[Gen8, Gen9, Gen10 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] awl14:
Hello Archos community,

I have bought the new Archos 50c Neon in early July, because of its nice price-performance ratio and the fact that it runs Android 4.4.2.

I have been able to successfully root it using Chinese "KingRoot", but am looking for an alternative SuperUser app. I already own a license of SuperSU Pro (which I am using for my tablet), but it turns out that the current versions of SuperSU (both 2.46 and 2.49) currently cause a crash when calling "su" from adb - seemingly because the Dalvik VM is unable to instantiate class "android.os.Environment" from SuperSU code when SuperSU wants to display its UI dialog that asks for permission. For the detailed issue description, please see here:

My thread in XDA SuperSU forum: Crash when trying to run su

Unfortunately, Chainfire (the author of SuperSU) from his signature is "away for most of the summer", and I will wait until he's back and then point him to this issue one more time.

In the meantime, I have created a script to successfully remove all remains/remnants of KingRoot (after successful rooting with it) and replace it by Koushik Dutta's OpenSource Superuser package:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdutta.superuser

http://www.koushikdutta.com/post/superuser

I have attached a ZIP file to this post that includes everything needed to do so - here are the instructions:

Please note that I do not take any responsibilities in case you brick your device, and also note that you void your warranty for the phone when rooting (these should be clear anyway)!

Reset your Neon 50c to factory settings (optional, might be needed in case you run into issues otherwise when removing KingRoot)

Unzip the attached ZIP and copy its contents to the root of the internal SD storage on your 50c Neon (directory /sdcard)

Use the included kingroot_4.0.0.apk to root your phone (allowing to install apks from untrusted sources)

Then, from your PC, open an "adb shell" to your device (you need to activate developer mode and USB debugging in order to do so)

From this adb shell, execute "su" and allow this root access through the KingRoot dialog on your phone. You now have a root shell on your phone.

Open a second adb root shell in the same way to not become stuck in case something goes wrong with the first one

In the first adb root shell, cd to /sdcard and execute my script in the following way:

cd /sdcard
sh -x ./kingroot_2_koush_su.sh ./busybox ./superuser.zip

and while it is running, press enter three times when "ps | grep king" and "ps | grep k_" show whether there are still processes running on your device that are related to KingRoot. General rule here is: When there are processes still running for the first ("ps | grep king"), something went wrong and KingRoot uninstall will most probably fail, while the fact that only processes matching the second ("ps | grep k_") are found, is normal and will NOT stop the script from working successfully.

When the script has finished, your phone will do a "soft reboot" (from killing zygote). You should do another explicit "hard" reboot afterwards anyway before trying to use the newly installed Superuser package.

I have run this script myself on my device, and am pretty confident that after the script has run successfully, there are no remains/remnants of KingRoot left on my device. The Open Source Superuser app by Koushik Dutta runs without any issues.

Hope this helps - and am still looking for some help with why SuperSU crashes on the 50c Neon although it seemingly has been installed properly...

Best regards,

awl