.3 rom from in recovery (stock or CWM)

1. Copy Root.zip to your sdcard.

2. Turn your phone off

3. Boot your phone into recovery mode. (Hold HOME+POWER buttons. When the screen turns on let go of POWER but keep holding HOME. After you enter recovery mode, let go of HOME.)

4. Select “apply update from sdcard”

5. Find and select Root.zip

6. When it’s done installing, select “reboot system now”

7. Go to apps and look for 'superuser'. If you see it, your phone is rooted. :)

Option 2: (un-tested)

flash CWM from stock recovery:

This gives you the freedom of a custom recovery, flashed on the device from stock recovery

1. Download recovery-clockwork-5.0.2.6-galaxyace-fix.zip

2. Put recovery-clockwork-5.0.2.6-galaxyace-fix.zip on your sdcard

3. Boot into current

stock

(default) recovery (zip also compatible with CWM recovery)(Hold HOME+POWER buttons. When the screen turns on let go of POWER but keep holding HOME. After you enter recovery mode, let go of HOME.)

4. Go to "apply update from sdcard"

5. Select "recovery-clockwork-5.0.2.6-galaxyace-fix.zip"

6. When it finishes, power off and boot back into recovery mode to check it has installed (it should say "ClockworkMod Recovery v5.0.2.6" somewhere)

Option 3 (un-confirmed):

use Heimdall.

An open source, cross-platform, alternative to Odin.

Heimdall is officially supported on the Galaxy S (and S variants including Galaxy Tab)

It allows you to do pretty much anything Odin can do (interact with download mode), and so you can flash a root kernel to gain root and CWM recovery.

Although supposedly untested on the Galaxy Ace, heimdall should be able to flash the usual root precedure (rooting kernel with CWM).

It would be great if someone could verify heimdall works for the Galaxy Ace

Option 4: (un-tested)

root your ROM using the zergRush exploit (from the Revolutionary team).

zergRush rooting scripts: Linux, Mac, Windows

For the zergRush exploit scripts, you only root your firmware, so CWM will need to be installed manually afterwards if you want it.

Now that you have root, you should be able to (optionally) flash CWM from an app or over adb using flash_image) (DO YOU NEED ROOT IF THIS IS DONE IN RECOVERY(STOCK)?)

Apps that can flash CWM include:

* CWM Manager

* Flash image GUI

_DO NOT USE_ ROM Manager (reported unstable)

To flash using ADB and flash_image, download flash_image and an CWM recovery img then run:

cd directory-containing-files/
adb remount
adb push flash_image /system/bin/flash_image
adb shell chmod 0755 /system/bin/flash_image
adb push recovery.img /sdcard/
adb shell
flash_image recovery /sdcard/Recovery.img
rm /sdcard/recovery.img
reboot recovery

Or from the phone's terminal (if BusyBox is installed):

first put recovery.img & flash_image onto /sdcard/

cd directory-containing-files/
su
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system
mv /sdcard/flash_image /system/bin/flash_image
chmod 0755 /system/bin/flash_image
flash_image recovery /sdcard/Recovery.img
rm /sdcard/recovery.img
reboot recovery

DISCLAIMER: I do not personally own a Samsung phone, and have not yet tested these methods (although I am interested to hear how well they work,and will do my best to update the post). I am however planning to root a friends Galaxy Ace and possibly also an Galaxy S2, so will be testing some of these soon (I'm not sure I should try the untested heimdall on a friends Ace though)