[G2 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] djraimondi:
Hello All,

DISCLAIMER! I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT MAY OCCUR THROUGH THE USE OF THIS GUIDE!!! YOU FOLLOW THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THIS MAY/WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY

I wanted to make this post because I was such a little girl about rooting my phone and installing a custom recovery ever. I’m creating a step by step guide with

PICTURES/VIDEOS

to help anyone else do the rooting AND flashing custom recovery.

ALL INSTRUCTIONS WERE DONE USING THE LG G2 VERIZON VERSION WITH THE OTA UPDATE

. That is I rooted it when it was VS98011A.

PLEASE READ THE INDIVIDUAL THREADS TO MAKE SURE YOUR SPECIFIC VERSION IS SUPPORTED

.

I would first like to give credit where credit is due to everyone who has helped my sorry butt do this. All specific questions/problems should be directed to the proper threads as I cannot accurately answer them (sorry).

First of all the two guides I used:

Rooting: thecubed

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=45692679#post45692679

Flashing TWRP: WACOMalt

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2449670

Personal help I received via my own thread:

Paranoid Android User: djraimondi

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=46779203#post46779203

Thank you “jrgilbert79” for all of your responses.

NOTE: I AM NOT PROVIDING LINKS TO THE FILES ON THIS PAGE. PLEASE GO TO THE GUIDE PAGES TO GET THE ROOT FILES AND THE TWRP AND LOKI FILES. THE RESPECTED THREAD POSTERS ARE USUALLY GOOD AT KEEPING THE MOST UPDATED FILES IN THEIR POSTS.

Now for the instructions:

1.Ensure you have the proper USB drivers installed, and your phone is in the proper mode (For Verizon, use Ethernet mode on the PC settings menu)

2.Enable Developer Mode on your phone and enable USB Debugging

3.Extract this zip file somewhere on your PC. (I recommend making a folder on the desktop named “root” and extract everything into that folder.)

4.Run root.bat

5.The phone will ask you to disconnect USB, disable USB debugging, then re-enable it and plug the phone back in, do so when prompted

6.You will then be asked if you would like to have a superuser package installed, which you can accept or decline (I recommend accepting).

If the text instructions scare you please use this video (I did). Follow along exactly as said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y45SXPRb31o

BAM! You should be rooted. To check do what the video says:

Go back into the command promp (shift right click inside the “root” folder (if you created it) “open command prompt here”). Type “adb shell”, “su”, “id”.

It should show identical information to this image.

Restart your phone.

Now installing TWRP can be a little more confusing. The actual guide gives you 3 options. It is easiest to use just the first one. What you are going to want to do is download the require files. The .img and the loki_flash file. Now unless you have adb installed you will need to put these files in a certain location. (If you do not know if you have adb installed you probably don’t, it’s okay the root folder has a way around this).

So now you should have downloaded the loki zip and extracted it to get the loki_flash file and your specific twrp disk image. Place both these files inside the folder that contained all the root information, like so:

Note: The files in the black box are what allow you to do the adb commands such as “adb devices”, “adb push”, etc. That is why you must shift click and “open command window here”. If you are afraid you did it wrong always test that windows can see your device by typing “adb devices” and verify it sees your LG.

Once you have the command window open and both files inside the same folder you use to root your device you are ready to flash the twrp recovery. It’s actually pretty simple, just like the root method. Essentially you are just copying two files over onto your device.

I’d figure I will add a little information as to what exactly is going on here. These are kind of a sudo linux language commands. I always liked knowing what was actually going on when I did stuff. You can skip this part if you want…

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“adb push” essentially copies a file over to the given location, in these instances /data/local/temp.

Cd means “change directory” it is a way of navigating through folders and sub folders. Windows has the same command.

Chmod pronounced “change mod” is giving rights to the file. Linux has a way of allowing rights to files. You have 3 groups “user” “group” “global/world” and 3 premissions “read” “write” “execute”. Basically all you need to know is “777” gives read write and execute commands to EVERYONE.

./ essentially runs a program or file or whatever. (This is what flashes the custom recovery).

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Enter the commands as shown:

THESE ARE FOR VERIZON. YOU MUST CHANGE THE FILE NAMES IF YOU ARE USING ANY OTHER CARRIER.

Code:

adb push loki_flash /data/local/tmp/loki_flash

adb push openrecovery-twrp-2.6.3.2-g2vzw.img /data/local/tmp/openrecovery-twrp-2.6.3.2-g2vzw.img

adb shell
(IF YOU DONT SEE A # prompt, type su to get it.)
cd /data/local/tmp

chmod 777 loki_flash

./loki_flash recovery /data/local/tmp/openrecovery-twrp-2.6.3.2-g2vzw.img

exit

adb reboot recovery

It will look something similar to this (I had already previously pushed the loki file that is why you do not see that here). When you are done if you don’t want to create a backup right away and just want to turn your phone back on go into “Reboot” -> “System”. It will boot your phone normally.

Now this is also something I wanted to show ya’ll. To get into TWRP recovery using the key combo you have to turn off your phone. Wait 5 seconds. Turn it on while holding the VOLUME DOWN and POWER key. Once the LG logo appears let go and instantly press and hold the VOLEUME DOWN and POWER key again. This scared me at first but it takes you to a factory reset screen. Mind you I took this video with my Droid RAZR HD, excuse the bad quality haha. (Also I was watching the CMA’s don’t hate… Yes it was Taylor Swift Preforming. You don’t need the sound anyway). Of course you can reboot into recovery using the adb command like the second video as well.

http://youtu.be/8EC29byGOvg

http://youtu.be/jLqBC7uWhyI

To create a backup I just did the default suggested by TWRP. This is from their websites:

http://teamw.in/whattobackup

The default backup options in TWRP are system, data, and boot. For most cases, this is sufficient for backing up a ROM. (Note that in some rare cases, boot isn't available for backup on certain devices). If your device has the option, backing up android_secure and/or sd-ext may be a good idea. There's usually no reason to back up cache or recovery (recovery not available for backup on some devices).

Some devices have "special partitions" like WiMAX, pds, efs, etc. These partitions almost never need to be included in a normal backup. It's usually a good idea to make a single backup of these partitions and hang on to them just in case. Make use of TWRP's keyboard feature and name your backup of these special partitions accordingly.

You just swipe you create a backup. It takes some time (took my device about 5 minutes). I did not compress it I did that afterwards. My file in side was relatively large (4GB approx.). Here is a screenshot of the folder with the backup and then the zip file I made of it. You should probably imo keep a copy on your phone for flashing back and a copy on your computer in case something goes horribly wrong and you lose the file (that way you can adb push the file).