[Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II] rmhand:
Finally got Note 2 rooted after some battles

I finally got my Note 2 rooted, thanks to various posts and pointers here, but it took a lot of work (about 4 hours!) and some of my experiences may help others ...

I did this with a Verizon Note 2:

Model SCH-I605

Android version 4.4.2

Baseband version I605VRUFND7

Kernel 3.0.31

Build KOT49H.I605VRUFND7

Prep:

Downloaded two versions of GhettoRoot:

- GhettoRoot v0.3.2

- the All-In-One "post 27" version by NetworkingPro at http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=55210343&postcount=27

I unzipped them both to root folders (not sure if this is important?) on C:

Factory reset phone.

Put phone into debug mode.

To do this you've gotta access Developer Options.

If you don't see Developer Options you've gotta go into Settings / About device and click on the build number a bunch of times.

Also under Security make sure you allow "Unknown sources" for apps.

Getting the device recognized:

When I'd plug my phone into my pc it would come up as a media device (MTP). This meant I could browse my phone and SD card on my computer.

I opened a Windows command (DOS) prompt as administrator and cd'd to the Ghetto Root v0.3.2 folder.

To open command prompt as administrator you need to right click on the Command Prompt in the Start menu and choose 'Run as administrator'.

I initially tried without being administrator but had no luck, but this may have nothing to do with whether or not I was at admin level or not.

So it may or may not be important to be administrator ... just telling you what finally worked for me.

Run INSTALL.cmd.

In my first several runs (when I was not administrator, if that's important) the adb server would start but it could not find the device, even though I could browse it in Windows Explorer!

Finally I took the advice of a poster here and watched the YouTube video "How To Download & Install Android Studio For Windows" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy34ZcFRhZo

During the install of Android Studio I chose a different spot for installing the Android SDK ... hiding it beneath a hidden AppData directory seems pointless.

I installed it at C:\Java\Android\AndroidSDK.

USB Drivers:

Although Windows could see my phone fine there are numerous posts about needing the right drivers to do the rooting thing, so I ended up getting USB drivers from three places:

I got Koush's USB drivers from https://github.com/koush/UniversalAdbDriver

For good measure I also downloaded the latest USB drivers from Samsung at http://www.samsung.com/us/support/downloads

Note that the model # did not match exactly ... The closest match on the Samsung site was SCH-I605TSAVZW while on the inside of my phone it showed something like SCH-I605TSV.

I have no idea if this step was important.

I also installed PDANet on my computer, from http://pdanet.co/. This apparently also installs the USB drivers.

I doubt if I absolutely needed to install USB drivers from three sources ... just letting you know what worked for me.

Then, when connecting my phone in debug mode, it showed up in Windows Device Manager up near the top as an Android device, and it said something about "ADB" when you drilled into it. (Sorry, I don't have the exact wording).

Now I ran the newly installed adb (from Android SDK) to see if it could detect my phone. It did!

C:\ghettoroot-v0.3.2> C:\Java\Android\AndroidSDK\platform-tools\adb devices
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached
430xxxxxxxxxxxxx device

At some point above I was asked on my phone if I wanted to allow the PC to have access. (This is a debug mode thing). I said yes, of course. If this step doesn't happen apparently you'll never make it through the rest of the steps! You only have to do this once.

Also, along the way I made multiple attempts of unpluging/pluging-back-in the phone, as well as turning USB debugging mode off / on in order to get it recognized. Not sure if I needed to do this once I made it to this point where I had the latest adb installed.

What seemed to work (but I didn't validate by testing back and forth) is that once I had done the "adb devices" thing the GhettoRoot could connect to my phone. Call me superstitious, but after that I ran "adb devices" every time before running GhettoRoot and every single time GhettoRoot was able to connect.

Rooting

I then ran GhettoRoot v0.3.2 again:

C:\ghettoroot-v0.3.2>INSTALL.cmd

This time it took off roaring, with messages scrolling up the screen. However it stumbled at the SuperSU installer ZIP section:

...
/data/local/tmp/ghetto/META-INF/com/google/android/update-binary-2[64]: unzip: not found
...
Unable to chmod /tmp/supersu/arm/chattr: No such file or directory
Unable to chmod /tmp/supersu/arm/chattr.pie: No such file or directory
/data/local/tmp/ghetto/META-INF/com/google/android/update-binary-2[72]: /tmp/supersu/arm/chattr: not found
/data/local/tmp/ghetto/META-INF/com/google/android/update-binary-2[73]: /tmp/supersu/arm/chattr.pie: not found

etc ...

./root.sh[399]: dirname: not found
./root.sh[399]: basename: not found

...

Remove some surveillance...
./root.sh[510]: dirname: not found
./root.sh[510]: basename: not found
./root.sh[510]: find: not found
Completion summary:
Successful tasks: Install SuperSU, Deknox, De-OTA, Remove some surveillance
[INFO] postroot:407: Executing ./root.sh succeeded

*** Thank you for choosing ghettoroot. Please enjoy your stay.

The script doesn't have the greatest error checking ... clearly it had failed.

But I'd heard others had also failed with GhettoRoot v0.3.2, but had gotten it to finally work all the way with the GhettoRoot All-In-One "post 27" version by NetworkingPro from http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=55210343&postcount=27

But at first I had even worse luck with this one - it couldn't find the phone:

C:\GhettoRoot>GhettoRoot.bat
Welcome to GhettoRoot for the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 - 4.4.2 ND7
Please confirm you have turned on USB debugging and authorized your device.

The rooting process is about to begin. Please do not interrupt the process once it has started.

Removing old root files.
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
error: device not found
error: device not found

Then I noticed in the GhettoRoot folder there was a version of adb.exe that was a different size than the one I had downloaded with the Android SDK.

So I renamed C:\GhettoRoot\adb.exe to adb-old.exe and copied adb (three files actually) over from the Android SDK at C:\Java\Android\AndroidSDK\platform-tools:

- adb.exe

- AdbWinApi.dll

- AdbWinUsbApi.dll

(I have no idea if the dll files were also needed ...)

I re-ran GhettoRoot.bat and this time with the newer adb it worked!!!

I now had SuperSU on my phone (it was in the app drawer) and I verified I had root by opening ConnectBot to a local connection and typing "su" to see that I get the '#' prompt. [Details at http://trendblog.net/check-android-phone-rooted-two-steps/]

It was a long four hours but finally I'm rooted ... hope this helps someone ... Good luck!